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Silencing Spectacles: Freedom of Speech on Trial

The 2008 presidential election is a historic example of democracy in action. The presidential campaign, however, also provides unfortunate examples of the state rendering basic democratic principles ineffectual. One prime example of this curtailment is the arrest of noted journalist Amy Goodman at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul, Minnesota. Goodman, wellknown as the host of Democracy Now! was covering the RNC when she received word that police were arresting two of her producers who were covering a group of protestors outside. Goodman raced to help her colleagues and the police arrested her as well. Goodman later recounted the event: “They seriously manhandled me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The top ID [at the convention] is to get on the floor and the Secret Service ripped that off me. I had my Democracy Now! ID too. I was clearly a reporter” (Watt 26). Goodman was not the only reporter arrested during the 2008 RNC; she was one of 40. Two weeks after her arrest, city officials of St. Paul dropped the charges against Goodman and the other 40 journalists. The dismissal of the charges was seen as a victory for the freedom of the press. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman said, “This decision [to drop the charges] reflects the values we have in St. Paul to protect and promote our First Amendment rights to freedom of the press” (Havens 2). In response, Goodman said, “It’s good that these false charges have finally been dropped, but we never should have been arrested to begin with. These violent and unlawful arrests disrupted our work and had a chilling effect on the reporting of dissent. Freedom of the press is also about the public’s right to know what is happening on their streets...” (Goodman). Goodman’s response elucidates the true gravitas of the situation: the removal of the press from the public for specious reasons denies the American people the information that determines awareness of the political process. But we are concerned with a larger problem. Although the prosecutors eventually dropped the charges against Goodman,which means that the freedom of the press “triumphed,” during the RNC there was both direct and indirect censorship. Directly, Goodman’s three hours of incarceration kept her from serving, in her words, as a “critical watchdog in a democratic society” for a short, but critical, period of time during the four day convention (Linthicum). There was indirect censorship in that the focus of news coverage shifted from the convention to the issue of Goodman’s arrest. For although Democracy Now! continued to report on the RNC, Goodman and her detention became a major topic of news in terms of her journalistic rights under the First Amendment. Therefore, the press was censored by two means: first, members of the press were unable to cover the convention during their detainment and second, public discourse shifted from a focus on the events of the convention that the press corps were trying to cover to a discussion about the rights of free speech. The example of Amy Goodman suggests a significant conceptual argument for understanding free speech and its relationship to the First Amendment. This essay argues that the First Amendment itself sometimes paradoxically distracts attention from the very speech it was designed to protect. This