Speaking Freely with Sanford Ungar

This week from The Free Speech Project at Georgetown University: the final episode of a four-part Speaking Freely podcast series concerning Free Speech issues during 2020. We look at the effect of misinformation as COVID-19 spreads across the country. How should social media balance Free Speech with the need for truthful speech during a pandemic?

Music used in this podcast is from the artist Broke for Free and licensed under the creative commons.

The third episode examines the objections that some religious communities have raised to lockdown orders imposed by state and local governments. We speak with NPR religion correspondent Tom Gjelten, Notre Dame sociologist Kraig Beyerlein, and lawyer Steve Crampton from the Thomas More Society. Crampton represented a Mississippi church burned down by a suspected arsonist after it violated its city stay-at-home guidelines. 

Music used in this podcast is from the artist Broke for Free and licensed under the creative commons.

In part two of our series, we turn to workers who have been deemed “essential” to keeping the economy running during the pandemic.  Some essential workers worried about working while the virus was spreading and have spoken out about working conditions, including the lack of social distancing and safety equipment, such as masks. Some have faced retaliation, bringing into question whether they should be free to speak even as the country battles a pandemic that is causing widespread deaths. 

Music used in this podcast is from the artist Broke for Free and licensed under the creative commons

In this final episode, we talk about technology. Over the past decade, tech -- and especially social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter -- have become a key tool for political organizers. Social media companies had a problem they needed to solve quickly  - what should they do with misinformation or disinformation posted on their platforms? With COVID-19 spreading, the stakes were life and death.

In the early months of 2020, many public places of gathering, such as schools, movie theaters, and churches, began to shut down in response to the outbreak of the pandemic in the United States. In towns across the country, the shuttering of churches proved to be an especially heated decision, and many took to the courts to fight what they saw as encroachment by the federal government. In this episode, we examine how people and governments struggled to balance both sides of the issue.

In part two of our series, we turn to workers who have been deemed “essential” during the pandemic. When the novel coronavirus began spreading in early 2020, workers most critical to keeping the economy running were deemed “essential” by state and federal governments. As many started to voice their concerns over hazardous work environments, some faced retaliation and even termination of employment for expressing their views. 

Today, in the first episode of this series, we look at two contrasting waves of protest that dominated the news beginning in the spring of 2020, and look at how people affected by the pandemic balanced individual versus community rights. 

Music used in this podcast is from the artist Broke for Free and licensed under the creative commons

From face masks to Facebook posts, Free Speech plays an important role in how we navigate the novel coronavirus pandemic. Join us for this four part series as we examine the intersection of societal restrictions and individual expression. 

Listen to her interview with FSP Program Director Sanford Ungar

And who, or what, will lead us?