Ben Bagdikian 
Professor Emeritus 
School of Journalism 
University of California 
Berkeley, CA 

Dear Professor: 

We have had previous correspondence, however brief.  I have examined your Media Monopoly and have acquainted you with my free speech interpretation. 

What prompts this letter is hearing you quoted extensively yesterday during the July 27 Sunday morning service of the UU Fellowship at Redwood City.  The presenter was lauding your stirring talk at the recent General Assembly at Phoenix. 

For years you have correctly pointed out the concentrations of power and the apathy of the press.  You seem, however, unconcerned as to how this comes about. 

I say it has come about as a result of misinterpretations of the free speech clause, particularly the holding that use of money is “free speech.” The word speech in early America meant conversation and dialogue according to the Oxford English Dictionary, not mere one way communication.  Moreover, the freedom of speech was well known to the nations founders as meaning speech-making and debates in a law-making or similar decision making body. 

We know there is no “right” to falsely shout fire in a crowded theater causing a panic.  Speaking to or about another human creates a personal relationship with that human involving conduct, behavior.  In reality there is no right anywhere to engage in unregulated conduct with another.  Had the nations founders alluded to a freedom of conduct or expression they would have been adjudged idiots.  Alexander Meiklejohn said speaking is subject to regulation “the same as shooting a gun.” 

The basic intent of the free speech clause is to guarantee to the citizenry that 
governmental issues will in finality be decided by democratic process. 
 
 
 

1999 Louis Worth Jones