{"id":1720,"date":"2016-04-21T14:24:10","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T20:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sebersole.wordpress.com\/?p=1720"},"modified":"2016-04-21T14:24:10","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T20:24:10","slug":"freedom-of-expression-has-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/freedom-of-expression-has-limits\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom of Expression Has Limits"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FreedomOfExpression\"ESPN’s decision to fire baseball commentator Curt Schilling\u00a0is not an infringement of Schilling’s\u00a0rights under the\u00a0First Amendment. Companies have parted ways with\u00a0high profile employees for all sorts of public\u00a0statements or deeds that were at odds with the company’s image. A few that come to mind are: Justine Sacco<\/a>, Sergeant Gary Stein<\/a>, Paula Deen<\/a>, Adria Richards<\/a> (this one is complicated), and don’t forget shock jocks Anthony Cumia<\/a> and Don Imus<\/a>. Even when your job is to be outrageous and over-the-line, apparently there is still a line that must not be crossed.<\/p>\n

Schilling’s offense (reposting an anti-transgender meme on Facebook) comes at a difficult time in America as social norms are changing at a dramatic pace. Remember that just a few short years ago\u00a0President Barack Obama and candidate Hillary Clinton were both opposed to same-sex marriage. And now that same-sex marriage is the law of the land, transgender rights have become the next big issue. While people evolve on where they stand on the issue,\u00a0companies, political figures, celebrities and other entities are making statements about where they stand. In this case ESPN decided to take a stand that put Schilling on the wrong side of the issue.<\/p>\n

In countries that do not have an equivalent of the First Amendment, public statements can quickly lead to government action. Just this week German Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed a court to proceed with prosecution of \u00a0a German comedian for defaming\u00a0Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to a report in the Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, similar laws exist in Sweden, Monaco, and Spain…countries not typically thought of as repressive regimes. In some Muslim countries, blasphemy laws allow for\u00a0punishment up to and including death.<\/p>\n

These events\u00a0raise questions and concerns about just how much freedom of expression exists within certain corporate or political cultures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ESPN’s decision to fire baseball commentator Curt Schilling\u00a0is not an infringement of Schilling’s\u00a0rights under the\u00a0First Amendment. Companies have parted ways with\u00a0high profile employees for all sorts of public\u00a0statements or deeds that were at odds with the company’s image. A few that come to mind are: Justine Sacco, Sergeant Gary Stein, Paula Deen, Adria Richards (this … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Freedom of Expression Has Limits”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,14,18,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1st-amendment","category-ethics","category-media-industry","category-politics","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}