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The First Amend-ment of the US Bill of Rights guarantees four freedoms they are religion, speech, the press and the right to assemble.

-Lazarus Pommells

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In 1984 Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag outside of the convention centre where the Republican National Convention was being held in Dallas, Texas. Johnson had burned the flag to protest the policies of President Ronald Reagan. he was fined and sentenced to one year in jail

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An attack on Charlie Hebdo's offices occurred on January 7. French brothers Chérif and Sa*d Kouachi armed with assault rifles broke into the magazine's offices and murdered caretaker Frédéric Boisseau. Afterward, they forced cartoonist Corinne ("Coco") Rey to enter a security code that granted access to the second floor, where an editorial meeting was taking place. After storming the newsroom, the attackers started shooting.

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In The Education of a Christian Prince by Eramus, he stated "In a free state, tongues too shall be free

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Shortly after the Licensing Order of 1643, John Milton wrote the speech Areopagitica, in which he famously criticized pre-publication censorship.
Milton seemed to believe that society's exposure to both the good and bad would be ultimately positive in how people would learn and grow.

Sources:
https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1259/john-milton
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1033/printing-ordinance-of-1643

~Jasmine Codling

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2005 - The Serious Organized Crime and Police Act

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2005 - The Serious Organized Crime and Police Act

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In 2005, the Serious Organized Crime and Police Act came in the UK to set up the Serious Organized Crime Agency and delegate it's functions. Part of the Serious Organized Crime and Police act was to ban any protests within 1 kilometre of the British Parliament. People who want to protest outside of Parliament or in Trafalgar Square which is a public space where protesting often happens, must let the Metropolitan Police know six days in advance https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2008/dec/16/serious-organised-crime-act

- Tyler Brace

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" To provide for the establishment and functions of the Serious Organised Crime Agency; to make provision about investigations, prosecutions, offenders and witnesses in criminal proceedings and the protection of persons involved in investigations or proceeding; to amend the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002; to make further provision for combating crime and disorder, including new provision about powers of arrest and search warrants and about parental compensation orders."

Establishes the Serious Organised Crime Agency and designates its functions.
Creates new provisions relating to parental compensation orders, civil orders which require parents or guardians topay compensation for damages or losses created by a child under 10 (therefore under the age of criminal responsibility).
Restricts the right to demonstrate within an exclusion zone of up to one kilometre from any point in Parliament Square. Those who want to demonstrate outside parliament, or indeed in Trafalgar Square - the traditional site of public protest - must apply to the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police six days in advance, or if this is not practical then with no less than 24 hours notice.
Creates a new offence of trespassing on a designated site. The site can be Crown Land, land that belongs to the monarch or heir to the throne or land a secretary of state believes is appropriate for designation in the interests of national security.
Makes all offences arrestable. Previously a police officer had to determine whether he suspected a person of committing a non-arrestable, arrestable or serious arrestable offence. The powers available flowed from that determination.
Extends previous legislation so that DNA retention on the National DNA Database is permitted even where a suspect has been cleared.

Ostensibly, this act was to enable the establishment of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). Launched in April 2006, SOCA bought together the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the parts of HM Revenue and Customs and the UK Immigration Service that deal with drug trafficking and people smuggling.

The legislation also makes a number of key changes to police powers and makes every offence, no matter how minor, arrestable. Prior to this act, there were a limited number of arrestable offences (one of the definitions was that the crime carried a penalty of five years' imprisonment). Under the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, fingerprints and DNA samples taken from a person arrested during the course of an investigation can be retained indefinitely on the National DNA Database, regardless of whether the suspect is charged or convicted of an offence.

The most controversial aspect of the act was the decision to criminalise unauthorised demonstrations within an exclusion zone of one kilometre around Parliament Square. These provisions were in part an attempt to end the one-man protest by Brian Haw, an anti-war campaigner who has been staging a peace vigil in Parliament Square since June 2001. Initially the High Court ruled that since his protest began before the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act became law he did not need to seek authorisation, but a later appeal overturned that decision and held that the act did apply to him.

A draft of the constitutional renewal bill released in March 2008, includes a proposal to repeal these contentious provisions.

There was widespread unease among civil liberty groups about the new police arrest powers. Human rights campaign groups such as JUSTICE expressed concerns that the act " grants too much discretion to individual officers and will lead to large numbers of unnecessary arrests". Under this act, officers merely have to satisfy themselves that there are reasonable grounds for arresting an individual because of their involvement or suspected involvement or attempted involvement in the commission of a criminal offence. JUSTICE pointed out that the legislation is drafted so broadly that it "will be very easy for an officer to justify an arrest" and that this could lead to unfair targeting of ethnic minority groups.

The bar on unauthorised demonstrations within central London galvanised a grassroots campaign against the measure that continues to this day.

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A-Z of legislation: Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005

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" To provide for the establishment and functions of the Serious Organised Crime Agency; to make provision about investigations, prosecutions, offenders and witnesses in criminal proceedings and the protection of persons involved in investigations or proceeding; to amend the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002; to make further provision for combating crime and disorder, including new provision about powers of arrest and search warrants and about parental compensation orders."

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The Petition of Right was sent by the English parliament to King Charles l complaining about a series of breaches of law. This very important document sets out the rights and liberties of the common man as opposed to the prerogatives of the crown. It expresses many of the ideals that later led to the American Revolution.

-Adrian Garib (100712058)

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Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical  magazine and in 2006 they published an article with a cartoon depiction of Mohammed saying "it's hard being loved by jerks". This caused outrage and the French president condemned the article and said offensive things shouldn't be said and should be avoided. In 2011 their offices were firebombed. In 2012 they posted more cartoons depicting Mohammed and in 2015 they were hit with a terrorist attack. Two Islamic gunmen entered the building and killed 12 people while shouting  "Allahu akbar" and also "the Prophet is avenged". The day after the attack the remaining staff announced they would continue their publications.

-Patrick McCaskie
Sources:
https://democracyweb.org/freedom-of-expression-history
https://www.ft.com/content/d30b0c22-96ee-11da-82b7-0000779e2340
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo#2006_publication

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Evolutionary scientists have identified that the most distinguishing feature of human beings ( Homo sapiens) is their capacity for complex language. It is still not clear when this capacity developed. Theories about when the spoken language began to emerge range from 100,000 to over one million years ago. The development of written language is better chronicled but not without historical debate. Recent archeological discoveries date proto-writing or pictographic language, the precursor to writing systems, to nearly 10,000 years ago (the 7 th millennium BC). Written language systems emerged in the fourth millennium BC. The first known examples were Sumerian, a cuneiform (or pictographic) language used in southern Mesopotamia, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, each dating from around 3200 BC. Both languages coincide with the rise of the earliest human civilizations. It is likely that written language also developed independently in the Indus Valley (2200 BC), China (1200 BC), and Mesoamerica around 600 BC, among other places, although historians debate whether these may be connected to earlier developments.

Galileo

Over time, opposing forces arose. On one side, individuals wanted to express ideas and opinions in written form; on the other side, rulers wanted to control such expression to maintain their power and their control over society. The Greek epic poet Homer (ninth or eighth century BC) supported free expression without hindrances. Pericles, Athens's most important statesman during its Golden Age (fifth century BC), extolled freedom of speech as the defining distinction between the world's first citizens' democracy, Athens, and its enemy, Sparta, a military dictatorship. Yet, even Athens restricted speech. Its first great lawmaker, Solon, banned "speaking evil against the living and the dead." And after the Peloponnesian Wars, Athens's Assembly sentenced the philosopher Socrates to death by poison as punishment for corrupting youth, encouraging them to question authority, and lecturing about unrecognized gods.

Until the Enlightenment in Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, censorship was the dominant practice of states and governments. Autocrats generally forbade any questioning of their policies, their behavior, or their right to rule. Such public questioning led to the gallows or worse. In mid-fifteenth century Europe, Johannes Gutenberg's introduction of the printing press using movable type allowed for the mass production of books and prompted rulers to impose further controls on publishing. The Vatican became the main enforcer of censorship. The Catholic Church's Congregation of the Index, first published in 1559, was a long list of printed books banned for reasons of heresy. One such book was Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibis orbium coelestium ("Regarding the revolutions of the heavenly spheres"), published in 1543, because it challenged the Church's belief in a stationary, or geocentric, earth. The great scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was sentenced to life in prison because he confirmed Copernicus's theories of planetary motion around the sun. Galileo's sentence was commuted to house arrest without visitors when he knelt before the pope to recant his belief in Copernican theory. Galileo's forced recantation of De revolutionibis and the banning of his own books dampened scientific inquiry and discovery for a century.

[ Areopagitica 's] argument ... was novel at the time but today is basic to our understanding of freedom of expression: 'Truth is most likely to emerge in a free and open encounter.'

During the Protestant Reformation, monarchs who broke from the Vatican's authority found a need for censorship themselves. In Britain, Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I were in mortal conflict with the Vatican, which attempted several coups and plotted assassination attempts on the Tudors after Henry VIII established a national church. Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I banned books that were opposed to the Church of England. They invoked the Court of Star Chamber (a palace court supplanting regular English Courts) to repress "slander." Elizabeth I also appointed the "Master of the Revels," who was responsible for censoring public presentations at her direction. Among the most famous acts of censorship is Elizabeth I's order to eliminate the abdication and assassination scene in William Shakespeare's Richard II because she interpreted the scene (not without justification) to invite comparison between her and the weak Richard II. The Catholic Stuarts who succeeded Elizabeth I tried and failed to restore Catholicism in Great Britain. For them, the Court of the Star Chamber was used to suppress political dissent and to control the licensing of printers. When Charles I raised an army against Parliament, the latter abolished the Star Chamber in 1637. Victorious in the English Civil War, however, Parliament reinstituted press controls through the Licensing Act of 1643. Its strict restrictions on what materials could be legally published gave rise to a heated debate on free speech.

John Milton, best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, entered the fray with the political essay Areopagitica, in which he carefully laid out arguments against the Parliament's adoption of the Licensing Act in favor of unfettered licensing. His main argument, novel at the time, is today basic to our understanding of freedom of expression: "Truth is most likely to emerge in a free and open encounter." While Milton's view was rejected, and the Licensing Act was passed, his arguments later found general adherence. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when Mary II and William III assumed the throne, they agreed to adhere formally to the newly adopted Bill of Rights. Censorship by royal fiat continued, but "unfettered licensing" became a new and generally accepted right that initiated England's tradition of a free - and freewheeling - media. Milton's Areopagitica, despite its complexity, became the touchstone for freedom of speech advocates. It has influenced the liberal tradition in Britain, the United States, and countries throughout the British Empire (see

Freedom of expression became a primary objective for Enlightenment thinkers as a measure of liberal progress. In Europe, Sweden was the first country to abolish censorship in 1766, followed quickly by Denmark and Norway in 1770. Reflecting the egalitarian spirit of the French Revolution, the National Assembly's Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 included not only the right to free expression but also the right to own a printing press (which previously required a license). In the American colonies, a principal complaint against the monarchy's control was the King's press censorship. After the American Revolution, the US Constitution's First Amendment, adopted in 1791, established one of the strongest standards for the guarantee of free speech by any constitution: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . ."

In what has become known as 'The Great Dissent,' Holmes argued that the [Court should] not restrict expression of opinion or belief that the state disagreed with.

Although the First Amendment as stated is rather absolute in its protection of free speech, the Bill of Right's protection required judicial standards. In the US, these standards evolved through decisions of the Supreme Court to expand freedom and reduce restrictions on the media and other means of expression. For example, slander and national security were traditionally common justifications for restricting speech until relatively recently. While there were legitimate claims to limit speech to prevent outright defamation or political violence, such reasons were broadly interpreted to restrict speech in important ways.

The most famous case involving defamation laws was New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), in which the Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling in favor of a Montgomery, Alabama city commissioner. He had sued The New York Times for liable over an advertisement made by civil rights leaders that he claimed had slandered him. It was a common tactic of public figures in the South against newspapers in the North to deter media coverage of the civil rights movement. In the Sullivan case, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 to create a new legal standard to protect individuals and the media in both the dissemination of information and the expression of views on public policy. Its decision stated that it was not enough for a published assertion to be found wrong to be determined slanderous, since facts and views could remain in dispute. Proof of slander, especially against a public figure, would require one of three standards: intent of "actual malice," prior knowledge of a claim's falsehood, or "reckless disregard" for the truth.

Similarly, until the mid-1950s, the US Supreme Court had upheld public and national security laws restricting speech. In Schenck v. United States (1919), Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a majority opinion broadly upholding the powers of the executive branch to maintain public order. Holmes famously asserted that "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." This frequently used example seems straightforward as a reason to restrict intentional acts of public disorder or violence. But Holmes's opinion established an open-ended "clear and present danger" standard for restricting speech. In the case before Holmes, the plaintiff, Charles Schenck, was a Socialist convicted for distributing leaflets calling for World War I draftees to openly resist the draft. A case heard a year later, Abrams v. United States, convinced Holmes that the Court could easily abuse his standard. The majority upheld convictions against anarchists who distributed leaflets only expressing opposition against American involvement in World War I. In what became known as "The Great Dissent," Holmes argued that his doctrine should be used in cases only when speech encouraged actions posing a "clear and present danger," not to restrict expression of opinions or beliefs the state disagreed with. He wrote: "the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas."

It took nearly forty years for a Supreme Court majority to agree with Holmes's Great Dissent. But in Yates v. United States (1957), the Court reversed numerous convictions based on the Smith Act, which outlawed revolutionary political groups calling for the overthrow of the government. In a 6-1 ruling, Justice John Harlan, relying on Holmes's arguments, stated that the law had to distinguish between expressing the idea of overthrowing the government and acting to do so. The scope of that opinion was enlarged in a case, Brandenberg v. Ohio, that determined that the "clear and present danger" doctrine could not be used to criminalize the simple advocacy of lawlessness but that such advocacy had to reach the standard of "fighting words" or incitement likely to provoke "imminent lawless action." The case was controversial because it vacated the conviction of a KKK grand master for speeches at a rally threatening violence against Jews and blacks. In another controversial decision in 1977, National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie , a Court majority extended free speech protection to the use of Nazi uniforms, symbols, and salutes in a proposed march through a predominantly Jewish community in Skokie, Illinois in which one in six members was a survivor of the Holocaust.

In New York Times Company v. United States (1971), the Supreme Court also ruled that the government could not prohibit publishing government documents or information without a "heavy burden of proof" that national security or public order justified it. All of these rulings greatly expanded protections for the media and for citizens generally. They reinforced freedom of speech as an essential characteristic of the US but also influenced democracies generally in the basic understanding that restraints on freedom were a greater threat to a country's democratic foundations than the exercise of free speech.

The rise of totalitarian regimes in the 20th century had an opposite dynamic: they eradicated all freedom of speech. Such regimes immediately took complete control of the media and made it into an instrument for conveying state ideology. "Deviant" or dissenting views and opinions were severely punished. In the earliest days of the 1917 Russian Revolution, for example, the Bolsheviks imposed strict censorship rules, wrecked the presses of rival political groups, and went so far as to destroy private ("bourgeois") libraries of opponents. Just as importantly, the Bolsheviks' leader, Vladimir Lenin advocated controlling society through propaganda and indoctrination. His successor, Stalin, institutionalized censorship by setting up state bodies to censor all publications and broadcasts as well as to control who could be a writer at all. In Germany, Hitler appointed Joseph Goebbels as director of propaganda almost immediately upon taking power to institute a regime of strict censorship in all areas of expression: printed and broadcast media, culture, and scholarship. One of Goebbels's first acts was to incite anti-Semitism in the media. He then rallied support for a massive book burning on May 10, 1933 in Berlin and other cities to destroy "non-German" books: 25,000 books were burned. (In the 19th century, German poet Heinrich Heine wrote prophetically, "Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.")

Goebbels's professed the notion of the "Big Lie," which defines the essence of totalitarian propaganda:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

Independent or free thinking, of course, was punished severely in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and similar regimes. All told, tens of millions of citizens who wrote or expressed views that contradicted state ideology or even common complaints about public officials found themselves in prison camps or graves. In the history of totalitarianism, however, one finds not just unimaginable suffering but also remarkable courage of individuals who struggled to write freely and reveal the truth for the world and for history. Examples include Albert Camus, editor of Combat during the French Resistance to Nazi Germany, the Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas who wrote of the cruel prison experiences he endured as a convicted homosexual, the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel who wrote of "the power of the powerless," and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago, which documented the inhuman penal and forced labor camp system of the Soviet Union. For these individuals, and many, many others, intellectual freedom could not be compromised because it meant compromising truth itself. Some who were imprisoned found ways both to write and to smuggle their works out of their prison cells and their countries, creating a distinct new form of literature called prison writing. Their pursuit of truth and their efforts to overcome censorship - and dictatorship - were an inspiration for freedom movements.

As noted in in this section and in the terrible destruction and mass murder carried out by Nazi Germany and other Axis powers during World War II caused the international community to create new institutions and instruments after the war to protect human rights and prevent a repeat of the war's atrocities. The most important institution was the adoption of the United Nations (UN) and the UN Charter. Its most important instrument is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. Its Article 19 established the global standard for free expression: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression." The UDHR was adopted by the UN General Assembly 48-0. Subsequent UN documents, however, such as the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Social, Cultural, and Economic Rights (adopted in the 1960s), include exceptions allowing for the temporary restriction of several freedoms to preserve "public order." Such exceptions were often used by authoritarian governments (and sometimes by democracies) to carry out general repression. As a result, the justification for suspending freedoms by the need to preserve public order was restricted in scope by the UN Commission on Human Rights in the time and circumstances such suspensions could be in force.

Even in democracies, controversies remain about restrictions on freedom of expression. France has laws against hate speech and the denial of the Holocaust and the genocide of Armenians. Their application against the leaders of the far-right National Front, however, appears to have had no effect on their rise in political polls (see Country Study). In recent years in the US, issues of national security continued to pose difficult challenges. Government employees or contract workers released information to the public revealing classified information stirring new debates over what constitutes "whistle-blowing" (and thus should be protected from prosecution) and what constitutes illegal or even treasonous transgression of the law. In a recent case exemplifying such debate, Edward Snowden, a government employee under a CIA contract revealed classified information about the National Security Agency's widespread collection of telephone and internet data as part of the war on terror. From exile in Russia, he also continued to release other information about NSA spying practices previously unknown to the public, including cases involving foreign governments. President Obama welcomed public debate on the programs after their unauthorized disclosure, but he directed the US government to charge Snowden with a variety of crimes under the Espionage Act and other laws and sought his extradition after he fled the country.

Not everyone agrees with the libertarian view of John Milton's Areopagitica or its embodiment in the First Amendment as defined by Oliver Wendell Holmes, especially given the increased threat of terrorism. Thus, democratic governments and societies continue to debate about the balance between national security and free expression as well as about other controversial issues such as obscenity, hate speech, political speech, intellectual property rights, and accountability of the media, among others.

Some clear challenges to free expression have emerged. Many authoritarian governments have ratcheted up repression of free speech (see, for example, in this section Country Study). Another distinct challenge, however, is the adoption of blasphemy laws. As noted above, such laws were common in European countries until the Enlightenment (and even today in the Russian Federation members of the rock group Pussy Riot were imprisoned for blasphemous behavior in an Orthodox Church). Today, such laws are found in much of the Muslim world. Such laws restrict free expression much beyond showing respect for a religion generally to prosecuting any discussion or even offhand remarks that might be interpreted as expressing criticism of Islam, its beliefs, or its religious officials. In some countries, blasphemy can result results in death (like and Saudi Arabia ). In the punishment is less severe but still chilling of free speech (one example: a world renowned pianist was given a suspended sentenced and fine for writing a jocular comment about Islamic clerics in a Twitter post). Overall, the effect of blasphemy laws has been to heighten intolerance of dissent. A study by Paul Marshall reports that such laws are "choking freedom of expression" (see ).

Such intolerance broadened to a global challenge of freedom of expression by extremist movements and repressive governments. A precedent was set in 1989 when Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwah (or religious edict) encouraging the assassination of Salman Rushdie, a British writer living in the US, for his novel Satanic Verses. Khomeini deemed it blasphemous for its treatment of the Koran and Islamic beliefs. Salman Rushdie had many death threats and went into hiding after the fatwah was issued. Book stores carrying his books were bombed; many stopped carrying them. After Khomeini's death, the government of Iran retracted the fatwah in 1998 under international pressure (but not its general policies against free expression). Rushdie is no longer in hiding, but his movements are restricted. There remain ongoing threats on his life (see articles in Resources).

Journalists working near soldiers in Nairobi during the December 2007 riots. Photo by Eleanor Marchant.

The fatwah was a precedent for extremist reactions to any expression in the world critical of Islam or offending the religious sensibility of Muslims. There were many incidents but the most far-reaching were "the cartoon wars." In September 2006, Jyllands-Posten, a regional Danish newspaper, published cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. Months later, Taliban extremists used their publication as a tenuous pretext to attack a Norwegian military base in Afghanistan (Denmark and Norway participated in the NATO mission in Afghanistan). Protests and attacks on Western embassies quickly spread to a dozen countries. Several Muslim political and religious leaders demanded that the Danish prime minister rebuke the publication of the cartoons and shut down the newspaper on the grounds that the Koran forbids any pictorial depiction of Allah or Allah's Prophets. Free speech organizations and some governments defended the right to publish the cartoons and argued that restricting speech according to religious sensibility would strike at the heart of freedom of expression. But many leaders, including in the US and other Western countries with traditions of free speech, criticized Jyllands-Posten and called for an apology. In the end, after an international boycott by Arab countries cost the Danish economy several billion dollars, the Danish paper did issue an apology to defuse the international controversy. The prime minister, however, took no action against the paper and did not apologize on the newspaper's behalf. He explained that in free societies, free speech was too important to be interfered with by the state. (See links on the "Cartoon Wars" in

Free speech defenders praised the Danish prime minister's fortitude but criticized the general response of Western leaders. Their reaction suggested that freedom of expression is a principle to be defended except when violent protests are organized against it. Such protests are often organized or provoked by extremist movements and governments, but they reflect a general political culture of intolerance. Freedom of expression encourages that slights to religious sensibilities or even violations of religious edicts be met instead by speech and persuasion, not violence, repression, or censorship. Organized religion-based intimidation is no different from government repression of journalists or, as in Mexico and Columbia, organized violence by criminal groups wanting to prevent publication of information about their activities. In each case, the aim is to intimidate people into silence.

In January 2015, Islamic State extremists carried out a terrorist attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris that killed 11 people and injured 11 others. There were related attacks on a kosher market and other targets but the attack on Charlie Hebdo was connected directly to its recent publication of satirical images of the Prophet Muhammed. In reaction, several million people gathered in a demonstration in Paris, including the leaders of most European nations, to condemn the terrorist attacks and to defend free media. "I Am Charlie Hebdo" was a slogan adopted worldwide on social media and other platforms. Ten years after "the cartoon wars," the challenge to freedom of expression by these newest attackers was abundantly clear. On the one hand, the people and their leaders declared that they would not be intimidated by violence; on the other hand, many publications have chosen self-censorship rather than risk the type of intimidation visited on Jyllands-Posten or the violence committed against Charlie Hebdo.

According to the annual report by Freedom House " Freedom of the Press ," there continues to be a steady increase over the last decade in restrictions on free media and free expression. While it notes troublesome cases of increasing restrictions in some "free" countries, the main threats to freedom of expression remain the broader restrictions imposed by repressive governments and ideologies in "partly free" and "not free" countries, as well as the threat and use of violence directed against freedom of speech in general.

In the 2015 Freedom House report, aixty-three countries were categorized as having a fully free media in 2014. These are countries "where coverage of political news is robust, the safety of journalists is guaranteed, state intrusion in media affairs is minimal, and the press is not subject to onerous legal or economic pressures." The large majority of countries in the 2015 survey, however, were either "partly free" (71) or "not free" (66). By world population, only 14 percent, or one in six persons, live in countries with "free media," while 42 percent live in "partly free" and 44 percent in "not free" countries.

Freedom House uses a comprehensive methodology for examining the legal, political, and economic environment in each country. It uses a similar scoring system as its Freedom in the World Survey: ranging from 1 (freest) to 7 (least free). In general governments in "partly free" countries (ranging from 3 to 5) impose administrative and ownership limits on media, tend to harass independent media critical of the government or its policies, fail to protect journalists or media outlets from attack and harassment by others, or often repress and restrict speech in substantive ways. In "Not free" countries, governments impose complete censorship, control the content of and access to the media and the internet, have fully restrictive registration requirements for media and journalists preventing most independent outlets and ensuring that the population gets its information from state media, and generally imprison or physically attack individuals who express themselves freely in any way. Often state-owned media are used for propaganda, ideological indoctrination, and state-controlled social mobilization. Eight countries are categorized as the "worst of the worst" (Belarus, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). These countries have no independent media, and state media perpetuate misinformation and "cults of personalities.

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Freedom of Expression: History | Democracy Web

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Evolutionary scientists have identified that the most distinguishing feature of human beings (Homo sapiens) is their capacity for complex language. It is still not clear when this capacity developed. Theories about when the spoken language began to emerge range from 100,000 to over one million years…

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In 2002, Isioma Daniel, a Nigerian journalist provokes Muslims by writing about the Prophet Mohammed and Miss World. This creates a lot of strong, angry feelings from the community and leads to riots which leave more than 200 dead. With a lot of freedom of expression and speech laws, Nigeria at the time is not used to people coming out and publicly enticing a whole religion like that. With Islam being the second biggest religion in Nigeria, this journalist upset many many people.
- Teagan Martire

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Criticism of US Government officials made illegal 1798

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Criticism of US Government officials made illegal 1798

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In 1798 a law was passed that made it illegal to make any criticisms towards any US government official. The law made it impossible to say anything negative unless the criticism was able to be proved in a court of law. During this time over two dozen people were arrested until later pardoned by Thomas Jefferson when he became president two years later.

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Marquis de Lafayette created the Declaration of the Rights of Man to serve the French Constitution of 1791. It held the central values that brought about the French Revolution, ultimately protecting the rights of France's citizens, laying the groundwork for free speech, democracy, and individual liberty.

- Sean Reilly (100780072)

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In 399 BC the Trial of Socrates was held. Socrates was being accused of two crimes: impiety to the Athenian pantheons and corruption of a city state. This is because Socrates believed that ideas should be free, and people should be able to speak without the shackles of society or government. The trial was close, but in the end free speech did not prevail and Socrates was executed.

By Justin Griesbach

Sources

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Socrates/Platos-Apology

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between 50 B.C. and A.D. 700, The fire that burned down the Library of Alexandria in Egypt is one of the most important instances of censorship even today. Perhaps a mistake, the fire set in the library destroyed over 40,000 manuscripts. Many of these were only copies and the valuable information they held is forever lost.

- Adriena Ranieri

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The Magna Carta, a document created due to the abuse of England's King John, states that no one is above to law. This includes the king, the lawmaker, and anyone with a higher power. The Magna Carta was the foundation of documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. (Shanahan Arulnathan)

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Pussy Riot is a feminist protest performance art punk rock band formed in 2011, Moscow. The group is composed of 11 members initially the group was formed in response to government policies that discriminated against women. Pussy Riot gained national attention in 2012 after a performance at Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The group approached the altar and performed a mock prayer for the Virgin Mary to take President Vladimir Putin out of power. The result was the arrest of three of the members with two members on the lamb. The resulting arrests further enforce the fact that censorship and severe response by authorities is a part of the political agenda set by Putin.

Sabina Ahad

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Also known as the Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing, England's Licensing Order of 1643 aimed to restore censorship in English publishing after the abolition of the Star Chamber Decree of 1637. The Ordinance gave the English parliament the right to track and register all members of the publishing industry, pre-license all forms of print, seize and destroy all print detrimental to the government and prosecute those responsible for it.

- Brendyn Beck

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After World war II the international communities came together to create new institutions, to stop such a thing from happening again. the most important ones of these new institutions were the United Nations and the UN charter. they were important in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.” the UN General Assembly adopted UDHR, in the 1960s with exceptions allowing temporary restrictions to preserve "public order"

All information was gathered from : Freedom of Expression: History | Democracy Web

- student: Logan Morais

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Evolutionary scientists have identified that the most distinguishing feature of human beings ( Homo sapiens) is their capacity for complex language. It is still not clear when this capacity developed. Theories about when the spoken language began to emerge range from 100,000 to over one million years ago. The development of written language is better chronicled but not without historical debate. Recent archeological discoveries date proto-writing or pictographic language, the precursor to writing systems, to nearly 10,000 years ago (the 7 th millennium BC). Written language systems emerged in the fourth millennium BC. The first known examples were Sumerian, a cuneiform (or pictographic) language used in southern Mesopotamia, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, each dating from around 3200 BC. Both languages coincide with the rise of the earliest human civilizations. It is likely that written language also developed independently in the Indus Valley (2200 BC), China (1200 BC), and Mesoamerica around 600 BC, among other places, although historians debate whether these may be connected to earlier developments.

Galileo

Over time, opposing forces arose. On one side, individuals wanted to express ideas and opinions in written form; on the other side, rulers wanted to control such expression to maintain their power and their control over society. The Greek epic poet Homer (ninth or eighth century BC) supported free expression without hindrances. Pericles, Athens's most important statesman during its Golden Age (fifth century BC), extolled freedom of speech as the defining distinction between the world's first citizens' democracy, Athens, and its enemy, Sparta, a military dictatorship. Yet, even Athens restricted speech. Its first great lawmaker, Solon, banned "speaking evil against the living and the dead." And after the Peloponnesian Wars, Athens's Assembly sentenced the philosopher Socrates to death by poison as punishment for corrupting youth, encouraging them to question authority, and lecturing about unrecognized gods.

Until the Enlightenment in Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, censorship was the dominant practice of states and governments. Autocrats generally forbade any questioning of their policies, their behavior, or their right to rule. Such public questioning led to the gallows or worse. In mid-fifteenth century Europe, Johannes Gutenberg's introduction of the printing press using movable type allowed for the mass production of books and prompted rulers to impose further controls on publishing. The Vatican became the main enforcer of censorship. The Catholic Church's Congregation of the Index, first published in 1559, was a long list of printed books banned for reasons of heresy. One such book was Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibis orbium coelestium ("Regarding the revolutions of the heavenly spheres"), published in 1543, because it challenged the Church's belief in a stationary, or geocentric, earth. The great scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was sentenced to life in prison because he confirmed Copernicus's theories of planetary motion around the sun. Galileo's sentence was commuted to house arrest without visitors when he knelt before the pope to recant his belief in Copernican theory. Galileo's forced recantation of De revolutionibis and the banning of his own books dampened scientific inquiry and discovery for a century.

[ Areopagitica 's] argument ... was novel at the time but today is basic to our understanding of freedom of expression: 'Truth is most likely to emerge in a free and open encounter.'

During the Protestant Reformation, monarchs who broke from the Vatican's authority found a need for censorship themselves. In Britain, Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I were in mortal conflict with the Vatican, which attempted several coups and plotted assassination attempts on the Tudors after Henry VIII established a national church. Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I banned books that were opposed to the Church of England. They invoked the Court of Star Chamber (a palace court supplanting regular English Courts) to repress "slander." Elizabeth I also appointed the "Master of the Revels," who was responsible for censoring public presentations at her direction. Among the most famous acts of censorship is Elizabeth I's order to eliminate the abdication and assassination scene in William Shakespeare's Richard II because she interpreted the scene (not without justification) to invite comparison between her and the weak Richard II. The Catholic Stuarts who succeeded Elizabeth I tried and failed to restore Catholicism in Great Britain. For them, the Court of the Star Chamber was used to suppress political dissent and to control the licensing of printers. When Charles I raised an army against Parliament, the latter abolished the Star Chamber in 1637. Victorious in the English Civil War, however, Parliament reinstituted press controls through the Licensing Act of 1643. Its strict restrictions on what materials could be legally published gave rise to a heated debate on free speech.

John Milton, best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, entered the fray with the political essay Areopagitica, in which he carefully laid out arguments against the Parliament's adoption of the Licensing Act in favor of unfettered licensing. His main argument, novel at the time, is today basic to our understanding of freedom of expression: "Truth is most likely to emerge in a free and open encounter." While Milton's view was rejected, and the Licensing Act was passed, his arguments later found general adherence. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when Mary II and William III assumed the throne, they agreed to adhere formally to the newly adopted Bill of Rights. Censorship by royal fiat continued, but "unfettered licensing" became a new and generally accepted right that initiated England's tradition of a free - and freewheeling - media. Milton's Areopagitica, despite its complexity, became the touchstone for freedom of speech advocates. It has influenced the liberal tradition in Britain, the United States, and countries throughout the British Empire (see

Freedom of expression became a primary objective for Enlightenment thinkers as a measure of liberal progress. In Europe, Sweden was the first country to abolish censorship in 1766, followed quickly by Denmark and Norway in 1770. Reflecting the egalitarian spirit of the French Revolution, the National Assembly's Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 included not only the right to free expression but also the right to own a printing press (which previously required a license). In the American colonies, a principal complaint against the monarchy's control was the King's press censorship. After the American Revolution, the US Constitution's First Amendment, adopted in 1791, established one of the strongest standards for the guarantee of free speech by any constitution: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . ."

In what has become known as 'The Great Dissent,' Holmes argued that the [Court should] not restrict expression of opinion or belief that the state disagreed with.

Although the First Amendment as stated is rather absolute in its protection of free speech, the Bill of Right's protection required judicial standards. In the US, these standards evolved through decisions of the Supreme Court to expand freedom and reduce restrictions on the media and other means of expression. For example, slander and national security were traditionally common justifications for restricting speech until relatively recently. While there were legitimate claims to limit speech to prevent outright defamation or political violence, such reasons were broadly interpreted to restrict speech in important ways.

The most famous case involving defamation laws was New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), in which the Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling in favor of a Montgomery, Alabama city commissioner. He had sued The New York Times for liable over an advertisement made by civil rights leaders that he claimed had slandered him. It was a common tactic of public figures in the South against newspapers in the North to deter media coverage of the civil rights movement. In the Sullivan case, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 to create a new legal standard to protect individuals and the media in both the dissemination of information and the expression of views on public policy. Its decision stated that it was not enough for a published assertion to be found wrong to be determined slanderous, since facts and views could remain in dispute. Proof of slander, especially against a public figure, would require one of three standards: intent of "actual malice," prior knowledge of a claim's falsehood, or "reckless disregard" for the truth.

Similarly, until the mid-1950s, the US Supreme Court had upheld public and national security laws restricting speech. In Schenck v. United States (1919), Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a majority opinion broadly upholding the powers of the executive branch to maintain public order. Holmes famously asserted that "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." This frequently used example seems straightforward as a reason to restrict intentional acts of public disorder or violence. But Holmes's opinion established an open-ended "clear and present danger" standard for restricting speech. In the case before Holmes, the plaintiff, Charles Schenck, was a Socialist convicted for distributing leaflets calling for World War I draftees to openly resist the draft. A case heard a year later, Abrams v. United States, convinced Holmes that the Court could easily abuse his standard. The majority upheld convictions against anarchists who distributed leaflets only expressing opposition against American involvement in World War I. In what became known as "The Great Dissent," Holmes argued that his doctrine should be used in cases only when speech encouraged actions posing a "clear and present danger," not to restrict expression of opinions or beliefs the state disagreed with. He wrote: "the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas."

It took nearly forty years for a Supreme Court majority to agree with Holmes's Great Dissent. But in Yates v. United States (1957), the Court reversed numerous convictions based on the Smith Act, which outlawed revolutionary political groups calling for the overthrow of the government. In a 6-1 ruling, Justice John Harlan, relying on Holmes's arguments, stated that the law had to distinguish between expressing the idea of overthrowing the government and acting to do so. The scope of that opinion was enlarged in a case, Brandenberg v. Ohio, that determined that the "clear and present danger" doctrine could not be used to criminalize the simple advocacy of lawlessness but that such advocacy had to reach the standard of "fighting words" or incitement likely to provoke "imminent lawless action." The case was controversial because it vacated the conviction of a KKK grand master for speeches at a rally threatening violence against Jews and blacks. In another controversial decision in 1977, National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie , a Court majority extended free speech protection to the use of Nazi uniforms, symbols, and salutes in a proposed march through a predominantly Jewish community in Skokie, Illinois in which one in six members was a survivor of the Holocaust.

In New York Times Company v. United States (1971), the Supreme Court also ruled that the government could not prohibit publishing government documents or information without a "heavy burden of proof" that national security or public order justified it. All of these rulings greatly expanded protections for the media and for citizens generally. They reinforced freedom of speech as an essential characteristic of the US but also influenced democracies generally in the basic understanding that restraints on freedom were a greater threat to a country's democratic foundations than the exercise of free speech.

The rise of totalitarian regimes in the 20th century had an opposite dynamic: they eradicated all freedom of speech. Such regimes immediately took complete control of the media and made it into an instrument for conveying state ideology. "Deviant" or dissenting views and opinions were severely punished. In the earliest days of the 1917 Russian Revolution, for example, the Bolsheviks imposed strict censorship rules, wrecked the presses of rival political groups, and went so far as to destroy private ("bourgeois") libraries of opponents. Just as importantly, the Bolsheviks' leader, Vladimir Lenin advocated controlling society through propaganda and indoctrination. His successor, Stalin, institutionalized censorship by setting up state bodies to censor all publications and broadcasts as well as to control who could be a writer at all. In Germany, Hitler appointed Joseph Goebbels as director of propaganda almost immediately upon taking power to institute a regime of strict censorship in all areas of expression: printed and broadcast media, culture, and scholarship. One of Goebbels's first acts was to incite anti-Semitism in the media. He then rallied support for a massive book burning on May 10, 1933 in Berlin and other cities to destroy "non-German" books: 25,000 books were burned. (In the 19th century, German poet Heinrich Heine wrote prophetically, "Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.")

Goebbels's professed the notion of the "Big Lie," which defines the essence of totalitarian propaganda:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

Independent or free thinking, of course, was punished severely in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and similar regimes. All told, tens of millions of citizens who wrote or expressed views that contradicted state ideology or even common complaints about public officials found themselves in prison camps or graves. In the history of totalitarianism, however, one finds not just unimaginable suffering but also remarkable courage of individuals who struggled to write freely and reveal the truth for the world and for history. Examples include Albert Camus, editor of Combat during the French Resistance to Nazi Germany, the Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas who wrote of the cruel prison experiences he endured as a convicted homosexual, the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel who wrote of "the power of the powerless," and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago, which documented the inhuman penal and forced labor camp system of the Soviet Union. For these individuals, and many, many others, intellectual freedom could not be compromised because it meant compromising truth itself. Some who were imprisoned found ways both to write and to smuggle their works out of their prison cells and their countries, creating a distinct new form of literature called prison writing. Their pursuit of truth and their efforts to overcome censorship - and dictatorship - were an inspiration for freedom movements.

As noted in in this section and in the terrible destruction and mass murder carried out by Nazi Germany and other Axis powers during World War II caused the international community to create new institutions and instruments after the war to protect human rights and prevent a repeat of the war's atrocities. The most important institution was the adoption of the United Nations (UN) and the UN Charter. Its most important instrument is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. Its Article 19 established the global standard for free expression: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression." The UDHR was adopted by the UN General Assembly 48-0. Subsequent UN documents, however, such as the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Social, Cultural, and Economic Rights (adopted in the 1960s), include exceptions allowing for the temporary restriction of several freedoms to preserve "public order." Such exceptions were often used by authoritarian governments (and sometimes by democracies) to carry out general repression. As a result, the justification for suspending freedoms by the need to preserve public order was restricted in scope by the UN Commission on Human Rights in the time and circumstances such suspensions could be in force.

Even in democracies, controversies remain about restrictions on freedom of expression. France has laws against hate speech and the denial of the Holocaust and the genocide of Armenians. Their application against the leaders of the far-right National Front, however, appears to have had no effect on their rise in political polls (see Country Study). In recent years in the US, issues of national security continued to pose difficult challenges. Government employees or contract workers released information to the public revealing classified information stirring new debates over what constitutes "whistle-blowing" (and thus should be protected from prosecution) and what constitutes illegal or even treasonous transgression of the law. In a recent case exemplifying such debate, Edward Snowden, a government employee under a CIA contract revealed classified information about the National Security Agency's widespread collection of telephone and internet data as part of the war on terror. From exile in Russia, he also continued to release other information about NSA spying practices previously unknown to the public, including cases involving foreign governments. President Obama welcomed public debate on the programs after their unauthorized disclosure, but he directed the US government to charge Snowden with a variety of crimes under the Espionage Act and other laws and sought his extradition after he fled the country.

Not everyone agrees with the libertarian view of John Milton's Areopagitica or its embodiment in the First Amendment as defined by Oliver Wendell Holmes, especially given the increased threat of terrorism. Thus, democratic governments and societies continue to debate about the balance between national security and free expression as well as about other controversial issues such as obscenity, hate speech, political speech, intellectual property rights, and accountability of the media, among others.

Some clear challenges to free expression have emerged. Many authoritarian governments have ratcheted up repression of free speech (see, for example, in this section Country Study). Another distinct challenge, however, is the adoption of blasphemy laws. As noted above, such laws were common in European countries until the Enlightenment (and even today in the Russian Federation members of the rock group Pussy Riot were imprisoned for blasphemous behavior in an Orthodox Church). Today, such laws are found in much of the Muslim world. Such laws restrict free expression much beyond showing respect for a religion generally to prosecuting any discussion or even offhand remarks that might be interpreted as expressing criticism of Islam, its beliefs, or its religious officials. In some countries, blasphemy can result results in death (like and Saudi Arabia ). In the punishment is less severe but still chilling of free speech (one example: a world renowned pianist was given a suspended sentenced and fine for writing a jocular comment about Islamic clerics in a Twitter post). Overall, the effect of blasphemy laws has been to heighten intolerance of dissent. A study by Paul Marshall reports that such laws are "choking freedom of expression" (see ).

Such intolerance broadened to a global challenge of freedom of expression by extremist movements and repressive governments. A precedent was set in 1989 when Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwah (or religious edict) encouraging the assassination of Salman Rushdie, a British writer living in the US, for his novel Satanic Verses. Khomeini deemed it blasphemous for its treatment of the Koran and Islamic beliefs. Salman Rushdie had many death threats and went into hiding after the fatwah was issued. Book stores carrying his books were bombed; many stopped carrying them. After Khomeini's death, the government of Iran retracted the fatwah in 1998 under international pressure (but not its general policies against free expression). Rushdie is no longer in hiding, but his movements are restricted. There remain ongoing threats on his life (see articles in Resources).

Journalists working near soldiers in Nairobi during the December 2007 riots. Photo by Eleanor Marchant.

The fatwah was a precedent for extremist reactions to any expression in the world critical of Islam or offending the religious sensibility of Muslims. There were many incidents but the most far-reaching were "the cartoon wars." In September 2006, Jyllands-Posten, a regional Danish newspaper, published cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. Months later, Taliban extremists used their publication as a tenuous pretext to attack a Norwegian military base in Afghanistan (Denmark and Norway participated in the NATO mission in Afghanistan). Protests and attacks on Western embassies quickly spread to a dozen countries. Several Muslim political and religious leaders demanded that the Danish prime minister rebuke the publication of the cartoons and shut down the newspaper on the grounds that the Koran forbids any pictorial depiction of Allah or Allah's Prophets. Free speech organizations and some governments defended the right to publish the cartoons and argued that restricting speech according to religious sensibility would strike at the heart of freedom of expression. But many leaders, including in the US and other Western countries with traditions of free speech, criticized Jyllands-Posten and called for an apology. In the end, after an international boycott by Arab countries cost the Danish economy several billion dollars, the Danish paper did issue an apology to defuse the international controversy. The prime minister, however, took no action against the paper and did not apologize on the newspaper's behalf. He explained that in free societies, free speech was too important to be interfered with by the state. (See links on the "Cartoon Wars" in

Free speech defenders praised the Danish prime minister's fortitude but criticized the general response of Western leaders. Their reaction suggested that freedom of expression is a principle to be defended except when violent protests are organized against it. Such protests are often organized or provoked by extremist movements and governments, but they reflect a general political culture of intolerance. Freedom of expression encourages that slights to religious sensibilities or even violations of religious edicts be met instead by speech and persuasion, not violence, repression, or censorship. Organized religion-based intimidation is no different from government repression of journalists or, as in Mexico and Columbia, organized violence by criminal groups wanting to prevent publication of information about their activities. In each case, the aim is to intimidate people into silence.

In January 2015, Islamic State extremists carried out a terrorist attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris that killed 11 people and injured 11 others. There were related attacks on a kosher market and other targets but the attack on Charlie Hebdo was connected directly to its recent publication of satirical images of the Prophet Muhammed. In reaction, several million people gathered in a demonstration in Paris, including the leaders of most European nations, to condemn the terrorist attacks and to defend free media. "I Am Charlie Hebdo" was a slogan adopted worldwide on social media and other platforms. Ten years after "the cartoon wars," the challenge to freedom of expression by these newest attackers was abundantly clear. On the one hand, the people and their leaders declared that they would not be intimidated by violence; on the other hand, many publications have chosen self-censorship rather than risk the type of intimidation visited on Jyllands-Posten or the violence committed against Charlie Hebdo.

According to the annual report by Freedom House " Freedom of the Press ," there continues to be a steady increase over the last decade in restrictions on free media and free expression. While it notes troublesome cases of increasing restrictions in some "free" countries, the main threats to freedom of expression remain the broader restrictions imposed by repressive governments and ideologies in "partly free" and "not free" countries, as well as the threat and use of violence directed against freedom of speech in general.

In the 2015 Freedom House report, aixty-three countries were categorized as having a fully free media in 2014. These are countries "where coverage of political news is robust, the safety of journalists is guaranteed, state intrusion in media affairs is minimal, and the press is not subject to onerous legal or economic pressures." The large majority of countries in the 2015 survey, however, were either "partly free" (71) or "not free" (66). By world population, only 14 percent, or one in six persons, live in countries with "free media," while 42 percent live in "partly free" and 44 percent in "not free" countries.

Freedom House uses a comprehensive methodology for examining the legal, political, and economic environment in each country. It uses a similar scoring system as its Freedom in the World Survey: ranging from 1 (freest) to 7 (least free). In general governments in "partly free" countries (ranging from 3 to 5) impose administrative and ownership limits on media, tend to harass independent media critical of the government or its policies, fail to protect journalists or media outlets from attack and harassment by others, or often repress and restrict speech in substantive ways. In "Not free" countries, governments impose complete censorship, control the content of and access to the media and the internet, have fully restrictive registration requirements for media and journalists preventing most independent outlets and ensuring that the population gets its information from state media, and generally imprison or physically attack individuals who express themselves freely in any way. Often state-owned media are used for propaganda, ideological indoctrination, and state-controlled social mobilization. Eight countries are categorized as the "worst of the worst" (Belarus, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). These countries have no independent media, and state media perpetuate misinformation and "cults of personalities.

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Freedom of Expression: History | Democracy Web

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Evolutionary scientists have identified that the most distinguishing feature of human beings (Homo sapiens) is their capacity for complex language. It is still not clear when this capacity developed. Theories about when the spoken language began to emerge range from 100,000 to over one million years…

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Emperor Qin Shi Huang persecuted scholars and destroyed books he deemed to be useless. With the exception of books about medicine, agriculture, prophesy, and historical records of himself. Books that were deemed "useless" were burned.
- Aiesha Lewis

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During the 20th century under a campaign led by  Mao Zedong  to create a utopia targeted libraries and books deemed to be politically incorrect, religious, of traditional value, etc.   During this period any anti-communist works that did not support socialism/ communism and  was of anti-Maoist literature was to be censored, banned, and were categorized to be deemed dangerous. Public book burnings and social public shaming served as a tool and deterrent to destroy and discourage use of any material not deemed appropriate by the CCP.

Joshua. Payuan

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The novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was released in 1884 and banned from libraries just a year after. The book caused controversy as people thought the story was irreligious, trashy and obsolete.
-Lauren Morrison

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The Index of Forbidden Books is a list of books that the catholic church banned as they were deemed to be dangerous to the faith of the Catholics.
The index contained a list of upwards of 4000 books that were banned from reading. The index was in effect up until 1966 where it was finally abolished.

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Todd Browning's 1932 film " Freaks" was censored by MGM studios due to the poor reaction of audencies  while testing the film. Without consent the studio edited Brownings film and released the shortened version which was eventually banned by the BBFC claiming the film to be commercially exploitive  to the film's title characters. The original film in its entirety is considered a lost film.

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Waco Siege February 28th, 1993 - April 19th, 1993

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Waco Siege February 28th, 1993 - April 19th, 1993

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In the early hours of February 1993 ATF agents were dispatched to the Mount Carmel Center to issue a search warrant to the Branch Davidians on suspected weapon violations. Branch David leader David Koresh was met with gunfire from the ATF the Davidians fired back until a cease-fire was made. As the days grew into weeks David Koresh made a deal with the FBI negotiator saying that if he can broadcast his message they would leave. The FBI complied with his demands but they took out a lot of what his message said. angry David Koresh stayed in the compound, another deal was made with David he was to write his version of the seven seals then come out. The FBI went back on their deal with David and decided the siege was over. Armed with tear gas mounted on tanks they smashed through the compound filling it with the gas, a fire started because of the gas causing many lives to be lost including many children. The days after the siege panted the Davidians as this doomsday cult that started the siege. years later what really happened came to light this is one of many instances where censorship put normal people in a bad light.

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the missionary's burned all of Mayan books to destroy there religion. the missionaries  where removing freedom of speech from mayans. -Ethan Callaway

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1932 Todd Brownings film "Freaks"  was censored by MGM having edits made to the original without the consent of director on the grounds that audiences had reacted poorly to the grotesque images of carnival sideshow characters. The  shortened version of the film was still banned for years by the BBFC only finally coming to light in the 60s, now being considered a lost classic.

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2001
In the wake of 9/11, the Patriot Act gives the US government new powers to investigate individuals suspected of being a threat, raising fears for civil liberties.

Jordan Dolman

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1633
Galileo Galilei was hauled before the inquisition after making claims that the sun does not revolve around earth.

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On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, expounds the theory of natural selection. TH Huxley publicly defends Darwin against religious fundamentalists.

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Nazi Germany is probably one of the most well known cases of mass censorship in the 20th century.

The custom of mass book burnings in Germany and the persecution of people who went against the ideas of the Nazis all started on April 6th, 1933. The German Students Association for Press and Propaganda urged the mass cleansing of books and even held public events in order to mass burn books. around 25 000 University books were burned as they were deemed un-German. Even well known authors like Earnest Hemingway, Jack London, Hellen Keller and many more that did not according to Nazi philosophy was deemed as un-German and were burned.

Lastly in the effort to abolish Jewish culture and book written by a jewish author was also burned at mass book burnings.

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Due to conflict with religion and ideology, Spaniards and leader Fray Diego de Landa, acting bishop of the Yucatan, burned many of the Mayan's sacred books in 1562. Specifically, the Mayans did not agree with the Christian ideology the leader was trying to teach them, resulting in the Spaniard's actions.
- Sian Carroll

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Emmanuel Corral - Braille Books Banned in Paris (1892)

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Emmanuel Corral - Braille Books Banned in Paris (1892)

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The director of Paris school for the blind ordered all books written in Braille to be disposed. He did not favour the idea of blind students being able to read. Fortunately, not all employees complied with his instruction, and discreetly continued the usage of the coded writing. Braille was eventually restored at the school. If it weren't for those employees who preserved the code, we would not have Braille books today, and the blind would've had limited access to information.

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Theo Van Gogh was assassinated shortly after the debut of his recent film "Submission". The film was made to condemn the mistreatment of women in Islam.
-Antonio Pasqua

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Ban of all books that did not agree with communist beliefs. Including religious books such as The Bible and Quarn.

Anina Kostelski

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The book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published 1885. The book was banned, burned and some riots occurred because of its racial slurs, violent language and inappropriate for children. It was banned in many states across in United States. The New York public schools banned it for its excessive use of racial slurs. An article counted using the "N" word 150 times. Parents and teachers found it negatively impacted students, and it made students uncomfortable reading it allowed in class.

-Ashley Terwillegar

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Nazi Germany is probably the most well-known, 20th century, case of mass censorship. Mass book burnings and persecution of people with ideas that conflicted with Nazi philosophy first began on April 6, 1933 with a proclamation released by the German Students Association for Press and Propaganda. They urged the “cleansing” of literature and threw public festivals to celebrate the bonfires.

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Eminem released the album ''The Marshall Mathers LP'' back on May 23rd, 2000. This album caused a lot of outrage regarding its lyrics at the time.

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Anthony Comstock (roughly 1873) – connected to the “Comstock Law”, first US federal anti-obscenity statute – limits mailing of materials related to contraception or abortion