Thesis (M.S.)—Boston University

Freedom of speech is a fundamental human rights. In Article 19 of United Nations  Declaration of Human Rights declared “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”   China claims that the citizens of People’s Republic of China have the right of freedom of speech in Chinese current Constitution. However, Chinese journalists are barely able to express news freely, and the media freedom has become to a serious problem in modern China. On the other hand, Taiwan’s media freedom is considered to be the best in Asia according to Freedom House.   In this thesis, the author will research media freedom in China through a comparative case study, where the differences between Chinese and Taiwanese media will be explored. The thesis looks at how Chinese and Taiwanese media practice media freedom and how the Chinese media is constrained.     As a comparative case study, Chinese and Taiwanese media reports on the Mong Kok civil unrest in 2016 is used since the events in Hong Kong are of interest to both sets of media. Both quantitative and qualitative research method was used to do the data collection, and in analysis of the cases, critical discourse analysis is applied along with Trilling’s three models.   The research shows that the Chinese and Taiwanese media displayed obvious differences in their reporting of the Mong Kok civil unrest, they have different news quantities, article size, photo usage, news angle, key messages and thematic structure, as well as the means of expression. According to the analysis of these differences, the Chinese media freedom was limited to a great extent. In addition, the Chinese media was socially constrained by the deep-rooted sense of Democratic Centralism and Confucian value both in national leaders and citizens.

Cette thèse vise à dévoiler les obstacles à une libre circulation de l’information au Liban, un pays longtemps considéré comme une île de liberté par rapport à son entourage. Dans ce contexte, le confessionnalisme constitue l’obstacle le plus solide et le plus dangereux non seulement à la libre circulation de l’information au Liban, mais également à la construction d’un pays au vrai sens du terme. A côté du confessionnalisme, les obstacles à une libre circulation de l’information au Liban sont nombreux. Tout d’abord, les textes législatifs où nous trouvons de nombreuses limitations à la liberté d’expression dans la presse écrite et également dans l’audiovisuel, puis une jurisprudence qui ne met pas en avant le concept sacré de la liberté d’expression, une forte censure par l’Etat, et une autocensure dans un contexte de violence. La géopolitique du Liban n’aide pas non plus, d’un côté Israël un pays en état de guerre avec le Liban ou dans les meilleurs des cas en état de cessez le feu. Et de l’autre, la Syrie, un pays qui a toujours considéré le Liban comme l’un de ses départements. A cela s’ajoute une histoire sanglante d’un petit pays qui peu après son indépendance du mandat français tombe dans une guerre civile qui détruit ses institutions et met en question la légitimité de l’existence même de cet état nouveau et la possibilité d’une vraie coexistence entre ses dix-huit communautés. Cette guerre risque de se déclencher à nouveau même vingt ans après l’accord de Taëf qui était censé instaurer la paix dans le pays. / This thesis aims to uncover the barriers to the free circulation of information in Lebanon, a country long considered an island of freedom in relation to its surroundings. In this context, sectarianism is considered the greatest and most dangerous obstacle, not only to the free flow of information, but equally to the building of a country in the true sense of the term. In addition to sectarianism, the obstacles for the free circulation of information in Lebanon are numerous. These include legislative texts that place many restrictions on freedom of expression on the press and audiovisual media, a jurisprudence that does not advance the concept of freedom of expression, a strong censorship from the state, and the self censorship of the press in an environment of violence. The geopolitics of Lebanon does not help either. On the one side, it is bordered by Israel, a country at war with Lebanon or in the best cases, in a state of ceasefire. On the other side, it is bordered by Syria, a country that has always considered Lebanon as one of its territories. Added to this is a bloody history of a small country that shortly after independence from the French mandate, falls into a civil war that destroyed its institutions and called into question the legitimacy its existence. It also called into question the possibility of a true coexistence between its eighteen religious sects. This war may be triggered again even twenty years after the Taif Agreement that was supposed to bring peace to the country.

Este trabalho analisa os debates parlamentares sobre a legislação da atividade de imprensa e a publicação dos trabalhos da Câmara dos Deputados durante o período de 1820 a 1840. São aspectos que se relacionam intimamente com a construção de um Estado monárquico-constitucional-representativo, por serem a liberdade de expressão, e consequentemente a de imprensa, assim como a publicidade dos atos governamentais, dois dos pilares deste sistema de governo. O objetivo é compreender de que maneira os deputados exploravam politicamente estes preceitos liberais e a forma por eles encontrada para corporificá-los nas instituições do império brasileiro. / This study analyses the parliamentary debates on press legislation and the publicity of the works of the Chamber of Deputies concerning the period between 1820 and 1840. These are issues closely related to the construction of a monarchic, constitutional and representative State, in the sense that freedom of expression - and therefore press freedom - are, together with the publicity of government acts, two of the pillars that sustain this system of government. The objective is to understand in what ways the legislators made these liberal concepts politically useful, as well as how were these concepts incorporated into the institutions of the Brazilian Empire.

Este trabalho analisa os debates parlamentares sobre a legislação da atividade de imprensa e a publicação dos trabalhos da Câmara dos Deputados durante o período de 1820 a 1840. São aspectos que se relacionam intimamente com a construção de um Estado monárquico-constitucional-representativo, por serem a liberdade de expressão, e consequentemente a de imprensa, assim como a publicidade dos atos governamentais, dois dos pilares deste sistema de governo. O objetivo é compreender de que maneira os deputados exploravam politicamente estes preceitos liberais e a forma por eles encontrada para corporificá-los nas instituições do império brasileiro. / This study analyses the parliamentary debates on press legislation and the publicity of the works of the Chamber of Deputies concerning the period between 1820 and 1840. These are issues closely related to the construction of a monarchic, constitutional and representative State, in the sense that freedom of expression - and therefore press freedom - are, together with the publicity of government acts, two of the pillars that sustain this system of government. The objective is to understand in what ways the legislators made these liberal concepts politically useful, as well as how were these concepts incorporated into the institutions of the Brazilian Empire.

Cancel culture can briefly be described as the active attempt to silence a person that has expressed an opinion that offended someone whether it was intentional or not. This thesis will present how cancel culture is understood, perceived and experienced by journalists, communication professionals, and media experts, as well as how, according to them, it impacts freedom of expression and journalism. The findings are analyzed from a theoretical framework of the public sphere and participatory democracy. The conclusion shows that cancel culture can both serve as a means to address social injustices while also threatening freedom of expression and, by that, journalism. Cancelling journalists, because they have reported on controversial issues that others have found offensive, can result in more self-censorship among journalists which can have negative consequences for democracy itself. Further research is encouraged to investigate the impacts of cancel culture on the field of journalism and ultimately its impacts on freedom of expression and democracy.

This thesis examines the views of freedoms of press and speech held by the twelve earliest justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, as the Sedition Act of 1798 raised their earliest First Amendment questions including the breadth of those freedoms and of seditious libel. The thesis discusses three aspects of the early justices' views, which add to existing studies. First, the context of those justices' views was growing challenges to the restrictive Blackstone and Mansfield definition of freedom of press as only freedom from prior restraint (licensing) and as not also freedom from subsequent restraint such as seditious libel prosecution. Those challenges were reflected in broad language protecting freedoms of press and speech, and in the absence of language stating that the English common law of rights or of seditious libel was left unaltered. That crucial context of growing challenges has not been detailed in existing literature. (Chapter 3.) Second, the views of each early justice on press and speech are chronicled for the period 1789-1798. That discloses express commitments to those freedoms, which are absent from existing literature, and no adoption of the Blackstone definition before the 1798 crisis. (Chapters 4-5.) Third, the cases and reasoning of the six sitting justices upholding the Sedition Act of 1798 are chronicled and assessed, along with the views of the six remaining justices. That reveals that most remaining justices and also a significant minority within the Federalist party rejected the Sedition Act. Yet positions on the Sedition Act have been only cursorily discussed for four sitting justices and have been overlooked for the other eight justices, as well as for the Federalist party's minority, for the critical period 1798-1800. (Chapters 6-7.) The thesis proposes reasons for that divergence between the pre-1798 commitment of all justices to freedoms of press and speech, and the support given by most sitting justices to the Sedition Act, in contrast to apparent opposition by most remaining justices. The primary reasons are their opposing positions on several connected issues: the extent of rights to dissent, the challenges to the Blackstone definition and to seditious libel, the effect of new state and federal constitutions on seditious libel and on common law rights, strength of attachment to freedoms of press and speech and to seditious libel, and most sitting justices' changes of position to embrace the Blackstone definition. The thesis calls into question conventional views in existing literature on each of those three aspects. First, Levy and others express the dominant view that freedom of press in state declarations of rights and the First Amendment 'was used in its prevailing common law or Blackstonian sense to mean a guarantee against previous restraints and a subjection to subsequent restraints for licentious or seditious abuse,' so that contrary evidence 'does not exist,' and that 'no other definition of freedom of the press by anyone anywhere in America before 1798' existed. Instead, opposition to the essence of seditious libel had been mounting over the decades. Second, the early justices are usually portrayed as having nothing to say about freedoms of press and speech before 1798. Instead, nearly all exhibited commitment to those freedoms before that crucial year, though half the early justices upheld the Sedition Act during 1798-1800. Third, the Federalist party, the early justices, and the states except Virginia and Kentucky are all usually described as unanimously supporting the Sedition Act. Instead, the Federalists divided over the Act, and the early justices did as well, with an unrecognized but significant minority of the party, and nearly half of the early justices, opposing the Sedition Act, as did several additional states.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:24:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carlos Roberto Ibanez Castro.pdf: 1029776 bytes, checksum: 01cbdf2fc0c04dd532b359610efb95f0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-14 / The truth is usually defined according to a subjectivism that demand against the actual existence of perfect correlation between the statement about a certain object and the reality manifested by it. However, it is possible to devise a definition of the concept of truth sufficiently objective, based on the study of philosophical thought has invested heavily in the debate about the true. This objectification, able to assign to the truth concreteness that apparently it miss, evidences relevant to strengthen the defense of a fundamental right to truth, as a corollary of the principle of truthfulness. Overcome this exercise will try to understand that the right of access to information is conditioned by the fundamental right to the truth, which acts as the beginning and end of that, in order to preserve the dignity of the human person and freedom. Moreover, will demonstrate, still under the aegis of a right to the truth, that the classification of sensitive information is a process that cannot be perfected over the heads of the people, under penalty of manifest violation to the democratic and republican principles. The recognition of the fundamental right to the truth in relations involving the access and dissemination of information will be considered, even when the exercise of freedom of expression and information in the context of press prerogatives / A verdade é normalmente definida segundo um subjetivismo que demanda contra a efetiva existência da perfeita correlação entre o enunciado a respeito de determinado objeto e a realidade por ele manifestada. Contudo, é possível conceber uma definição do conceito de verdade suficientemente objetivo, partindo do estudo do pensamento filosófico que muito investiu no debate acerca do verdadeiro. Essa objetivação, capaz de atribuir à verdade a concretude que aparentemente lhe faltaria, evidencia-se relevante para fortalecer a defesa de um direito fundamental humano à verdade, como corolário do princípio da veracidade. Superado esse exercício, buscar-se-á compreender que o direito de acesso à informação está condicionado pelo direito fundamental à verdade, que atua como princípio e fim daquele, com vistas a preservar a dignidade da pessoa humana e a liberdade. Outrossim, demonstrar-se-á, ainda sob a égide de um direito à verdade, que a classificação de informações sigilosas é processo que não pode se aperfeiçoar à revelia do povo, sob pena de manifesta violação aos princípios democrático e republicano. O reconhecimento do direito fundamental à verdade nas relações que envolvem o acesso e a divulgação de informações será considerado, ainda, quando do exercício da liberdade de expressão e de informação no contexto das prerrogativas da imprensa

Este trabalho procura debater a liberdade constitucional de informação sob um viés não usual ao direito constitucional brasileiro. Seu ponto de partida é a proteção ao sigilo de fonte para jornalistas profissionais, consagrada pelo texto constitucional. Essa regra parece pressupor uma distinção possível e clara entre jornalistas e demais cidadãos. Mas como compreendê-la em um cenário atual no qual: a) as condições tecnológicas permitem que qualquer cidadão, a um custo baixo ou quase inexistente, publique informações para um número indistinto de pessoas, e; b) o Supremo Tribunal Federal tenha reconhecido que o Estado não pode exigir a obtenção de um diploma de ensino superior para diferenciar a categoria de jornalistas? Logo, o pano de fundo deste trabalho é a possibilidade de o Estado diferenciar jornalistas de demais cidadãos com relação à concessão de prerrogativas para o exercício da liberdade de informação. Nos Estados Unidos, esse é um debate relevante ao menos desde a década de 1970. São apresentados seus principais aspectos: por um lado, a jurisprudência de sua Suprema Corte, que se negou sistematicamente a diferenciar direitos próprios à liberdade de imprensa (Press Clause) em comparação com a liberdade de expressão (Speech Clause); por outro, as abordagens funcional e institucional à liberdade de imprensa, composta respectivamente por autores favoráveis e críticos àquela linha jurisprudencial. Ao final, a partir de uma perspectiva crítica e da adoção de fundamentos jurídicos, busca-se analisar a regra constitucional do sigilo de fonte e propor parâmetros interpretativos para sua aplicação. / This paper seeks to debate the constitutional freedom of information under an aspect not common to Brazilian constitutional law. The departure point is the reporters privilege, constitutionally protected for professionals by law. That rule seems assume a possible and clear distinction between journalists and other citizens. But how to understand it under a scenario where: a) the technological conditions allow any citizen, with very cheap or barely existing costs, to publish information for an indistinct number of people, and; b) the Supreme Federal Court has recognized that the State may not license journalists by a college degree diploma? Thus, the background subject of this paper is the possibility that the State differentiates journalists from other citizens in regard to the concession of prerogatives for the exercise of the freedom of information. In the United States, this has been a relevant debate at least since de 1970s. The main aspects are presented: on one hand, the Supreme Courts case law that has systematically denied to differentiate exclusive rights deriving from the Press Clause in comparison to the Speech Clause; on the other hand, the functional and institutional approaches to freedom of the press, respectively representing the authors favorable and critics to that judicial construction. Finally, taking on from a critic perspective and adopting legal fundaments, it seeks to analyze the constitutional rule of the reporters privilege and to propose interpretative standards for it.