Free speech threats in the US and UK

[Commentary] Everybody in public life in the US and UK claims to believe in freedom of expression and a free press. Strange, then, that a growing number of people should now choose to exercise that freedom in order to declare that it should be limited—at least for others.

On both sides of the Atlantic, attention focuses on the overt threats to freedom of expression posed by state interference, as illustrated by the scandals over the National Security Agency spying revelations and the Justice Department secretly seizing AP journalists’ phone records. In Britain, we still labor under the worst defamation laws in the civilized world. These laws, under which truth is no defense and the defendant is assumed guilty until proven otherwise, attract powerful ‘libel tourists’ from around the world, seeking to use the London courts to silence their critics. US courts have rightly refused to enforce judgments imposed by UK libel courts. Even in the Land of the Free and the First Amendment, the “Free Speech, BUT” group has been gaining ground.