Another opinion: [url]http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ucrr/20011218/cm/_quot_give_me_liberty_or_quot_shut_up_ya_bum__1.html[/url]
Op/Ed - Richard
Tuesday December 18 05:51 PM EST
"GIVE ME LIBERTY OR" ... SHUT UP, YA BUM!
By Richard Reeves
NEW YORK -- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," said a prominent Philadelphian, a guy named Benjamin Franklin.

Well, he better not try peddling that kind of stuff in Sacramento, capital of the great state of California.

Actually, someone did try to say something like that in Sacramento last Saturday, at the mid-year graduation ceremonies of California State University. She was booed and heckled off the stage.

The speaker forced to shut up after five minutes was Janis Besler Heaphy, president and publisher of the Sacramento Bee, the local paper. I, for one, am proud to be in the same business as she is. These are the best of times for us, when we are unpopular. The reason she was booed -- apparently more by parents than by students in the crowd of more than 17,000 -- was because the other great institutions of our society will not talk about civil liberties at a time of crisis. We are not here to print interviews with Tom Cruise; we are here to say necessary things many do not want to hear.

We are here to say the emperor has no clothes. Or, at least the emperor's spokesman, Ari Fleischer (news - web sites), who has nakedly told us to watch what we say. That is not the way it works. We're here to watch Ari Fleischer and his boss.

Heaphy was doing just fine at the beginning of her speech, when she was a bit vague, saying: "Decisions made in the near-term will shape America's future -- your future." The trouble began when she began to move toward the specific: "No one argues the validity and need for both retaliation and security. But to what lengths are we willing to go to achieve them? ... To what degree are we willing to compromise our civil liberties in the name of security? ... We simply cannot protect freedom by forsaking freedom."

Ah, Mr. Franklin's concerns.

Then the mob began to form rhetorically when she said she was talking about racial profiling, holding aliens without charges against them and trying suspects in secret military tribunals.

She was hard to hear after that and finally had to quit. She had been silenced.
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Part 2 of 2...
Too bad the crowd did not get to hear her speak directly about the effects of short-term suppression on long-term governance. This was something the crowd did not want to hear:

"In October, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), citing security concerns, persuaded the five major television news organizations to censor portions of the videos produced by Osama bin Laden (news - web sites). ... Two days ago, government officials released a videotape they said proved bin Laden was behind the terrorist attacks. But since the previous bin Laden tapes had been censored, can the public really be sure that this latest tape hasn't also been?"

"That, ladies and gentlemen, is a dangerous mind-set. When information grows scant, rumor and innuendo swell to fill the void. When the press grows timid, half-truths and rhetoric pass as facts. ... The Constitution makes it our right to challenge government policies. Our culture makes it our duty. Raising issues. Asking questions. Debating options."

Issues, questions and options were promptly shouted down.

The president of the university, Don Gerth, tried to quiet the crowd. He failed, then said later: "The temper of our times is not terribly open to that ... I have never seen behavior like this. It is a day I will never forget. I am not proud of it."

No American should be. But the temper of times is going to be very tough on news people if they do not go along with everything the government wants. We are between the rock and the hard place of government and the patriotism of the day. "Where do we draw the line?" Heaphy asked. "And how do news organizations maintain their credibility if the public knows government has the ability to censor news reports?"

That is a great question, at least to people in my business. But no one heard her ask it in Sacramento.