Corporations and Freedom of Speech

Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press

From left to right, Mark Chandler, Cisco's general counsel, Elliot Schrage, a vice president for corporate communications at Google, Jack Krumholtz, managing director of federal government affairs and associate general counsel for Microsoft, and Michael Callahan, Yahoo's general counsel before a joint hearing on the Internet in China.

This past week, we have been considering (via the film The Corporation) whether or not there is a significant gap between the role that corporations do play, and the role that they ought to play, in serving the public good (or "public interest" as it is sometimes also called).

Right now, the topic du jour has to do with freedom of speech: to what extent (if any) do multinational corporations have the obligation to cultivate, serve, and defend freedom of speech in the normal course of conducting their respective businesses?

On Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2006, executives representing Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, were called to testify before a Congressional human rights committee about what a subcommittee chairman called their "sickening collaboration" with the Chinese government (requires free registration). [See their respective prepared testimonies here, here, here, and here.)

Fortune's online report of the hearings was, I should think, sobering to any Internet-related corporate executive. An excerpt:

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, who chaired the House subcommittee hearing, compared the
tech company's actions to IBM's collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Smith, a New Jersey Republican, dismissed the claim by firms that they have to obey local laws. "If the secret police a half century ago asked where Anne
Frank was hiding, would the correct answer be to hand over the information in
order to comply with local laws?" Smith asked. "We must stand with the
oppressed, not the oppressors."

U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and a Holocaust survivor, was even sharper in his attacks. "Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace," Lantos told the tech executives. "I simply do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."

Given the fact that Tom Lantos represents the district containing "the high-tech empire of Silicon Valley," that is extraordinarily strong language. (It also casts doubt on the repeated assertion in The Corporation that one cannot meaningfully distinguish bewteen government and business anymore.) As one would expect, there is broad coverage of the hearings.

However, one notes a certain irony in the massive press coverage. The lead in the CNN story, for example, somewhat sanctimoniously says that US lawmakers were attacking these companies for "putting profits before freedom." But if you look at CNN's own coverage of the cartoon riots, you will note at the bottom this disclaimer:

CNN is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of the Prophet Mohammed because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself.

Such a statement sounds rather innocuous, and perhaps even high-minded, until you read statements of truly brave people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Almost no American news media have chosen to reprint the cartoons.

Taking all of these things into account, please write a thorough, fact-based editorial to be submitted to the LA Times, NY Times, or Wall Street Journal in which you express your opinion of the issue raised at the beginning of this blog entry: to what extent (if any) do multinational corporations have the obligation to cultivate, serve, and defend freedom of speech in the normal course of conducting their respective businesses? Be sure that in your editorial, you take into account not only the views of the corporate world (linked above), but also the views of those trying to defend human rights. Examples include:

Rep. Christopher Smith (R, NJ)

Congressional Human Rights Caucus (See "Briefing Testimonies -- Human Rights and the Internet--The People's Republic of China)