Right to Report on the Police
Apparently the director for the Memphis police department has requested the identities be revealed of several bloggers who write about local police matters. This got me thinking about gun control.
Some on the left have argued that we don’t need firearms for protection because the police already provide that service. Using the same justification, one can easily argue that bloggers shouldn’t be allowed to write about police matters because professional journalist already provide this service. Would those on the left support laws forbidding citizens from writing about police matters unless they are certified by an official organization of journalism? Such restrictions would reduce some of the more unsavory aspects of freedom of speech such as slander. Honestly, we don’t need non-professionals witting about police matters when we already have a professional journalists who do this work.
One can’t help but think that the those on the left would disagree with such laws on the grounds that it’s to dangerous to leave such an important job up to small groups of citizens. They would worry that such a groups would be weak to corruption and easily controlled by the state. No, it would be better to accept the unsavory aspects of free speech, the noise as it were, and let all citizens report on police matters. Sure the right will be abused but its better than leaving such an important right in the hands of small group of people.
This is the same reason I would give for why our right to bear arms should be protected.
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Heh, well said. That’s why I support mandatory gun ownership.
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Let’s at least state the opposing argument fairly- the difference between gun ownership and journalism is that you can kill people with guns a lot easier than with blogs. The argument isn’t that people shouldn’t be ALLOWED to protect tehmselves because the police do it, it’s that the arguemnt that they NEED guns to protect themselves is weakened by teh fact that police already do that. It’s not an argument against owning guns at all, just a rebuttal to an argument in favor of ownership- the argument against gun ownership is that they end up killing people.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Wow, I thought there might be more to the story, but there really isn’t. What I mean is that I thought I would read some articles and find that the police department might have at least “some” reason for needing this info…. But it turns out there isn’t a reason….. Unless you count violating first amendment and privacy rights just because you can as a good reason.
July 25th, 2008 at 11:57 am
The right to privacy ends up killing people. The right to freedom of speech kills people. The right freedom of press kills people. All the rights kill people, why single out just one?
July 25th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
That’s why families need to have more kids, so if some die they won’t make such a big deal about it. Like in ye olden dayes. It’s as if people have forgotten that death happens.