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NRB to Lay Out Internet 'Free Speech' Charter
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The National Religious Broadcasters organization plans a proposal to new media companies like Facebook, Google
and Apple on “how to balance their free enterprise rights with the free speech
rights of Internet users.”
The group plans to release a
“Free Speech Charter for the Internet” in the coming days, Sept. 12. It cites recent incidents such as the
Chick-fil-A protests, wherein NRB feels that certain positions were
discriminated against by some Internet media companies.
NRB has been critical of policies of many such companies
regarding types of content allowed on their platforms; an NRB
official wrote late last year, “These
new media giants have declared that they possess both the right and the
will to
use standard-less, arbitrary power to shut down ideas they simply do not
like.
Considering how a handful of these giant technology companies rule
entire
fields of Web-based communications, the threat to freedom of discourse
is
breathtaking.”
The
NRB also acknowledges that the issue is not clean-cut, with conflicting positions
between traditional public free speech and the rights of media property owners
to police their content. The new program is associated with
the NRB’s John Milton Project for Religious Free Speech.
Related:
New Media Have a Free Speech Problem (NRB Commentary,
Nov. 2011)
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