---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: geeta seshu Date: 7 April 2010
Dear friends, For several months now, we have been working on putting together a Free Speech Hub to track issues related to freedom of speech and expression and create a space for debate and discussion. Some of you have been part of this process with us - as contributors, experts in your field or even as a sounding board... We'd like to share the Free Speech Hub with you. Please browse through, share your thoughts and ideas and help make the Free Speech Hub a dynamic space for free speech issues. Sevanti Ninan Geeta Seshu Negotiating our freedoms *To keep unwanted incursions on our many freedoms at bay, a society needs to be watchful. Vigilance requires a flow of information.* The Hoot unveils a Free Speech Hub because the time has come to track who stops whom from doing what. Posted Tuesday, Apr 06 19:46:50, 2010 The television free for all over Sania Mirza and Shoab Malik's engagement woes exemplifies what Amartya Sen once described as the media's propensity for targeted invasion of privacy. They were rowdy at the press conference, they clambered over the wall of the Mirza family home, they pursued the family making the allegations for leads, and have been happy to go to town with anything they got. You begin to wonder whether there is any editorial control left any more in any TV newsroom in the country, any news editor who believes that the media's job is to report new developments but not live off a personal dispute, however high profile the parties involved. Media excesses lead to a decline in public sympathy for the tribe. So even as some members of the media run amuck, countless others doing their jobs in vulnerable circumstances find little sympathy for their plight. The climate is inhospitable these days for free speech and all the related freedoms the term implies. It is increasingly so every year. This year in Karnataka two people actually died in clashes over protests against a newspaper publishing a piece of writing by Taslima Nasreen. Is anybody in civil society losing sleep over this shrinking space? The Hoot unveils a *Free Speech Hub<http://www.thehoot.org/web/freetracker/indexfree.php> * because the time has come to track who stops whom from doing what and how many such incursions on free speech occur every month. Our tracker which you will find on the Hub also tracks battles won: bans lifted, censorship by the mob pushed back. Click here to read more: http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/index.php Click here to visit the Free Speech Hub: http://www.thehoot.org/web/freetracker/indexfree.php <http://www.thehoot.org/web/freetracker/indexfree.php> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "humanrights movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/humanrights-movement?hl=en.
