Censorship, Inc.: The Corporate Threat to Free Speech in the United States / Edition 1

by Lawrence Soley

Overview

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is a landmark in the defense of free speech against government interference and suppression. In this book we come to see how it also acts as a smokescreen behind which a more dangerous and insidious threat to free speech can operate.
Soley shows how as corporate power has grown and come to influence the issues on which ordinary Americans should be able to speak out, so new strategies have developed to restrict free speech on issues in which corporations and property-owners have an interest.
Censorship, Inc. is a comprehensive examination of the vast array of corporate practices which restrict free speech in the United States today in fields as diverse as advertsing and the media, the workplace, community life, and the environment. Soley also shows how these threats to free speech have been resisted by activism, legal argument, and through legislation. Grounded in extensive research into actual cases, this book is at the same time a challenge to conventional thinking about the nature of censorship and free speech.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583670668
Publisher:	Monthly Review Press
Publication date:	06/01/2002
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Lawrence Soley is Colnick Professor of Communication and Professor of Journalism at Marquette Universityin Milwaukee. His previous books include Free Radio Broadcasting, Leasing the Ivory Tower, and The News Shapers.

Table of Contents

	Preface	i
1	Private Censorship, Corporate Power	1
Part I	Speaking of Labor	21
2	Company Towns and Labor Camps	25
3	Dirty Work: Blacklisting and Silencing Employees	55
Part II	Uncivil Actions	81
4	SLAPPing Citizens	85
5	"Hog Tying" Critics: Agricultural Disparagement Statutes	111
Part III	Private Property, Public Silence	135
6	Freedom to Buy, Not Speak	139
7	Private Communities: Real Properties, Real Restrictions	167
Part IV	The Muted Media	191
8	Advertisers: Muscling the Media	195
9	Muzzling David: Corporate Media Goliaths	219
10	Freeing Speech	249
	Endnotes	265
	Index	297