Target of hundreds of death threats and ally to political dissidents, Flemming Rose, Foreign Editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, has a unique perspective on the importance of freedom of speech in a world plagued by fears of terrorism.
In 2006, Jyllands-Posten published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, inciting a worldwide firestorm and making Rose a target for religious extremists, forcing him to live with round-the-clock security. In the time since, Rose has met with political dissidents around the world—from former Soviet citizens to ex-Muslims living in Europe.
In his new book, The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech, published by the Cato Institute, Rose not only recounts that story, but takes a hard look at attempts to limit free speech, peppering his heady prose with powerful anecdotes of his work to preserve this inalienable right and the interesting people he has met along the way.
Cato Senior Fellow Nat Hentoff is one of the foremost authorities on the First Amendment. He has earned numerous awards and is a widely acknowledged defender of civil liberties. For 51 years, Hentoff was a columnist and staff writer with The Village Voice.
He is also a jazz expert, Hentoff writes on music for The Wall Street Journal and Jazz Times. He is the subject of the documentary, The Pleasures of Being Out of Step.
He is still a prolific writer. Here are a few of his recent columns:
When terrorists opened fire in the Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris yesterday, the world changed forever. Suspected violent Islamists shot and killed twelve individuals, including the editor-in-chief and two policemen. The satirical French weekly newspaper had previously been firebombed in November 2011, a day after it had published a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed.
People around the world responded with an outpouring of support as the Twitter hashtag #JeSuisCharlie (“I am Charlie”) quickly became a global trend. A cartoon featuring a male Charlie Hebdo employee kissing a muslim man under the banner “l'amour plus fort que la haine,” (“love is stronger than hate”)—which had originally been published as the cover of the magazine six days after the 2011 attack—became in many ways a symbol of the Charlie Hebdo staff’s bravery in the face of terrorism.
Many news organizations, such as CNN, made the decision not to share any inflammatory images from Charlie Hebdo. The Associated Press—the world’s oldest newswire—is removing any potentially incendiary Charlie Hebdo images from its database. Others, such as the New York Daily News, UK Telegraph, and BBC, will be keeping the images but censoring them, in whole or in part. Still other news organizations—from the Huffington Post to Gawker, the Weekly Standard to Buzzfeed—are showcasing the very cartoons that are at the center of the controversy. In their own right, the remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo announced earlier today that they will be releasing the next week’s edition on schedule.
One thing is clear: the future of free speech is very much up for debate. In light of yesterday’s horrible tragedy, Cato scholars weigh in on the crucial role it plays in a free world.
Target of hundreds of death threats and ally to political dissidents, Flemming Rose, Foreign Editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, has a unique perspective on the importance of freedom of speech in a world that is increasingly multicultural, multireligious, and multiethnic. In The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech, a new book published by the Cato Institute, Rose takes a hard look at the slippery slope of attempts to limit free speech, peppering his heady prose with powerful anecdotes of his work to preserve this inalienable right and the interesting people he has met along the way.
The topic of police abuse and what can be done about it has been in the news a lot lately. This 2010 video from the Cato Institute explores the surprisingly controversial topic of filming on-duty police officers.
No one disputes the idea that police misconduct is wrong, but reasonable people do disagree about the scope of the problem and how it ought to be addressed.
Cato’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project gathers reports of credible allegations of police misconduct so policymakers (and others) can make informed assessments of the nature and circumstances of police misconduct, and consider proposals that can minimize wrongdoing.
Our objective is to identify policies that consistently uphold high standards of ethics, honesty, and professionalism from police officers and critique the policies that do not.
Cameras play an important role in that. Several high-profile cases of police brutality have been exposed by citizens who recorded police actions with cell phones. Yet some state wiretapping laws, written before the age of ubiquitous recording devices, prohibit recording these events and then further criminalize the publication of the recordings on the Internet.
So, is filming police against the law–and, more importantly, should it be?
Does the First Amendment protect citizen journalism, or do police agents have a right to privacy while performing public duties? Watch the video and decide for yourself.
A D.C.-based public policy research organization (or "think tank") dedicated to the values of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.
