Random Noise #12 : Freedom of Speech and of the Press

Freedom of speech is a right and a duty.

Faced with injustice, we have both a right and a duty - a duty-right - to speak out against it.

Politically motivated censorship can only do its dirty work in absolute secrecy.  But once that censorship becomes public knowledge, it achieves the opposite of its desired effect when it amplifies and unifies the voice of outrage.

... the controversy over freedom of speech and of the press is at bottom a controversy of the desirability, or otherwise, of telling lies. What is really at issue is the right to report contemporary events truthfully, or as truthfully as is consistent with the ignorance, bias and self-deception from which every observer necessarily suffers.

George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature.