ombudsman columns
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The war on journalism
Ombudsman Closing off information to the public by squeezing the press leaves us in the dark with pundit prattle, poor policies and panic.
10.22.01
Freedom flees in terror from Sept. 11 disaster
Ombudsman Do we really want to add constitutional freedoms to the sorrowful list of casualties?
09.19.01
The making of a First Amendment martyr
Ombudsman Journalist Vanessa Leggett sits in jail because she won’t become an investigative pawn of government.
08.22.01
Freedom of speech: Rated 'R' for restricted
Ombudsman Voluntary rating systems don’t go far enough for those who would dictate what we see in the comfort of a theater or listen to in the privacy of our homes.
07.19.01
The thought police: Lay down your rights and back away slowly!
Ombudsman Law enforcement seems to be increasingly involved in hauling people off to court for committing acts of expression.
06.21.01
Ducking questions, principal puts reporter in handcuffs
Ombudsman Trying to report feature on baby ducks at Virginia school lands Kelly Campbell of Potomac News in jail.
06.15.01
Will Supreme Court give primacy to privacy?
Ombudsman If justices protect cell-phone privacy at the expense of First Amendment free-press rights, we'll all lose.
01.04.01
First Amendment: still under siege at age 209
Ombudsman Spoiling this year's birthday party are those who sense they can restrict our first freedoms by tapping into deep resentments of ordinary people against expression they despise.
12.15.00
A hero without sword or shield
Ombudsman William Lawbaugh stood up for campus press freedom at Mount Saint Mary's College in Maryland, and has paid a steep price.
11.27.00
A leaky bureaucracy is good for democracy
Ombudsman Through legislative legerdemain, we nearly ended up with a law that would have punished those who seek to promote good government.
11.10.00
Trying to shut out the light by banning books
Ombudsman First came the press, then came pressure not to print "dangerous publications," a regrettable tilt toward censorship that persists across the centuries.
09.25.00
A panic of biblical proportions over media violence
Ombudsman Have you heard the one about '1,000 studies linking media to violence'? They don't exist.
08.21.00
'Tools' fail as strategies to keep kids away from Net sex at libraries
Ombudsman Paul McMasters testifies before National Research Council that effort to combat 'harmful' material does more harm than good.
07.18.00
It's the 'principal' of the thing
Ombudsman One administrator takes high road in handling controversy over student newspaper; another takes wrong path by trying to squelch student expression.
07.11.00
Pinning a label on violence in media
Ombudsman Someone should be keeping track of all the proposals coming out of Congress to regulate what the rest of us can see, hear and say. It is a long and scary list.
06.23.00
Plugging a leak by puncturing freedom
Ombudsman In Washington, where information is power, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence proposes to keep secrets by jailing those who talk to the press.
06.16.00
Why a bad deal by the press is a big deal to the public
Ombudsman We've come to expect a certain amount of silliness from television news operations.
06.01.00
Playboy signal-bleed case never should have been a case
Ombudsman Perhaps only die-hard First Amendment advocates welcomed yesterday's Supreme Court ruling that Congress violated our constitutional rights in trying to regulate sex-oriented cable channels, but all of us should be outraged that this silly, costly battle had to be fought in the first place.
05.23.00
The folly of reading the mind of the reader
Ombudsman Gershon Legman was a man of great accomplishments and interests, best remembered as the blood enemy of censors and their collaborators.
05.18.00
Don't just condemn censors, confront them
Ombudsman Trying to see 'the censors' side of things' only emboldens them; librarians, schools and others charged with keeping the flame of intellectual freedom must stand up to censorship, not try to accommodate it.
05.10.00
Page last updated: 5/2/2013 3:43:25 AM
