28 Results

As Geert Wilders spoke in Melbourne last night, protesters gathered outside — but it was less violent, and more ideological, than mainstream media reported. Crikey intern Michelle Slater was there.

Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders spoke in Melbourne last night. Shakira Hussein, a Muslim, attended for Crikey — she found it weird and at times menacing.

It would be a strange law that said the minute you become influential, you are less free in what you say.

The Melbourne Underground Film Festival staged an illegal screening of Bruce LaBruce’s banned gay zombie flick LA Zombie. A victory for free speech, perhaps, but it’s hard to emerge from it feeling like anything other than a loser.

Yes, what Helen Thomas — the longest serving member of the White House press corps who retired yesterday — said about Israel was despicable. But doesn’t the US have freedom of speech in its constitution? asks Roy Greenslade.

Today is Everybody Draw Mohammad Day on Facebook, with bloggers around the world sketching lewd pictures of the prophet to protest censorship. But is this really about free speech, or just an excuse to be a jerk?

The media’s appalling behaviour in the Lara Bingle saga will only serve to strengthen privacy laws.

Asking political commentators to identify themselves for just a few weeks when an election is in progress is hardly a threat to freedom of speech.

Hillary Clinton has a new gong to bang: internet freedom. Read her speech championing the increase of freedom of speech online and calling on the China to get with the program.

With the announcement of the Government’s internet filter, 15 December will forever mark the day Australia joined the slippery slope to censoring freedom of speech, says David Braue.

Was extreme right-wing BNP leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on the BBC’s Question Time a win for free speech or a loss for quality television? Guardian commentators and British MPs weigh in.

Libel tourism has been catapulted into the headlines after aviation writer Joe Sharkey was served a writ for defamatory statements he says he didn’t make in Brazil after surviving a mid-air collision in 2006.

In Australia, graphic anti-smoking photos on cigarette packets are now the norm. President Obama has signed a law for similar requirements in the US. But the tobacco industry is fighting back — with the first amendment.

Critics of the Iranian government are up in arms over the apparent blocking of social networking site Facebook just weeks before the country heads to the polls.

Conroy’s protecting us from ped-philes, stopping terrorists, that sort of thing. It’s like the regulation we have for TV, films and books. Except it’s not. It’s not even close, writes Stilgherrian.

We should be speaking up for him now, rather than waiting for a more appealing victim of this attack on free speech.

It’s hard to know how best to approach hate-mongers seeking to grace our shores, writes Irfan Yusuf.