Ombudsman columns
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Speech police — on the left and right — trample freedom of expression in the name of virtue
Ombudsman David Lowenthal, professor emeritus of political science at Boston College, offered an argument for censorship of the entertainment media in an article recently published in The Weekly Standard. Lowenthal is inspired by two convictions: That Hollywood is dishing out too much sex and violence and that we consumers like it too much for our own good.
09.08.99
A little less churn in the press pool, please
Ombudsman Sydney H. Schanberg is one of the nation's journalistic treasures. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the fall of Cambodia in 1975. He has distinguished himself in the reporting craft at The New York Times and Newsday. He has fought fiercely for press freedom. His work and his integrity stand as a caution to indiscriminate bashers of the press.
08.30.99
Crime on campus: What colleges won't tell you
Ombudsman In the next few weeks, 10.4 million students will be settling in on the nation's college and university campuses. They look forward to learning, maturing, perhaps partying a little. Some will be more prepared than others for this academic adventure, but very few will be prepared for the amount and nature of crime they will encounter on those campuses.
08.23.99
Fear of freedom puts First Amendment at risk
Ombudsman There are among us self-appointed and self-anointed guardians of culture and morality who believe that the rest of us have too much freedom. In their insistent opinion, our culture is too coarse, our speech too uncivil, our tastes too crude.
08.16.99
People think press too free; government only too happy to make it less so
Ombudsman To the amazement of people living elsewhere, the majority of Americans think that our press is too free. More ominously, a goodly number of police, judges and political leaders who should know better pander to that attitude by harassing journalists and restricting their efforts to keep the public apprised of what the officials are up to.
08.09.99
Hollywood: the power and the evil
Ombudsman All eyes turn to Hollywood these days in search of both blame and remedy for whatever ails us at the moment.
07.26.99
Zoning out the First Amendment
Ombudsman The First Amendment often frustrates the efforts of local government officials to punish adult businesses.
07.19.99
Dr. Laura: Wronging our rights in the library
Ombudsman While radio talk host Dr. Laura Schlessinger complains about online porn and pedophilia, the librarians she blames carefully craft acceptable Internet-use policies and provide a tap on the shoulder to those who don't adhere.
07.12.99
Notwithstanding the Constitution ...
Ombudsman Here's the game politicians are playing with First Amendment freedoms: When problems prove hard to solve, outlaw offending speech so it looks like we're doing something.
07.06.99
State of the First Amendment:A survey of public attitudes
Ombudsman Most Americans celebrate the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. Yet they are not entirely comfortable with those freedoms. They are constantly reevaluating their commitment to First Amendment rights and values and rearranging their priorities, asking themselves whether life would be more civil, more orderly, less threatening if the excesses of expression were somehow subdued.
07.02.99
Toying with free speech
Ombudsman Washington Redskins fullback John Riggins raised a few eyebrows several years ago when he told Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at some Washington gala, Come on, Sandy baby, loosen up.
06.28.99
When judges keep press at bay, the public is thereal loser
Ombudsman Last week, a federal court of appeals in
California issued an opinion that might be
characterized fairly as a footnote in the infamous
Unabomber case.
06.14.99
Unlearning liberty: children in democratic limbo
Ombudsman The concept of freedom is becoming largely academic in the nation's schools.
06.07.99
Testimony before the House Commerce Subcommittee on Health and Environment
Ombudsman Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. My name is Paul McMasters. I am here today testifying on behalf of the American Society of Newspapers Editors as a member of that organization's Freedom of Information Committee.
05.26.99
Murder by the book: Free speech takes a hit
Ombudsman Publisher's decision to settle in murder case involving Hit Man murder manual demonstrates how vulnerable formerly unassailable speech has become.
05.24.99
V-chipping away at your TV choices
Ombudsman We move ever closer to the day when the government will be watching ever more closely what you watch on television.
05.17.99
Blaming media for social ills: convenient excuse
Ombudsman There is a saying among lawyers that bad facts make bad law. In its $25 million verdict against a tabloid TV show on May 7, a Michigan jury added a corollary: "Bad television makes terrible law."
05.10.99
Tough choice: journalist or jailbird
Ombudsman It's one thing to defend journalistic freedom and independence with bombast and rhetoric; quite another to surrender personal freedom and independence in a jail cell.
05.03.99
Journalists can't be cops, too
Ombudsman Several Michigan newspapers and television stations aren't faring very well in a struggle to preserve their independence from law enforcement.
04.16.99
When privacy and press rights collide
Ombudsman The facts around it have grown fuzzy and faded with the passage of 30 years but the singular image is as sharp today as it was the night it was imprinted in my memory.
03.29.99
Honoring Madison's constitutional legacy
Ombudsman On the map, the road wending through Virginia's beautiful Piedmont region is Highway 20.
03.22.99
National FOI Day: Access is the key to good government
Ombudsman Tomorrow is the birthday of James Madison, who labored to embed the principle of an informed citizenry in our civic compact. That is why across this nation, in ways large and small, March 16 is observed as National Freedom of Information Day.
03.15.99
Why the Starr 'muzzle' on Monica telling the full story?
Ombudsman Something like 70 million people not yet afflicted with scandal fatigue tuned in to watch Barbara Walter's two-hour interview with Monica Lewinsky Wednesday. And as entertained and titillated as they may have been, they did not get the whole story.
03.08.99
Scandalmania: The press just can't help itself
Ombudsman How did Juanita Broaddrick's accusation that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her in a Little Rock hotel in the spring of 1978 wind up on the front pages of mainstream newspapers 21 years later?
03.01.99
'Broadcasters not tending to their free-speech interests'
Ombudsman Broadcasters not tending to their free-speech interests
02.25.99
Exorcising the demons of television
Ombudsman Our night terrors from things that go bump on the television screen continue. Recent dispatches from the cultural wars:
02.22.99
When it comes to chemical threats, ignorance just isn't bliss
Ombudsman Forty million men, women and children in the United States live in the shadow of 66,000 plants harboring chemicals that could kill or maim indiscriminately if they escaped into the air we breathe.
02.15.99
Trampling freedom in a cyberpanic
Ombudsman It often appears that the nation's newspapers are peering into cyberspace through the wrong end of a telescope. In such an inverted view of the online world, where vagrant bits and pieces and bright flashes are made more ominous by distance, a cyberpanic sets in. The Internet looms in the lens as more threat than promise.
02.09.99
Fear of sex translates into laws on what we can say and show
Ombudsman Food can cause problems, too, but you don't see laws proposed to restrict pictures of food online.
02.01.99
Senate fiddles in secret while public burns
Ombudsman A good part of the reason most of us remember that riveting and remarkable 1990 public television series
01.25.99
Nuremberg Files anti-abortion site: Free speech or hit list?
Ombudsman Where does free speech stop and a hit list begin?
01.19.99
Must a civil society be a censored society?
Ombudsman More than one year has passed, and we have yet to shake the image of Matthew Shepard pistol-whipped and strung up to die on a Wyoming rail fence because he was gay.
01.17.99
The 'it's out there' beat: This time, restraint defeats rumor
Ombudsman The good news is that the American mainstream press thus far has shown admirable restraint in not making public the latest, apparently unfounded, rumor about alleged pre-presidential sex-capades
01.11.99
Libel: Subtle censor of the press
Ombudsman Two federal appeals courts went their separate ways in recent high-profile libel cases, proving once again that what the legal world considers settled law is anything but that to the press and the public.
01.04.99
Journalism educators need to get passionate about First Amendment freedoms and responsibilities — on-campus and off
Ombudsman Journalism educators are the ones who mold the minds and create the credentials of the journalists who determine what we read in our newspapers and view and hear in our newscasts.
12.28.98
Press at its best — or just documenting dirt?
Ombudsman Porn publisher Larry Flynt finally got fed up with the mainstream press horning in on his franchise.
12.21.98
Few will note 207th birthday of our five fundamental freedoms, even though each is under attack
Ombudsman A precious few will take note of today's 207th birthday of the First Amendment.
12.15.98
Fight over free press at Univ. of Rhode Island puts a lot on the line
Ombudsman More than two decades ago, the student newspaper on the campus of the University of Rhode Island suffered an identity crisis and wound up changing its name from The Beacon to The Good 5 Cent Cigar.
12.14.98
Tough times at 'Free Speech High:' School administrators teaching dismalFirst Amendment lessons
Ombudsman For just a taste of the dismal state of free expression for the nation's young people, consider last week's story of the Phoenix high school student who tried to publish his own newspaper and wound up in the headlines himself.
12.07.98
Reducing free speech's Net worth
Ombudsman The Commonwealth of Virginia seems to be awash in Internet ironies right now.
12.01.98
Media's prime-time crime spree hides real statistics — violence in U.S. is down
Ombudsman Violent crime declined for the sixth year in a row and now is at its lowest rate since 1987, according to a report released this weekend by the Justice Department. Big news story, right? Well, not quite.
11.23.98
Censorship: It's in our genes
Ombudsman The human being arrived in this world with three basic instincts: the urge to hunt and gather food, the urge to procreate, and the urge to censor.
11.16.98
Sooner or later, Hollywood offends us all
Ombudsman "The Siege" opened this weekend under siege from Arab-Americans offended by
the movie's characterization of their religion and culture. Groups planned
to picket and distribute leaflets at a number of theaters.
11.09.98
Citizens get short shrift from officials on public information
Ombudsman After the votes are counted in precincts across the nation tomorrow, the pundits and politicians will no doubt decry poor voter turnout and blame it on poor citizenship.
11.02.98
Books and movies as natural born killers
Ombudsman There are no limits to the limits on free expression if publishers, broadcasters and the producers can be held responsible for crimes of those who try to avoid responsibility by saying a book, movie or music made me do it.
10.26.98
Shackling the world's press with good intentions
Ombudsman Press councils, universal ethics codes sound good but just provide excuses to restrict media at a time when we need more press freedom, not less.
10.19.98
Waving the flag vs. saving free speech
Ombudsman Little-noticed constitutional crisis gone for now - but will return.
10.12.98
High crimes and misdemeanors in the press
Ombudsman Some journalists covering the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal are unindicted co-conspirators in the impeachment of their own credibility.
10.05.98
Book-burning mentality sears society's soul
Ombudsman In the movie "City of Angels," the angels' home away from heaven is not a
church or sanctuary but a library.
09.28.98
When privacy is paramount, is democracy in danger?
Ombudsman This morning, we endured the breach of yet another barrier to the private
and confidential as various media began streaming to us four hours of
unedited and unexamined grand jury testimony by President Clinton.
09.21.98
Page last updated: 5/2/2013 1:02:09 PM
