SETTING ‘THE NEW YORKER’ STRAIGHT ON FREE SPEECH: You may remember me posting earlier this month about a recent article in The New Yorker by Kelefa Sanneh called “The Hell You Say” and its dismissive, yet poorly-researched handling of free speech (and us “speech nuts”). Well, I, along with some other staff members at FIRE, have carefully compiled “A Dozen Things ‘The New Yorker’ Gets Wrong about Free Speech (And Why It Matters)” to set the record straight. Why is critiquing this one magazine article important, you might ask? As I say in my response in today’s Huffington Post:

First of all, in a time when people seem increasingly comfortable with book banning, blasphemy laws, hate speech laws, and amending the Constitution to limit the First Amendment, it’s important to take every opportunity we can to correct common misconceptions and explain some of the basics of the deep and profound philosophy behind free speech and the wisdom inherent in First Amendment law. Second, it’s important to take on the growing tide of critics, including authors and even journalists, who rely on freedom of speech but want to dismiss it as something unsophisticated or even dangerous. Whether from Eric Posner, Gary Trudeau, or Noah Feldman, there is a push to dismiss freedom of speech that seems to lionize the fact that other countries limit it. Every single one of these critics should sit down and read Flemming Rose’s book on international censorship, The Tyranny of Silence, before assuming that “enlightened censorship” is either justified or working out well for anyone.