The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Kids Fight Book Banning Through kidSPEAK
Several organizations have sprung up in response to concerns about censorship of children's books. When the Harry Potter books came under attack, a number of organizations joined together to establish Muggles for Harry Potter, which is now known as kidSPEAK and focuses on being a voice for kids in fighting censorship in general. KidSPEAK stresses, "Kids have First Amendment rights—and kidSPEAK helps kids fight for them!"
Parents Against Bad Books in Schools
PABBIS (Parents Against Bad Books in Schools), is just one of a number of parent groups around the country challenging children's and young adult books in classroom teaching, and in school and public libraries. These parents go beyond wanting to restrict access to certain books for their own children; they seek to restrict access for other parents' children as well by getting one or more books removed from the library shelves or having access to the books restricted in some way.
What Do You Think?
It is appropriate for parents to guide their children’s reading, television viewing, and exposure to media as they see fit. The public library can assist in this process by providing reader’s advisory services, booklists, and other related services in a positive, pro-active manner. What they library should not do is act in loco parentis — in the place of the parents — either by limiting access to materials or services solely on the basis of the user’s age or by attempting to enforce parentally dictated controls.
Assignments
1. Why do many people think that challenges, book censorship and book banning are things that happened in the distant past?
2. Why do people want to ban books?
3. What are four motivating factors of banning books?
4. Does the age level for which a book is intended guarantee that someone won't try to censor it? Why?
5. Who makes the most complaints to public libraries and schools?
6. What does the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution state?
7. What does the abbreviation PABBIS mean?
8. Why is it appropriate for parents to guide their children’s reading, television viewing, and exposure to media as they see fit?
9. What do you think about censoring books for kids?
10. Summarize the text.
Text 8
Why Not Censor?
By Robin Hanson [40]
An important kind of regulation is paternalism regarding individual behavior – we often prohibit or require certain choices, and say this is because people can make mistakes. The story told is that expert regulators can carefully consider the mistakes we are likely to make, and adjust our sets of available choices with an eye to reducing those mistakes. Paternalistic regulations now limit, for example, the investments you can make, the food and drugs you can consume, the professionals you can employ, the cars you can drive, etc.
When considering any particular regulation, officials should consider hoped-for gains from fewer mistakes on the one hand, and then on the other hand subtract expected losses from frustrating preferences, reducing innovation, and enforcement costs. When considering whether to allow regulation in some area, voters should also consider the possibility of incompetent, corrupt, or partisan regulatiors.
While public and elite opinion supports many kinds of regulation, there also appears to be a widely-held consensus against one kind of regulation: censorship. While we accept some limits on what kids can hear, and a few limits on extreme adult expressions, the standard view is that ordinary adults should mostly be allowed to speak and hear whatevever they want.
Yet the same human flaws that lead us to mistakenly consume investments, drugs, cars, or professionals can lead us to mistakenly consume claims, arguments, and opinions. And expert regulators have an apparently similar potential to help people by identifying and removing poor choices from their available consumption options. Why are we so eager to regulate so much individual behavior, yet so reluctant to endorse censorship?
It can’t be because our beliefs and opinions don’t matter – they often matter greatly. Yes, censorship can interfere with the competition of ideas and the evolution of better ones, but regulation can interfere with innovation in most any area. Yes, we do like to interfere in the competition of ideas by favoring some ideas via school curricula, public service messages, and subsidized art. But we still usually stop short of actually censoring messages opposed to those we favor and subsidize.
Actually, we don’t stop short as much with for-profit corporations. For example, we won’t let alcohol makers advertize the fact that most research finds those who drink more are healthier. But we are more reluctant to limit what non-profits can say about the subject. This suggests to us that one big thing going on is an anti-dominance instinct against for-profit firms. We are in general reluctant to limit choices, whether of ideas or other things, but we are more willing to make an exception for products and services offered by for-profit firms, especially big ones.
One big noteworthy exception to this pattern is reporters; we are reluctant to limit what large for-profit news firms can say. News firms have somehow sold themselves as being smaller opponents of bigger maybe-illicitly-dominating governments. When most firms are regulated against their will, they are also smaller opponents of bigger maybe-illicitly-dominating governments. But in those cases we side with the bigger governments against the smaller firms. So why side with big news firms against a bigger government?
We suspect there are multiple equilibria here. When governments limit criticism we accept their claim that firms must not be allowed to speak freely, but when news firms are allowed to tell us they shouldn’t be censored, we believe and support this position.
Assignments
1. What does the term “paternalism” mean?
2. What do paternalistic regulations limit?
3. What should officials consider when considering any particular regulation?
4. Why are people so eager to regulate so much individual behavior, yet so reluctant to endorse censorship according to the author?
5. Do you agree with the statement: “…censorship can interfere with the competition of ideas and the evolution of better ones, but regulation can interfere with innovation in most any area”?
6. Why are we more reluctant to limit what non-profits can say about the subject?
7. Is censoring good according to this article?
8. Why do we accept governments claim that firms must not be allowed to speak freely?
9. Comment the following statement: “When most firms are regulated against their will, they are also smaller opponents of bigger maybe-illicitly-dominating governments”.
10. Summarize the text.
Public Relations
Text 1
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PR
From http://publicrelationsblogger.com [41]
The history of public relations is mostly confined to the early half of the twentieth century; however there is evidence of the practices scattered through history. One notable practitioner was Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire whose efforts on behalf of Charles James Fox in the 18th century included press relations, lobbying and, with her friends, celebrity campaigning.
A number of American precursors to public relations are found in the form of publicists who specialized in promoting circuses, theatrical performances, and other public spectacles. In the United States, where public relations has its origins, many early public relations practices were developed in support of railroads. In fact, many scholars believe that the first appearance of the term "public relations" appeared in the 1897 Year Book of Railway Literature.Later, practitioners were — and are still often — recruited from the ranks of journalism. Some reporters concerned with ethics criticize former colleagues for using their inside understanding of news media to help clients receive favorable media coverage
The first "names" Some historians regard Ivy Lee as the first real practitioner of public relations, but Edward Bernays, a nephew and student of Sigmund Freud, is generally regarded today as the profession's founder. In the United Kingdom Sir Basil Clarke (1879 - 1947) was a pioneer of public relations.
The First World War helped stimulate the development of public relations as a profession. Many of the first PR professionals, including Ivy Lee, Edward Bernays, John W. Hill, and Carl Byoir, got their start with the Committee on Public Information (also known as the Creel Committee), which organized publicity on behalf of U.S. objectives during World War I.Edward Bernays was the self-appointed Father of Public Relations.
In describing the origin of the term Public Relations, Bernays commented, "When I came back to the United States [from the war], I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And propaganda got to be a bad word because of the Germans... using it. So what I did was to try to find some other words, so we found the words Counsel on Public Relations".
Ivy Lee, who has been credited with developing the modern news release (also called a "press release"), espoused a philosophy consistent with what has sometimes been called the "two-way street" approach to public relations in which PR consists of helping clients listen as well as communicate messages to their publics. In the words of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), "Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other." In practice, however, Lee often engaged in one-way propagandizing on behalf of clients despised by the public, including Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller. Shortly before his death, the US Congress had been investigating Rockefeller's work on behalf of the controversial Nazi German company IG Farben.
Bernays was the profession's first theorist. Bernays drew many of his ideas from Sigmund Freud's theories about the irrational, unconscious motives that shape human behaviour. Bernays authored several books, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928), and The Engineering of Consent (1947). He saw public relations as an "applied social science" that uses insights from psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically manage and manipulate the thinking and behavior of an irrational and "herdlike" public. "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society," he wrote in Propaganda, "Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."
In the 1890s when gender role reversals could be caricaturized, the idea of an aggressive woman who also smoked was considered laughable. In 1929, Edward Bernays proved otherwise when he convinced women to smoke in public during an Easter parade in Manhattan as a show of defiance against male domination. The demonstrators were not aware that a tobacco company was behind the publicity stunt.
One of Bernays' early clients was the tobacco industry. In 1929, he orchestrated a now-legendary publicity stunt aimed at persuading women to take up cigarette smoking, an act that at the time was exclusively equated with men. It was considered unfeminine and inappropriate for women to smoke; besides the occasional prostitute, virtually no women participated in the act publicly. (Indeed, in some countries this is very much still the case.)
Bernays initially consulted psychoanalyst A. A. Brill for advice, Brill told him: "Some women regard cigarettes as symbols of freedom... Smoking is a sublimation of oral eroticism; holding a cigarette in the mouth excites the oral zone. It is perfectly normal for women to want to smoke cigarettes. Further the first women who smoked probably had an excess of male components and adopted the habit as a masculine act. But today the emancipation of women has suppressed many feminine desires. More women now do the same work as men do.... Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom."
Upon hearing this analysis, Bernays dubbed his PR campaign the: "Torches of Liberty Contingent".
It was in this spirit that Bernays arranged for New York City d?butantes to march in that year's Easter Day Parade, defiantly smoking cigarettes as a statement of rebellion against the norms of a male-dominated society. Publicity photos of these beautiful fashion models smoking "Torches of Liberty" were sent to various media outlets and appeared worldwide. As a result, the taboo was dissolved and many women were led to associate the act of smoking with female liberation. Some women went so far as to demand membership in all-male smoking clubs, a highly controversial act at the time. For his work, Bernays was paid a tidy sum by George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company.
Though not a commercial success in Europe, Paul Chabas's September Morn ended up in the permanent collection of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art after scandalising Anthony Comstock.
Another early practitioner was Harry Reichenbach (1882-1931) a New York-based American press agent and publicist who promoted movies. He claims to have made famous the Paul Chabas painting, September Morn. Supposedly, he saw a print in a Chicago art store window. He made a deal with the store owner who had not sold any of his 2,000 prints. Reichenbach had hired some boys to "ogle" the picture when he showed it to the moralist crusader Anthony Comstock. Comstock was suitably outraged when he saw it. Comstock's Anti-Vice Society took the case to the court and lost. However, the case aroused interest to the painting, which ultimately sold millions of copies.
Standards
In 1950 PRSA enacts the first "Professional Standards for the Practice of Public Relations," a forerunner to the current Code of Ethics, last revised in 2000 to include six core values and six code provisions. The six core values are "Advocacy, Honesty, Expertise, Independence, Loyalty, and Fairness." The six code provisions consulted with are "Free Flow of Information, Competition, Disclosure of Information, Safeguarding Confidences, Conflicts of Interest, and Enhancing the Profession."
In 1982 effective Public Relations helped save the Johnson & Johnson Corporation, after the highly publicized Tylenol poisoning crisis.
Assignments
1. Where PR has its origins?
2. When and where did the term “public relations” appear?
3. Who are the profession’s founders?
4. Who has been credited with developing the modern news release?
5. What is the “two-way street” approach to public relations?
6. What is Ivy Lee contribution in PR?
7. Who saw public relations as an "applied social science" that uses insights from psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically manage and manipulate the thinking and behavior of an irrational and "herdlike" public?
8. When was the first “Professional Standard for the Practice of Public Relations" enacted?
9. What are the six core values of the current Code of Ethics?
10. Summarize the text.
Text 2
