Posts Tagged ‘First Amendment’

WikiLeaks, the First Amendment and Getting Our Heads Screwed on Straight

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

By Mary Beth West, APR

In the summer of 1992, as I diligently inched my way through then-Dean Dwight Teeter’s 400-level Communications Law course at UT’s College of Communication & Information, I well remember my final paper on the topic of the government’s authority to withhold information for purposes of national security. 

The 1970s Pentagon Papers case as well as governmental protection of information in the first Gulf War constituted much of my paper’s content, and I had to take a stance on the issue and support my position.  Some years have ticked by since then . . . yet my opinion on the matter still holds as firm as the day I wrote that paper (and, incidentally, earned an “A” in the class). 

I’m all about the First Amendment and will always advocate for the media’s and the public’s right to seek access to information. 

Seek.  That doesn’t necessarily mean get. 

When the spam really hits the fan in the context of the global war on terror, as well as any individual’s or entity’s sick nonchalance about blowing up my family or my neighbor’s family on an aircraft, at a Christmas tree lighting event, on the National Mall or wherever else, then in my world, government authority trumps the press’s or the public’s right to information if it means the intent of preventing that outcome. 

And of course, the same holds doubly true in protecting U.S. military and government service members who purposely risk their lives daily to protect Americans as well as other innocent civilian lives worldwide. 

 Yes – the press serves an absolutely critical watchdog function when it comes to our government.  Thankfully, our Constitution provides arguably the most rigorous safeguards for that function of any nation in the world. 

In addition to that great document, where the interests of national security overseen by the government have clashed with the public’s right to information that legitimately should be in the public domain, there has been built a framework of legal precedent that continues to serve our nation’s interests on both sides of that spectrum, even as it evolves with the world in which we now find ourselves.  The key element here in those clashes is that there exists – at least in this country – a legal system to balance the interests within the greatest means possible.   

Enter WikiLeaks, and you can chuck the whole idea of legality out the window.  A foreign-hosted website, neither it nor its Australian founder is under the U.S. government’s jurisdiction, so in the face of the site’s most recent unleashing of classified U.S. government / military / diplomatic data, there are a variety of roadblocks posed to the U.S.’s ability to do anything about it beyond prosecuting U.S.-citizen leak sources and trying to shore up internal security. 

I will be interested to hear the Society of Professional Journalists’ take on this latest incident, if they provide one.  A few years ago, SPJ filed an amicus brief in a district court defending WikiLeaks in a completely separate, unrelated whistleblower case involving a Cayman Islands-based bank. 

Here’s a question for SPJ and media outlets worldwide: where does the line exist between “whistleblower” and intentionally aiding and abetting some of the greatest forces of evil on the globe?  And what does it take, exactly, for them to acknowledge that such a line exists?

Thus far, in light of recent developments, it appears SPJ has remained silent.  From a PR standpoint, that may be smart. After all, assuming SPJ leans toward the stance it’s most accustomed to taking, who really wants to defend an entity that is as sanctimonious about upholding “government transparency” via criminally – treasonously – obtained data as it is blasé and arrogantly dismissive about the very notion of human lives being jeopardized? 

But in a way, the SPJ’s silence is deafening.  When it comes to matters of the highest gravity concerning freedom, there is a time for the nation and for the journalism profession to put on their thinking caps and separate the real wheat from the chaff – and this is it. 

From a doing-the-right-thing standpoint, it is my sincere hope that SPJ will find a way – any way – to denounce what has taken place and draw the logical, moral line in the sand that so obviously has been crossed in most egregious and premeditated fashion by WikiLeaks. 

Freedom of the press and of information is one of the greatest and most important freedoms we have – and no country has defined or upheld it as the people of the United States.  But information can also be a loaded gun (or a loaded briefcase bomb – and I’m not being alarmist, just sadly realistic).  In just whose hands are we not only willing to place it but also to advocate for it to be placed? 

We have seen the enemy, and it is not us.

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Freedom of Speech on Acid

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

By Mary Beth West, APR

Coming off the long Independence Day weekend, it’s appropriate that the Freedom Forum launched its “1 for All” campaign this month to spotlight our First Amendment freedoms. 

As cited in Editor & Publisher in referencing the need for the campaign, “Only 4% of Americans can name all the ‘five freedoms’ guaranteed in the Amendment, and the other 96% don’t appear embarrassed by their ignorance.” 

Even if they aren’t up on their civic lessons about the First Amendment’s direct role to ensure our freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition, everyone participating in the U.S.-based blogosphere and social media realm should count those blessings with tremendous gratitude and pride.

This month, “In the Profession” will focus on social media, with some observations on how the light-speed evolution of online communications tools, tactics and strategies are advancing public relations programs – all the while wreaking more than their fair share of havoc.

It’s that dichotomy of outcomes that makes social media such a parallel representation of the First Amendment itself.

Like social media, the doors that these freedoms open can let wondrous light shine in, but they can also unleash many ideas, opinions, sentiments and messages that are troubling, controversial, offensive, inaccurate, and, for lack of more to-the-point phrasing, can make for a big damn mess that people like me working in the public relations profession must ride herd on daily to clear up and clean up.  Such is our lot in life, but truthfully, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

As an American, I learned long ago that the exercise of First Amendment freedoms doesn’t come wrapped in some neat little contained package or encased within a D.C. museum under Plexiglas in a climate-controlled environment. 

To the contrary, our First Amendment freedoms’ strength, power and beauty are typified by the fact that they run amok all over the landscape, oftentimes making colossal, inconvenient spectacles that require us to have to stop, listen, consider, reconsider, and discuss with one another – even to the point of passionate wars of words – points of view that are not our own. 

Sometimes, the net result of those freedoms even goes so far as to change how we do things, both as individuals and as a society.  And we can argue yet some more as to whether those changes are good or bad.  The circle of First Amendment freedom therein continues.

Quite similarly, social media operates and produces outcomes in much the same way, only in faster and more dramatic fashion . . . a veritable freedom-of-speech on acid.  However unbridled, chaotic and maddening it can be, social media extends powers to the people that the Founding Fathers undoubtedly would have reveled in and embraced as a legacy to the Constitution’s spirit and intent. 

To that point, I think those visionary forbearers would have insisted that social media and online communications exist as an unregulated, unfettered platform for our society’s advancement – both domestically and globally.  And they would have credited us with enough intelligence to utilize it in such a way that the First Amendment would not only continue to survive, but thrive. 

So to that end, let’s exercise those freedoms, and that intelligence, in such a way that would make them proud.

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Media Relations: It’s a part of – but not the whole – PR toolbox

Friday, May 7th, 2010

By Mary Beth West, APR

For anyone who has worked in the public relations field, it doesn’t take long to realize that this profession is widely misunderstood, as it has been since it formally became a professional discipline in the mid-twentieth century.

One of the main reasons for this mystification is that so many people singularly define public relations as what they see firsthand, most often in the form of what’s known as “media relations” – the communications process of working directly with reporters, editors and media outlets to achieve an organizational goal. 

And, unfortunately, what people readily observe in the media relations sphere is commonly not that flattering to the profession as a whole.

Turn on the TV most nights, and you’re faced with various spokespersons on the verge of fisticuffs, political press secretaries succumbing to the day’s feeding frenzy with the slip of a half-truth (i.e. a half-lie), or – my personal favorite – Hollywood characters from “Spin City,” “Wag the Dog,” “Sex and the City” or the like who define their PR success by how much they’re pulling the wool over someone’s eyes, or, in Samantha Jones’ case, pulling it off. 

So to help set the record straight about media relations done well, “In the Profession” will focus this month on best practices for this segment of work. 

I hasten to emphasize that media relations is one tool in the public relations and marketing communications arsenal – it’s not the whole of the PR toolbox itself, as some tend to assume.  It is, however, the most high-profile and publicly visible tool.  As such, a big part of representing the value of public relations accurately starts with making sure that media relations’ purpose and parameters for success are understood.

I’ll kick things off with our first piece of advice for the month: respect the First Amendment, freedom of the press and the role that media play to ensure that we live in an open and as-transparent-as-possible society. 

Unfortunately, many businesses – and even many people working in a public relations role – view news media as the enemy and something to be feared.  True, there can be some reporting tactics out there that are problematic (we’ll discuss those this month, too). 

However, the best place to start in working with the media from a position of strength and confidence is to understand – and to respect – the media’s greater First Amendment-driven role in society . . . and in so doing, to seek a relationship with media contacts that facilitates a free flow of information, achieving your organization’s objectives while serving the public good.  Pretty rewarding stuff all-around.

We look forward to sharing more on media relations in the month ahead, and we welcome your comments and feedback.

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