ANSWERS: 31
  • You republicans have the right to bitch, moan, whine, cry, and make even bigger fools of yourselves all you want. And from what I can tell, that right is being utilised to it's fullest by the Republicans every single day. Yes we do. Fux News lies it's ass off, and you don't notice or care. Glenn Beck was a liar. He deserved the shit he got. Would you care for some cheese to go with your Sour Graped Whine?
  • I have not seen what's going on with Glenn Beck, but as long as the government is not getting involved we still have freedom of speech. I herd what he said about Obama being a racist and I agree with him in how he laid it out. The problem is that the liberals are vindictive and they want to personally destroy a person that speaks what they don't believe. The thing is that now the right is starting to play the same game (finally) and they don't like it too much. Ah good times!
  • We all have freedom of speech. Even though I do not like what some people say it is their right. Obama= Racist? DUH! Only a complete idiot would miss that! Glenn Beck was not the first to say it and will not be the last. I do not think to highly of Glenn Beck, he is a back beacher. All he does is repeat what Mark Levin said the night before his show. . The liberal media can do what ever they want. Just look at the FCC! They are concentrating on talk radio, what about the daily show? How many times do they have to bleep John Stewart's F's? Not that I want John Stewart silenced. I am just pointing out how lopsided the liberal view point is. . To the liberals you do have freedom of speech just as long as you are on their side. If you are not on their side you are a - Hatemonger Warmonger Racist Bigot The list can go on and on.
  • We have free speech and it applies to everyone. Glenn Beck got into trouble because he is representing a corporation (Fox) and not just himself. If he wants to call our president with a white mom racist he should start a blog or come on AB and say it like the rest of you paranoid cowards do.
  • It is 1 sided affair they will riot against a War to defend our country and in some convoluted way say they are patriots. Their logic is not based in reality but rather shrills of BS and I suppose they always say take your med's is they arr in fact on them.
  • Was he arrested for it? Do you even understand the right to free speech?
  • We have total freedom of speech providing you do not comment on immigration or any minority group.
  • Hate speech or slander isn't covered by the bill or constitution....might not apply to this correctly but it's good to know.
  • Funny, I don't recall you protesting when MSNBC took Phil Donahue's off the air because he questioned the Invasion of Iraq. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donahue_%28MSNBC_program%29 I don't recall you protesting when Professor Steven Jones was forced to retire because he dared question the 'official' version of what happened on 9/11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones#WTC_destruction_controversy I don't recall you protesting when anyone opposed to the Patriot Act was told that they were "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" (i.e. committing treason) I don't recall you protesting when the FBI was infiltrating anti-war activist groups. I don't recall you protesting when Rush Limbaugh on-air said to liberals "Shut up until you win an election". But now that a right-wing loon is making over-the-top accusations about the President, NOW you are worried about freedom of speech? Gee, how patriotic of you.....;-D... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In6bIXrmrbM
  • Do you understand what "freedom of speech" is? Glenn Beck says whatever he wants and gets paid well to do it. He's not being arrested or even harassed by the government. There are many countries where he would be beheaded for constantly saying hateful things about it's leaders. Freedom of speech does not mean one is free from criticism of what you choose to air publicly. Your rant (not like it was really a question) might as well said " i like Beck and i hate Obama. Why doesn't everyone feel like I do?", because that's all this "question really boils down to".
  • Yes. No. People who make unfounded claims are called on the carpet to prove them. That's what Beck was asked to do, and he couldn't. FYI we have LIMITED freedom of speech. You cannot slander/libel someone, nor endanger others with your speech by [for example] shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
  • He didn't get in trouble. He just looked like a moron. If free speech entails having a right to spew verbal diarrhea on prime time TV, where do I sign up?
  • All American people DO have the right to freedom of speech, barring slander and such things. Your question does not seem to be a question at all, but rather an attempt to state your opinion, and have people agree with you. I have yet to encounter this monster called 'liberal media'. People continually talk about it, and blame it for everything that goes wrong in the world, but it seems to be a phantom of sorts.
  • Another reason I'm glad to be Japanese.
  • We have freedom of speech but who knows how long it's going to last. It is very obvious that the Obama administration would love to shut up anybody who disagrees with their ridiculous policies, that they want to enact. Look how fast they try to shut up people like Joe the plumber by any means possible to discredit and squash them and Sarah Palin too. There are many more victims of the, vicious, leftist bullies. Glenn Beck is right, Obama and liberals in general are the real racists. Liberals are the ones keeping racism alive because it makes for good leverage, to get what they want. Marxist Liberal politicians have the exploitation of Blacks, Hispanics, and the poor down to a science. One day these people will wake up and realize that they are being used, hopefully it won't be after they and everybody else in America has lost all of their freedoms.
  • Your question is nonsense - there is no "liberal media". The media do not have a liberal bias. Conservatives even admit it, when they're being honest. The Most Biased Name in News, Seth Ackerman, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, August 2001 “Years ago, Republican party chair Rich Bond explained that conservatives' frequent denunciations of ‘liberal bias’ in the media were part of ‘a strategy’ (Washington Post, 8/20/92). Comparing journalists to referees in a sports match, Bond explained: ‘If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is “work the refs.” Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time.’” The Liberal Media, RIP, Eric Alterman, The Nation, March 13, 2000 “Bill Kristol, perhaps the most honest and intelligent conservative in Washington (excluding, of course, that funny, friendly, charming McCain fellow). ‘The press isn't quite as biased and liberal. They're actually conservative sometimes,’ Kristol said recently on CNN. If Chris missed that one, he might have come across a similar admission by Kristol offered up in the spring of 1995. ‘I admit it,’ Kristol told The New Yorker. ‘The whole idea of the 'liberal media' was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.’” Spinning Populism In American News Media, Norman Solomon, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, undated “‘The truth is, I've gotten fairer, more comprehensive coverage of my ideas than I ever imagined I would receive,’ [Patrick] Buchanan acknowledged in March 1996. He added: ‘I've gotten balanced coverage and broad coverage -- all we could have asked.’” The Nation What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman Conservatives are extremely well represented in every facet of the media. The correlative point is that even the genuine liberal media are not so liberal. And they are no match--either in size, ferocity or commitment--for the massive conservative media structure that, more than ever, determines the shape and scope of our political agenda. In a careful 1999 study published in the academic journal Communications Research, four scholars examined the use of the "liberal media" argument and discovered a fourfold increase in the number of Americans telling pollsters that they discerned a liberal bias in their news. But a review of the media's actual ideological content, collected and coded over a twelve-year period, offered no corroboration whatever for this view. The obvious conclusion: News consumers were responding to "increasing news coverage of liberal bias media claims, which have been increasingly emanating from Republican Party candidates and officials." The right is working the refs. And it's working. Much of the public believes a useful but unsupportable myth about the so-called liberal media, and the media themselves have been cowed by conservatives into repeating their nonsensical nostrums virtually nonstop... What the studies show Who's On the News?: Study shows network news sources skew white, male & elite, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, June 2002: “A study of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News in the year 2001 shows that 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican.” Label Whores, Geoffrey Nunberg, The American Prospect, May 6, 2002: “[T]here was a discrepancy in the frequency of labeling, but not in the way [Bernard] Goldberg [author of Bias] -- or for that matter, I -- assumed. On the contrary, the average liberal legislator has a better than 30 percent greater likelihood of being given a political label than the average conservative does. The press describes [Barney] Frank as a liberal two-and-a-half times as frequently as it describes [Dick] Armey as a conservative. It labels [Barbara] Boxer almost twice as often as it labels [Trent] Lott, and labels [Paul] Wellstone more often than [Jesse] Helms.” Media Mythology: Is the Press Liberal?, Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, 1997: “When the Freedom Forum studied the relationship between the Washington news media and Congress, the press foundation tossed in what it considered a throwaway question to the reporters: How had they voted in 1992?… “Of the 130 respondents, 89 percent said they had voted for Bill Clinton. Only seven percent had supported George Bush… “To try to clear up this mystery, we contacted Kenneth Dautrich of the Roper Center, the polling firm that handled the Freedom Forum's data… “The Freedom Forum survey gave much greater weight to the voting choices of reporters from small publications who have next to no influence in the nation's capital. These work-a-day reporters rarely, if ever, appear on TV and their stories concentrate on the hum-drum actions of local members of Congress, not on national affairs. “It may be interesting that a large percentage of modestly paid reporters from small- to mid-sized dailies favored Clinton over Bush. But there is little evidence that those presidential preferences translated into soft media treatment of Clinton or into especially tough handling of Bush or the GOP congressional majority.” Examining the "Liberal Media" Claim, David Croteau, Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Sociology and Anthropology, (archived at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), June 1998: “The findings include: “ · On select issues from corporate power and trade to Social Security and Medicare to health care and taxes, journalists are actually more conservative than the general public. “ · Journalists are mostly centrist in their political orientation. “ · The minority of journalists who do not identify with the ‘center’ are more likely to identify with the ‘right’ when it comes to economic issues and to identify with the ‘left’ when it comes to social issues.” The reality Price of the 'Liberal Media' Myth, Robert Parry, consortiumnews.com, January 1, 2003 “[T]he larger fallacy of the ‘liberal media’ argument is the idea that reporters and mid-level editors set the editorial agenda at their news organizations. In reality, most journalists have about as much say over what is presented by newspapers and TV news programs as factory workers and foremen have over what a factory manufactures... “News organizations are hierarchical institutions often run by strong-willed men who insist that their editorial vision be dominant within their news companies. Some concessions are made to the broader professional standards of journalism, such as the principles of objectivity and fairness. “But media owners historically have enforced their political views and other preferences by installing senior editors whose careers depend on delivering a news product that fits with the owner’s prejudices. Mid-level editors and reporters who stray too far from the prescribed path can expect to be demoted or fired. Editorial employees intuitively understand the career risks of going beyond the boundaries. “These limitations were true a century ago when William Randolph Hearst famously studied every day’s paper from his publishing empire looking for signs of leftist attitudes among his staff. And it is still true in the days of Rupert Murdoch, Jack Welch and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.” The Rightward Press, E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, December 6, 2002 “It took conservatives a lot of hard and steady work to push the media rightward. It dishonors that work to continue to presume that -- except for a few liberal columnists -- there is any such thing as the big liberal media. The media world now includes (1) talk radio, (2) cable television and (3) the traditional news sources (newspapers, newsmagazines and the old broadcast networks). Two of these three major institutions tilt well to the right, and the third is under constant pressure to avoid even the pale hint of liberalism. These institutions, in turn, influence the burgeoning world of online news and commentary.” Big media pushes news to the far right, San Francisco Examiner, undated: “The biggest lie fed the American people by conservative pundits is that the United States is dominated by the ‘liberal media.’ As if Rupert Murdoch, Michael Eisner, General Electric, Time-Warner AOL and Viacom are owned and operated by liberals. “Not only are these folks ultra-conservatives, but the people they hire to voice their opinions are so far to the right, they give independent journalism a dirty name. No, my friends, the corporate media is in the hands of right-wing kooks parading as moderates and pushing the political envelope further and further to the right.” The Phantom Liberal Media, Jack F.K. Bungart, Vallejo Times-Herald, January 5, 2002: “If there is in fact a liberal media, it sure has been taking a lot of time off. “Where was it during the Clinton years? Long before Monica, the press went after the Democratic, supposedly liberal president with a vengeance that took even longtime Washington observers -- many of them Republican -- by surprise. “Where was it during Clinton's alleged runway haircut fiasco early in his first term? Or the supposed destruction of the White House by departing Clinton staffers? Both stories, widely reported as fact, have since been convincingly rebuked. “Where was it during Campaign 2000 [see below], after which two separate -- and non-partisan -- study groups determined that George W. Bush, not Al Gore, received the more glowing, less critical headlines and coverage? “Where was it when Gore was mocked mercilessly for supposedly claiming to have invented the Internet? Or be the subject of ‘Love Story’? Neither actually happened, but hoo boy, the Beast knows good copy when it sees it. “Where was it during the Condit feeding frenzy, when one look at a 24-hour cable channel made it look like -- lack of any real evidence be damned -- the Democratic congressman would be indicted any second on murder charges? “Where was it during the lazy, dismissive coverage of the follow-up to the Florida recount, which attempted to tidily wrap up what was as murky a mess as ever? “How odd it is that the whine against the so-called liberal media seems to always come from the same ever-expanding conservative media that buries presidents before inauguration day, acts as if the art of politicians blocking legislation only happens on one side of the aisle and loosely throws around murder accusations as if they're passes during touch football games.” Mr. Bush Catches a Washington Break, John F. Harris, Washington Post, May 6, 2001: “Are the national news media soft on Bush? The instinctive response of any reporter is to deny it. But my rebuttals lately have been wobbly. The truth is, this new president has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton. Take it from someone who made a living writing about those uproars.” How The '90s Boom Was And Wasn't Covered, Michael Dolny, TomPaine.com, July 23, 2002: “If anything, watching Wall Street’s ongoing meltdown and our shrinking net worth should help us recognize that the glaring bias in news, especially on economic issues, is a conservative one that allowed the current financial crisis to simmer below the surface until it boiled over into its current chaos. “Both print and broadcast media have practiced in recent years an uncritical, if not reflexive, cheerleading of CEOs, mergers and acquisitions, the latest earnings, and deregulation. That hardly amounts to a liberal bias. This conservative, pro-corporate propagandizing has been the dominant tone for some time, although the still-unfolding corporate accounting scandals have cracked this veneer… “Maybe conservative propagandists such as Ann Coulter and Bernard Goldberg should start complaining about a liberal public instead of a liberal media.”
  • Glenn Beck has the right to be a scumbag bigot, just as much as anyone does, under the provisions of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Why does anyone watch Glenn Beck, anyway? He's not intelligent at all and he IS a racist who is being paid by the GOP to spew his venom all over the airwaves, so why give him an audience? If I ever find out that Beck's been assassinated, I'll probably be so happy, I'll get an erection. +5
  • Oh sure, Glen Beck has the right to call Obama a racist. And the companies that used to advertise on his show have the right to pull all their adverts. Isn't freedom of speech a great thing?
  • did you know there is a law for lieing to a police officer. you can lie to me or your GOD but you can't lie to a cop,DUH!!! you can call me ignorant or the "N" word(heaven forbid) but you can't say it to a black man.are you getting the picture here? i can tell some one that they are a dumb ass but not the president. WOW! talk about double standards. who do you think is becomeing the slave now????? i'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count. becareful the thought police will come for you????
  • In a sense no you don't have freedom of speech. Like "Wide Awake Phoenix" wrote in (what I'm assuming to be) a rewrite of his/her answer, You can't yell "fire" in a crowded movie theater or "bomb" on a plane. But when it comes to "slandering" the president/government/other people, unless it is a derogatory in anyway like "ni**er" or "fa**ot", and even then people (the KKK) still use it as an excuse to get away for saying the things that they say, then you can pretty much say what you want, legally. Now is that to say that you can say what ever you want like how Glenn Beck called Obama a racist, no. For other reasons than legallity reasons. First off, you will probably lose your job (I'm sure he came close or is coming close), second you will alienate yourself from other people (he probably alienated him self from Obama supporters, and his advertisers), and the list goes on. There are consequences for everything you say or do. But legally no you cannot be arrested for what you say.
  • It only seems to apply if you are saying something controversial about main stream American values, Christianity, or a Republican. If you level criticism about a liberal, a non-Christian, or a minority then you are attacked and marginalized by the attack dogs in the media.
  • Thank goodness for FOX news
  • Everyone has the right to be stupid.
  • we only have freedom of speech if no one disagrees
  • Don't EVEN GO the RACIST route. How can NAACP and United Negro College Fund not be racist? Why does the liberal media cover rallies for anti-war protesters, but not cover patriotic ceremonies honoring the military for end of service: dead, retiring, or just separating?
  • We have freedom of speech, its just that right now the democrates have the majority
  • Ahh don't believe there crap people just fuck of politics so they can get power or just don't give a shit.
  • Just because bad things happened because Beck said something stupid does not mean there is no freedom of speech for retards like him. Just like if you go to an airport terminal and scream "JIHAD!" bad things will happen to you. Freedom of speech does not get rid of consequences for speech, we just don't have to be detained and sent to an indoctrination center when we speak out against the government.
  • Wow. The right-wings sad little persecution complex is REALLY kicking into high gear. Well, I guess they have to believe themselves to be martyrs and victims. God knows, they've got nothing else. Out of power, a party that is poisonous and rotting away, reduced to a regional curiosity. They had to run a man they previously decried as a 'RINO' to even have a shot at winning, and yet they still lost by the largest margin of any candidate in 20 years. They've got nothing left BUT to play victim. Sad.
  • When you call the first black man to become the president a racist you better be ready for a shitstorm. The really sad part is he probably believes it. Obama's racism seems to be the rally cry of the right wing media. I sure hope they don't realize they're shooting themselves in the foot.
  • Is calling your mom a c*m-guzzling whore considered as slander? Yes. Is calling your mom a c*m-guzzling whore considered as slander if she actually works as a c*m-guzzling whore in a legal Nevada brothel? No. Is it considered as slander when Glenn Beck called Obama a racist? Regardless of what your answer is, many companies that sponsored his show, didn't like what he said and stopped supporting him. Those companies have a right to stop supporting him just as you have a right to stop purchasing those company's products. So, do you have a right to freedom of speech? Yes. Does freedom of speech cover slander? No. Is Beck's comment considered as slander and not freedom of speech? Yes. If you still can't understand the difference, then I'm just going to end this with my "Freedom of Speech" answer: Sarah Palin is a c*m-guzzling whore.

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