The most important issue of this paper is contained mostly, though vaguely, in the title. What is agenda-setting and how it is related with freedom of speech domain? In further part I will try to present those, theoretically distant problems. I will also try to present how political and business organizations can affect on daily agenda, so in fact how thy can create access to free speech. There are some situations in mass media world, when those practices can be considered as internal or external censorship. In this paper I specific cases, all selected from American political and media systems. I think that US system is full of contradictions, from law confl icts (state vs federal law, First Amendment), owners of mass media competition (corporations, FCC) and finally state controlled media on the contrary to free speech (censorship).

Freedom of possessing and expressing own ideas and opinions and their dissemination is one of the fundamental rights, that entitled to each person. In addition to this, the freedom enables searching and getting information. Thanks to it, the right to express your own identity, selfrealization and aspiring to truth are guaranteed. It is one of the basic premise and the necessary condition to realize the idea of democracy. In the United States, the cradle of civil rights and modern democracy, the freedom of expression is guaranteed in the First Amendment to American Constitution (Bill of Rights), enacted in 1789 (came into force in 1791). On its virtue, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of (…) the freedom of speech, or of the press (…).” Although the record suggested that this freedom is absolute, (not restricted of any legislation), the later jurisdiction of the US Supreme Court (by case law) isolated categories of utterances that have not been contained by the First Amendment. ! e essential issues are answers on the following questions: in the name of what values Congress can limit the First Amendment? And where is the border of freedom of speech? One of the expressions that are not protected by the law is fi ghting words and hate words. The second are libel and slanders that are understood as a infringement of somebody’s rights.

One can hardly overestimate the meaning of freedom of speech in the European tradition. It dates back to the times of the ancient Greece, although it was only John Milton who wrote the first tract devoted to the subject in question. In his Areopagitica (1644), Milton skillfully defended the principle of a free flow of ideas by stressing out that an open and undisturbed clash of various information and opinions is a condition of discovering truth in life. The best-known and most frequently quoted fragment of Areopagitica reads: “And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the ! eld, we do injuriously, by licencing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the wors, in a free and open encounter. Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing”.

Freedom of Press in Political Regimes: the Case of Thailand
Abstract: Article updates the research on the development of media in political regimes. Freedom of the media, one of the basic civil liberties, is understood to belong to everyone, without restrictions on the right to freedom of expression (ie. The freedom of speech), the right to appoint media operators and the right to be informed. Applicable in Thailand limit media freedom in part are located in the directory of commonly accepted in democratic regimes. Thus, for example, restrict freedom of speech similar arrangements for the good of the legal, ie. Dobrom common law, such as public safety, legal order and security of the state and the individual’s personal property occurring, their interpretation and strict enforcement go far beyond the practice of democratic regimes. There is present therein in Thailand closure and suspension of the operation of media entities without a court order, to influence the structure of the business media, widespread censorship, criminalization of defamation, and especially imposing draconian penalties for committing this crime. The aim of this article is to determine the scope of the effect of restricting media freedom in the Thai media market.

The fundamental right to freedom of speech is a central element of the rule of law in a democratic state that constantly collides with other fundamental rights. Both in court decisions and in legal literature there is a significant discussion on the limits of the freedom of speech, mainly concerning its collision with other fundamental rights, particularly personality rights. This debate has become very strong in Brazilian constitutional case law, mainly in the Federal Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal), but also in other constitutional systems and even in the domain of international law. Based on the decisions of the Brazilian Supreme Court and those of the US Supreme Court and the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, this paper aims to discuss some criteria that may guide Courts when balancing freedom of speech and other fundamental rights.

The First Amendment to the United States’ Constitution prohibits any abridgment of the freedom of speech. According to the consistent line of the Supreme Court’s precedents, dating from 1931, the term “speech” encompasses non-verbal expressive conduct. Granting such symbolic speech constitutional protection can be justified with phenomenological, axiological, and historical arguments. Nevertheless, the constitutional jurisprudence regarding symbolic speech has so far been a little inconsistent and haphazard. The article proposes an adjudicative model that could be applied to all symbolic speech cases, bringing greater coherence and predictability to judicial decisions in this area. The suggested procedure comprises five basic steps: preliminary analysis (assessing basic features of the law in question independent of any First Amendment-specific enquiries), application of the “Spence test”, application of the doctrine of a categorical exclusion, intermediate scrutiny, and strict scrutiny.

Cyberspace seems to be ubiquitous. It coexists with the real world and it constitutes its coded zero-one reflection. However, it deprives us of privacy, our constitutional right. Even more, the modern technology allows our fingerprint to be traced forever. Problems with maintaining online privacy in the face of the phenomenon of identity theft for criminal purposes, or the use of our data for property purposes in the broadly understood internet marketing.

The subject of the article is references to the truth in the constitutions of modern states. The comparative study shows multiplicity of contexts in which the category of truth is mentioned in several dozen fundamental laws. The mention of truth in the constitutions as a component of the axiology of the legal and social order, the basis of transitional justice or the principle of court and administrative proceedings should be assessed positively. However, making the truth a limit of freedom of speech raises serious reservations. Granting constitutional protection only to truthful statements can stifle the public debate on socially prominent issues. The conducted analysis does not confirm the thesis of political liberalism that the truth is irrelevant for law and politics.

Nowadays, the concept of digital media, is nothing new. The article refers to the conditions of legal change implied by the vast progress and revolutionary digital transformation that has taken place when the media, which are an integral part of the communication process, have entered the realm of image culture, a sphere where they obliterate traditional modes of communication, creating a new sphere of influence, without a clear separation between the sender and the receiver. Hence, digital content has become the basis for the construction of a new system of axiology, so relevant in terms of constitutional values.

The COVID-19 pandemic made the authorities of many countries take extraordinary steps to prevent the new disease from spreading. They were not limited to improving the operation of healthcare but also extended to a range of areas of social and political life. That resulted in restrictions to fundamental human and civil rights and freedoms. A number of doubts voiced in the public debate in this connection encourage a scientific consideration of the legal aspects of restricting the rights and freedoms in connection with the pandemic. This paper is aimed at presenting disinformation as a hazard to the right to the freedom of speech, constitutionally protected in democratic states.

Among the laws regulating the press activity, the main one is the obligation to register a daily newspaper or a magazine (Article 20 of the Press Law). The registration application should include the data listed in that Article. Giving the role of a registrating body to the courts and not an administrative body, due to their independent nature, fosters the implementation of the free press rule formulated in Article 14 of the Constitution and developed in Article 1 of the Press Law. The ban on preventive censorship and press licensing is included directly in Article 54 Section 2 of the Constitution (this regulation, however, allows introducing by an Act of Parliament an obligation to obtain a license to run a radio or TV station). The registration mode is a kind of broadly understood application system and it is not included in the press licensing model. Nor does it have anything to do with preventive censorship. Regulations of the Code of Civil Procedure on non-litigious proceedings apply for registration procedure, together with alterations resulting from the Press Law. Magazine registration has two main functions: 1) protecting the name of no longer existing press titles (at the same time protecting the publisher’s right for the press title); 2) protecting the interests of potential readers. The latter case concerns preventing the reader from being misled about the true identity of a given newspaper. The Constitutional Tribunal noticed that the regulation concerning the registration mode is a limitation of the freedom of speech. However, the Tribunal did not find such a limitation that would breach Article 54 Section 1 or Article 31 Section 3 of the Constitution. Publishing a newspaper or a magazine may be suspended if in a given newspaper or magazine the law has been broken at least three times in a year, which has been confirmed by a valid criminal judgment. The regulations do not stipulate the option of cancelling the registration. It is, however, possibile that its validity may expire. According to Article 45 of the Press Law, in force since 19 July 2013, a person publishing a newspaper or a magazine without a license or suspended is subject to a fine. Currently such actions consitute a misdemeanour, and not an offence.

The text examines standards of freedom of speech stipulated by the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The focus is on political expression, which deserves the greatest scope of protection according to Western norms determined by the jurisprudence of the mentioned court and the Supreme Court of the United States. In this connection, the latter has significantly influenced the case-law of the former. The text under discussion analyses the problem from the perspective of the case of Ziembiński versus Poland (2), 2016.

The article examines the mechanisms of defamation in the internet space, social media and Facebook in particular. Human dignity is protected both as a constitutional value and as an individual right, though in everyday practice law-enforcement bodies usually tend to be unwilling to react to violations of human dignity, while appropriate legal provisions are often not in place to be implemented. Actions taken by the police in investigating appropriate cases do not always manage to identify perpetrators or bring them to justice. Most internet or cyber crime occurs across international borders and can be committed anonymously. There are certain types of defamatory statements that are considered to harm the reputation of the victim. Libel in the internet involves cyberbullying, online harassment, cyber-stalking, and, most of all, internet trolls. Trolling is any deliberate and intentional attempt to disrupt the credibility of others, often involving petty arguments. People tend to lose control of their emotions when they go online. An explosion of raw and unbridled emotions follows, standards wane, and eventually some internet users lose their touch with reality. Cyber violence and online harassment are punishable crimes and are subject to criminal prosecution: defamation, libel and online threats. Stalking and vulgar language in public places are offences subject to public prosecution and the provisions of the Petty Offences Procedure Code. . Generally, a defamatory statement published to third parties has to be proved and it has to be proved that the publisher knew or should have known that the statement that they made which harmed the reputation was false. The good name or reputation of another can be damaged, or even totally destroyed, in a number of ways. To calumniate another is certainly to ruin a person’s or a company their good name and so to do them an injustice. The number of criminal offences under Article 212 has increased four times over the past ten years.

The offense against religious feelings expressed in the text of Art. 196 of PC is strongly embedded in the constitutional liberties and freedoms and human rights of both the Council of Europe and the European Union. Freedom of conscience and religion, which originated in the wording of Art. 196 of PC remains in antinomy to other constitutional values protected by both international acts such as freedom of expression, freedom of artistic expression, the freedom to teach and freedom to enjoy cultural heritage. This requires balancing the content of these freedoms. At present stage there is yet no way to resolve the alleged doctrine of countertype of art.

Public manifestation of disregard for the Polish nation, the Republic of Poland and its constitutional authorities is a misdemeanor. Such disregard is not within the scope of the freedom of public debate. Such disregard is not within the concept of insult.

Censorship is a special case of media control. In the authoritarian system it is preventive censorship as well as press licensing that constitute a characteristic symptom of this control. In law, the notion of censorship has not been defined: therefore one has to refer to doctrines and jurisdiction. In the Polish law, a clear ban on preventive censorship, understood as making publishing or broadcasting a certain message dependent on the prior consent of a public authority, was included in Article 54 Section 2 of the Constitution. This regulation constitutes, in the area that it regulates, a development and confirmation of the freedom of the press and other media rule expressed in Article 14 of the Constitution. Additional provisions of the press’s freedom of speech in the context discussed here are formulated in Article 3 of the Press Law. Although it does not refer directly to preventive censorship, the ban it expresses is supposed to prevent the actual infringement on the freedom of the press by preventing its print and distribution. As for the issues discussed here, what may be controversial is the approach limiting the introduction of preventive censorship only to public administration institutions. The Constitutional Tribunal in its verdict from 20 July 2011, referring to the use of publication ban within proceedings to secure claims in claims against mass media concerning the protection of personal rights (Article 755 Paragraph 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure) stated that the judicial power is not the administrative power. Therefore, the courts’ activity cannot be considered as using censorship, but rather as monitoring the law being obeyed in the preventive meaning. And as for the regulations included in the European Convention on Human Rights, its Article 10 (as well as its other regulations) does not directly refer to the issue of controlling or obstructing publications, especially press releases. This question, however, has been the subject of many rulings of the European Court of Human Rights.

Gloss to the judgment of the ECtHR of 15 May 2022, OOO Memo p. Russia application no. 2840/10

No legitimate aim of proceedings for protection of reputation initiated by public authorities – gloss to the judgment of the ECtHR of 15 May 2022, OOO Memo p. Russia application no. 2840/10 On March 15, 2022. The European Court of Human Rights issued its judgment in the case of OOO Memo p. Russia, Application No. 2840/10. This judgment represents a turnaround in the Court’s previous line of jurisprudence. The ECtHR ruled that proceedings for civil defamation brought by public authorities have, as a rule, no legitimate aim and are thus incompatible with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The judgment establishes a higher level of protection against unjustified interference with freedom of expression than has been the case to date, and will have significant consequences for both proceedings before the ECHR and domestic proceedings. The judgement is also important because it draws attention to the problem of Stategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.

Gloss on the Judgment of the Supreme Court of August 24, 2023, file ref. no. IV KK 37/22

The purpose of the gloss is to present the correct line of reasoning that the Supreme Court should have adopted to reach the conclusion approved by the glossator. Relevant jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights allows for the acceptance of the absence of a violation of the norm sanctioned as a result of the application of constitutional and convention interpretation, rather than just the lack of social harmfulness of the act, as basis for the denial of the element of criminality. Any legal restrictions on freedom of speech must arise from serious reasons and an urgent societal need.

The terms political correctness or PC were not used until the late 1970s. According to James Wilson (1995), a judge in Georgia, in 1973 the US Supreme Court first mentioned the term “politically correct”. Thus, the doctrine of political correctness was based on the concept of “neutral language”. It is this language, free from expressions that offend the feelings and dignity of the person, violate his human rights, must oppose hate speech (Phumsiri N., 2018). The relevance of the work is due to the interest of studying the political correctness in the modern dimension, which is explained by the growing interest in society and spread in the media. Political correctness (PC) – a term that describes the style of behavior, speech, lifestyle, preferences, but at the same time does not violate the personal boundaries of people in religious, racial, political, cultural fields (Stephen Richer, Lorna Weir, 1995). Political correctness is a kind of voluntary social code of conduct, which provides for the inadmissibility of humiliating mentions of physical or mental disabilities of third parties, about their racial, religious or national affiliation, observance of gender equality in public and private life. The term “political correctness” began to be widely used only in the 80s of the 20th centuries. It was then that conservatives from American universities began to use it to denote social movements that advocated the establishment of codes of conduct that would exclude manifestations of racism, sexism, homophobia or other unacceptable forms of behavior. Politically correct terms are a special group of neologisms that are deliberately created by native speakers to replace lexical units that, for one or another political or social reason, begin to be perceived as derogatory. A number of researchers consider political correctness as one of the manifestations of euphemism, as an integral component of its linguistic aspect (Anna Monashnenko, Svitlana Amelina, Vasyl Shynkaruk, 2021). They consider euphemisms and politically correct units as identical concepts: euphemism is one of the most effective means of expressing politically correct vocabulary.