Free Speech? Freedom of the Press? In your dreams
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021)
Many of the commentators on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have lately been encountering the cold reality that we don’t have all the civil and human rights that they thought they had. First among those is free speech.
During the Cold War, the U.S. continuously brought up human rights, by which it meant the right to free speech without reprisals, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and first and foremost, the right to make a buck.
Even then, the actual implementation of these rights in the U.S. was overblown, while the lack of such rights in the East Bloc and developing nations was belittled. With the end of the Cold War, American politicians and opinion-makers put aside their happy faces, and returned to business as usual.
The following is one more example that while we may live in a democracy, it is an authoritarian democracy, where the rich and powerful enjoy those rights, and the rest of us have to watch what we say, and to whom we say it. There has never been free speech within the confines of corporate offices and factories. For generations, millions of workers, without unions, have spent half their waking lives lacking the most basic rights we enjoy on the outside. Corporate fascism does not include a right to free speech.
In the wonderful world of neoliberalism, business as usual means not letting anything stand in the way of profits. As a result, the boundaries of free speech have been restricted, and must be compatible with the drive for ever more profits by the corporations. The new owners of much of social media are bigger and wealthier than the old media, such as the New York Times, and what used to be your locally-owned newspaper.
A growing trend is that old and new media are linked together, such as with the Washington Post and Amazon, via Jeff Bezos.
Is There a Hedge Fund in your Future?
The Chicago Tribune empire, which not long ago owned the Los Angeles Times, and currently owns the New York Daily News and eight other newspapers, is about to be gobbled up by Wall Street. On Feb. 16, it was announced that the Tribune corporation is in the process of coming under the direct control of finance capital with its purchase by a hedge fund, Alden Global Capital for $630 million. Expect massive layoffs.
Despite Bezos’ ownership, the Washington Post still had enough journalistic independence to comment on the Alden take over:
With the takeover, Alden will add nine more newspapers to its already bloated monopoly of 200 papers. The sale of Chicago Tribune, Inc. must be approved by the next major shareholder, none other than Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire investor who owns the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union Tribune. Soon-Shiong will likely vote in favor of this journalistic disaster.
Greed All About It
About 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004 and 2018. According to the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, the top 25 corporations control nearly two-thirds of all daily newspapers. One corporation, New Media/GateHouse, owns 451 newspapers. The situation is even more bleak in TV and radio, and is exercising its clout in social media. The recent deluge of censorship and cancel culture is, in reality, the spread of corporate culture from newspapers, radio and TV to the New Media.
The only escapee from the Tribune train wreck is the Baltimore Sun, which Alden has graciously condescended to allow to go its own way and become a non-profit. This type of ownership arrangement can be either good or bad, depending who is on the board of directors, but it offers a chance to be independent of corporate America.
Save The News
The News Guild union (formerly The Newspaper Guid), the major union for journalists and other media workers, recently issued a fightback program, under the title:
The Save The News campaign is a fight for long-term solutions to the crisis facing the news industry by advocating for public policy that will:
Breakup corporate ownership of news organizations— five companies now own 74% of daily newspapers
Provide incentives for financial investors to sell news organizations to civic-minded, local investors
Provide grants, tax credits and new revenue for news organizations, and ensure that additional money is spent in newsrooms and not padding a corporate bottom line
Increase access to government records
Protect journalists and their sources from prosecution, just for doing their jobs
This program is a good start. It would be an even better start if it advocated for non-profit ownership to make sure decisions aren’t made just to increase the owner’s bottom-line.
In addition, every manifesto must be backed up by mass action in the streets, the newsrooms, invading stockholder meetings, boycotts, strikes, and other creative ways to bring the bosses to their knees.
As a journalist, and former Guild member/official, I believe this fight can be won, because what happens to the media is much more visible than are the machinations hidden in industrial parks. But it will take unity with other working class organizations, taking the fight to the employers, and a willingness to be in for the long haul. Preserving the First Amendment is everyone’s fight.
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The Poet Who Defeated Censorship in the USA
Without Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was a poet, publisher and owner of City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach, the social impact of the Beat Generation would have been much weaker.
City Lights was a publishing house as well as a bookstore. It broadened the reach of the new Beat poetry far beyond the walls of the store. Among the poets receiving wide-spread exposure were Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Patchen, Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, Gregory Corse, Robert Duncan, Malcolm Lowry, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Diane DiPrima, Jack Kerouac, Anne Waldman, Jack Hirschman, Rosario Murillo, David Meltzer, and of course, Ferlinghetti..
One of the poets, Allen Ginsberg, wrote a poem called Howl. The poem was revolutionary in its style and content. Some people called it obscene, because it mentioned banned drugs and both heterosexual and homosexual practices.. Nevertheless, Ferlinghetti thought it was an important poem which should be published, which he did in 1956.
The 1950s was not a progressive era in the U.S. Rather, it resembled Stalinism with its denunciations, kangaroo courts, government repression and jail terms based on a person’s tattered right to free speech.
In the middle of what Lillian Hellman called “scoundrel time,” Ferlinghetti challenged the boundaries of free speech by bringing the poem into the literary life of the country. It was to be printed in the UK and imported to City Lights. But when the U.S. Customs Bureau encountered the book, Ferlinghetti was promptly arrested and charged with disseminating obscene literature, along with his partner, Shigeyosi Murao. Also arrested was the bookstore manager, Shig Murao for selling the book to an undercover agent
A long trial ensued in which poets, critics and academics testified to the redeeming social value of Howl. The ACLU came to the support of the defendants. Finally, on Oct. 3, 1957, Judge Clayton Horn ruled that the poem had redemming social value which allowed its publication. Today, Howl is generally regarded as one of the greatest english-language poems of the 20th century.
A 2010 documentary, Howl, includes a reading of the poem and the story of the trial. The film can currently be seen on Amazon Prime Video. Reading of the poem by Allen Ginsberg can be found on YouTube. The text of Howl can be read here. Organize a reading with your friends and family.
Ferlinghetti did many courageous acts during his 101 years, which made the country we live in more free, and more appreciative of all forms of culture. In his case, 101 years was too short a life.
Gratitude & Praise, Lawrence Ferlinghetti!!! Also for maintaining City Lights as a community literary sentinel.
In Canada, we once hosted a 12 hr poetry marathon, which culminated in a midnight shared reading of Howl!!! 🐺