Editorial: Are we really in favor of free speech?

By John Edwards
The Smithfield Times 

A couple weeks ago, we published on this page a quote from the late Howard Broun, a noted newspaper journalist of a century ago. The quote, it seems, is worth pondering today: "Almost nobody means precisely what he says when he makes the declaration, 'I'm in favor of free speech.'"

Mr. Broun was right, of course. Even we more ardent defenders of free speech cringe at some of the things people say and do in the name of their First Amendment rights. (Consider our almost universal disgust, if not rage, over the Westboro Baptist Church protests that have disrupted funerals of American servicemen. The protests were upheld by a nearly unanimous Supreme Court in March.)

I suspect Mr. Broun would be encouraged, though, with the result of the "State of the First Amendment 2011" survey conducted by the First Amendment Center.

The Center conducts the survey annually, and has been doing so since 1997. And while questions are added each year, many of the basic queries have been the same ones used for 14 years. That provides an opportunity to look at trends and, generally, those trends are positive.

Back in 1997, for example, an abysmal 49 percent of Americans asked what the First Amendment protects were able to identify freedom of speech. That has risen to 62 percent today, a very encouraging, though still surprisingly small percentage.

Disheartening is the number of people who know that freedom of religion is protected by the First Amendment. That number actually declined from 21 to 19 percent since the first survey.

Freedom of the press came in a lame third, with 17 percent of respondents knowing that it is protected by the First Amendment.

Still fewer — 14 percent — know they have the protected right of assembly and only 3 percent had a clue that the right to petition government is protected.

While actual knowledge of what's in the First Amendment may be embarrassingly low, Americans do like the amendment more today than they did back in 1997. The survey asked whether respondents thought the First Amendment "goes too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only 18 percent of those polled thought it did, down from 28 percent back in 1997.

Conversely, 79 percent disagreed with that statement this year, up from 67 percent in 1997.

My profession didn't fare very well in the survey. That's not particularly surprising, considering what has happened to journalism during the past decade, but still should be a con- cern to journalists as well as anyone who values news.

Asked if they felt the news media tries to report the news without bias, only 17 percent agreed, while 47 percent disagreed. Interestingly, the percentage of those who both agreed and disagreed climbed during the past decade, perhaps another indicator of the divisiveness that is so prevalent in the U.S. today.

Separation of church and state fares better than journalism, thank good- ness, but not as well as freedom of speech. Sixty seven percent of those questioned feel that the First Amendment requires that separation, and only 28 per- cent feel it does not.

While the survey is encouraging for First Amendment advocates, we have a long way to go, and it is obvious from the responses that there are far more opinions than facts floating around, to wit:

Fully 30 percent of those surveyed could not name a single freedom insured by the First Amendment. But at least 95 percent had an opinion with respect to all the questions that called for an opinion rather than knowledge. Unfortunately, that's the America we know and love.