Without the freedom of the press the road to fanaticism and totalitarianism lies wide open. This book focuses on how the press reacted under strain in a number of cases in the 20th and 21st century. Both academics and journalists give their views on censorship, self-censorship and press-ethics challenging the reader to find his own position.

Mr. Bork discusses concern over press power and irresponsibility, particularly the attitude of the press that the public's "right to know" gives them the right to publish anything. He expresses concern that the public backlash could lead to excessive restrictions on the press.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:David Hume and the Danish Debate about Freedom of the Press in the 1770sJohn Christian LaursenWhen the reception history of David Hume’s political writings is written, there will have to be some discussion of their fate in “peripheral” countries like Denmark. Hume’s “Of Liberty of the Press” was translated into Danish as early as 1771. It is not widely known that Denmark was the first country officially to (...) declare freedom of the press and that a lively debate broke out once such freedom was declared. Hume’s essay was put to work in that debate. The story of this translation provides insights into the influence of Hume’s ideas in peripheral countries in Europe, and of Denmark in continental European ideas. Among other things, here we have an example of Hume’s work used in a concrete propaganda battle.The Danish translation of Hume’s essay was published as the last of three supplemental essays in a 31-page pamphlet entitled Mr. F. A. de Voltaire’s Letter to His Majesty the King of Denmark concerning freedom of the press in his states, together with some essays of relevant content. 1 A copy can be found at the Royal Library in Copenhagen in volume twenty of the forty-five bound volumes of pamphlets and booklets from 1770 to 1773 which make up Luxdorph’s Collection of Press Freedom Writings. 2 These pamphlets, in German, French, and (mostly) Danish, were collected at the time by Bolle Willum Luxdorph, a Danish man of letters and court counselor. [End Page 167]The occasion for Voltaire’s letter and our pamphlet was King Christian VII’s declaration of freedom of the press in his territories (the Kingdoms of Norway and Denmark and the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein) on 4 September 1770. It was in the form of a Cabinet Order to his Danish Chancellery, in the following words:We are fully convinced that it is as harmful to the impartial search for truth as it is to the discovery of obsolete errors and prejudices, if upright patriots, zealous for the common good and what is genuinely best for their fellow citizens, because they are frightened by reputation, orders, and preconceived opinions, are hindered from being free to write according to their insight, conscience, and conviction, attacking abuses and uncovering prejudices. And thus in this regard, after ripe consideration, we have decided to permit in our kingdoms and lands in general an unlimited freedom of the press of such a form, that from now on no one shall be required and obliged to submit books and writings that he wants to bring to the press to the previously required censorship and approval, and thus to submit them to the control of those who have undertaken the business until now of inspecting them; so have we graciously revealed and made known this our will concerning our kingdoms to our Danish Chancellery. Given at Friedrichsberg, the 4 September 1770. Christian. 3The foregoing cabinet order was largely the idea of Johann Friedrich Struensee, court physician and soon to be Prime Minister for Christian VII. 4 Less than ten years earlier, two periodicals he was involved with when he lived in Danish Altona had been suppressed, 5 and when he came to power by a series of accidents, one of his first acts was to arrange for the king to declare freedom of the press. [End Page 168]Response to this declaration was immediate. In Denmark it led to a flurry of pamphlets on a myriad of topics, including the high cost of living and the salaries of ministers, 6 monopolies and trade issues (vol. III), coinage (vol. IV), civil servants, the public debt, the agricultural economy (vol. V), the abolition of tenant farmers’ work obligations (vol. VI), the Iceland trade (vol. VII), marriage law, breweries (vol. VIII), banks, lotteries (vol. IX), soldiers’ and sailors’ pay (vol. X), the Norwegian economy (vol. XI), the universities and academies (vol. XII), the power of women (vol. XIII), irreligion and impiety (vol. XIV), prophecies of doom (vol. XV), fables, allegories and libels (vols. XVI–XVIII), and the eternity of hell (vol. XIX).Many pamphlets discussed press freedom... (shrink)

Stuart Hampshire's essay on human freedom offers an important analysis of concepts surrounding the central idea of intentional action. The author contrasts the powers of animals and of inanimate things; examines the relation between power and action; and distinguishes between two kinds of self-knowledge. Explaining human freedom by means of this distinction, he focuses his attention on self-knowledge gained by introspection. He writes: "...an individual who acquires more systematic knowledge of the causes of states of mind, emotion, and (...) desires, insofar as these are not the outcome of his decision, thereby becomes more free than he previously was to control and direct his own life:...there will in general be a closer correlation between that which he sets himself to do and that which he actually achieves in his life." In a postscript on determinism and psychological explanation, the author provides a detailed account of some of the ways in which explanation of states of mind differs from explanation of physical states. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Laws, Mind, and Free Will is a highly valuable book for anyone interested in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, or in the problem of free will and moral responsibility. The book has three distinct but related parts. The first presents an anti-empiricist position on the laws of nature, according to which the point of the laws is not primarily to predict kinematic outcomes, but rather to characterize dynamics. One upshot of the account is that the laws have an attenuated (...) role in determining and prediction of actual motion, and this has an important consequence for the relevance of the laws to the prospects for libertarian free will. This consequence is developed in detail in the second part of the book. A further feature of the account is that proposed laws and the theories in which they are embedded are models in a sense that reflects our interests and involves idealization. In Horst’s view, this is true for theories and laws across the sciences—from physics to psychology. The l .. (shrink)

Opponents and proponents alike of the freedom of the UK press to print prejudicial content about marginalised groups typically frame the debate in classic ‘free speech’ vs ‘harm principle’ terms. Those in favour of press freedom argue that the print press' right to freedom of expression beats any perceived or actual harm caused, and those against argue the opposite. Predictably, little progress is made in either party convincing the other. I suggest that we ought to instead ask, (...) what grounds the freedom of the press? I propose that one plausible answer is: the value of agential epistemic participation. And I argue that we cannot uphold that value at the same time as permitting discriminatory reporting against collectives of individuals. This offers a strong basis from which to argue for a change in UK press regulatory policy, to allow discrimination claims against groups of individuals to be heard. Further, when we consider the role of epistemic participation in one’s ability to perform as a person, we ought to find that most complaints will in practice find in the favour of the group in question, rather than the PPM. (shrink)

According to Tocqueville, the freedom of the press, which he treats as an extension of the freedom of speech, is a primary constituent element of liberty. Tocqueville treats the freedom of the press in relation to and as an extension of the right to assemble and govern one’s own affairs, both of which he argues are essential to preserving liberty in a free society. Although scholars acknowledge the importance of civil associations to liberty in Tocqueville’s political thought, (...) they routinely ignore the importance he places on the freedom of the press and speech. His reflections on the importance of the free press and speech may help to shed light on the dangers of recent attempts to censor the press and speech. (shrink)

This will be an admittedly opinionated review that gives with one hand and takes with the other. Let me be clear though from the outset that there is much to admire and agree with here. Perhaps, the biggest complaint is the failure of the author to engage with other highly relevant literature in philosophy of science and metaphysics that would yield her natural allies or would provide natural foils that ought to be named and engaged. On the allies side, there (...) are many people now writing in the vein of emergence that have made many of the same claims and used many of the same case studies to bolster their claims as Thalos. Surely, this requires a response on her part given that “emergence” is one of her primary foils. Rather than discussing those people’s work, she chooses to focus on a particular brand of emergence as a foil and thereby throws out the baby with the bathwater. Thalos also fails to engage the huge and highly relevant literature on the causal (or d .. (shrink)

Over the last eight years, there has been a sharp increase in government censorship and officially sponsored persecution of the Moroccan free press. The Moroccan press still enjoys greater freedoms now than under the late King Hassan II, thanks to the liberalization efforts he facilitated toward the end of his life, which were also continued in the early years of his son’s reign. However, the freedoms media activists worked so hard to obtain at the end of the last century have (...) rapidly begun to erode, particularly after the 2003 terrorist attacks in Casablanca. Morocco remains an important Arab ally to both the United States and Europe, but the monarchy risks that relationship by tightening the reigns on speech and violating international human rights laws. Moreover, the monarchy puts itself at risk domestically every time it imprisons a journalist or imposes a bankrupting fine on a popular periodical, as Moroccan human rights groups grow less enchanted by their king. Over the last two years, criminal charges against the media have increased significantly, causing some publications to close and leaving a number of journalists in jail for their writings. In addition, since 2008, the Moroccan government has begun to censor the Internet, arresting bloggers and satirists and temporarily suspending access to popular websites, such as YouTube. This article explores Morocco's obligations under international and domestic law relating to freedom of expression and examines some recent court cases involving the Moroccan media. (shrink)

Rodney G. Peffer argues that Karl Marx cannot be considered a utilitarian, a consequentialist, or a nonutilitarian consequentialist. Based on ethics of social consequences as one of the versions of nonutilitarian consequentialism, the author examines Marx’s early journalistic articles concerning the common good published mainly in the Rheinische Zeitung. The author verifies the hypothesis that Marx was a nonutilitarian consequentialist in the given period with regard to the common good. By examining Marx’s views on freedom of the press and (...) censorship, as well as his criticism of the feudal experiences of Prussia, the author came to the conclusion that Marx’s views expressed in early journalism are close to ethics of social consequences and thus to nonutilitarian consequentialism. (shrink)

Freedom of speech and of the press have long been central rights within democratic polities, but there is little agreement as to their content, scope or justification. These essays take up fundamental issues concerning freedom of communication in general, and some controversial areas as well.

In his latest book, Philip Pettit begins with the apt observation that analyses of freedom in the context of human agency and the free will problem are typically kept separate from discussions of that concept in the political realm. This he regards as an unfortunate departure from the classical view that the psychological freedom of the agent and the political freedom of the citizen are intimately connected. Indeed, the book is a sustained argument for replacing this dichotomy (...) with a single, comprehensive account of freedom as "fitness to be held responsible". Petitt argues that such an analysis is not only intuitively plausible but can be supported on coherentist grounds because, while our intuitions about freedom in each of the two spheres radically underdetermine an overall theory in that domain, "the combination of those sets of intuitions is capable of significantly constraining the choice of a single, unified theory of freedom". The central claim of this intricately argued book is that fitness to be held responsible is most plausibly equated with a conception of freedom that is at once psychological and social. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the articles submitted for the Symposium Confronting the Internet’s Dark Side. I discuss some of the criticisms of the book’s theory and my treatment of hate speech. The responsibilities of Internet Service Providers and Web-Hosting Services are in the fore, arguing that as they are the gatekeepers, they need to be proactive far more than they are now. This paper, like my book, strives to suggest an approach that harnesses the strengths and capabilities of the public (...) and the private sectors in offering practical solutions to pressing problems. (shrink)

The debate over press liberty before and during the pre-Revolutionary era (1763-1775) in America reveals how a once-unified, if rudimentary, tradition gave rise to two sophisticated and contrary doctrines, aspects of which continue to infuse current free speech discourse. The vague, republican and liberal discourse of the `free and open' press bifurcated as a result of the competing political and ideological forces involved in the pre-Revolutionary crisis. Through an examination of this historical debate over press liberty, this essay seeks to (...) recast two current scholarly debates . First, this study undermines the polarized debate over early American political thought and substantiates recent abstract attempts to demonstrate the complex relationship between republicanism and liberalism. Second, this interpretation uncovers a central dynamic in the development of the American tradition of press liberty, thus calling into question a wide variety of previous studies that ignore this crucial feature. (shrink)

Even the most ardent defenders of a legal right to freedom of the press are likely to regard this right as having limitations; but how precisely the right should be limited is a matter of considerable disagreement. This issue is at least partly moral in character: it concerns the moral acceptability of laws which regulate or protect the activities of members of the press. I propose here to address this moral issue, and to do so within the broader framework (...) of considering whether establishing a legal right to freedom of the press—regardless of how it might be limited—is justifiable on moral grounds. In pursuing this investigation, I will devote special attention to familiar claims about the relation between press rights on the one hand, and “the people's right to know” on the other. (shrink)

Freedom of expression is a fundamental part of living in a free and open society and, above all, a basic need of every human being and a requirement to attain happiness. Its absence has relevant consequences, not only for individuals but also for the whole social community. This might explain why freedom of expression was, along with other freedoms (conscience and religion; thought, belief, opinion, including that of the press and other media of communication; peaceful assembly; and association), (...) at the core of liberal constitutionalism, and constitutes, since the Second World War, an essential element of constitutional democracies. In a democracy, people should be allowed to express themselves to others freely. The paper, which is divided into five sections, points out that states are obliged to protect the exercise of that freedom not only because its very purpose is the common good and welfare of society but also because it is a requirement of any constitutional democracy. Otherwise, when people cannot express themselves, perhaps out of fear (not from ‘war’ but from different kinds of social pressure or ‘violence’ exerted by some lobbies, mass media, or governmental policies that are at odds with respect for the plurality of opinions), vulnerability arises. This weakens not only those individuals that are not allowed to express their thoughts but also those who do not dare to do it – or even not to think for themselves – under certain environmental pressures (exerted by states, international organizations, social media, or financial groups, lobbies, etc.). In the end, the decline of freedom of expression makes most people more vulnerable and jeopardizes the whole democratic system. (shrink)

Certain philosophers have argued in favour of recognising a right to freedom of conscience that includes a defeasible right of individuals to live in accordance with their perceived moral duties. This right requires the government to exempt people from general laws or regulations that prevent them from acting consistently with their perceived moral duties. The importance of protecting individuals’ integrity is sometimes invoked in favour of accommodating conscience. I argue that personal integrity is valuable since autonomy, identity and self-respect (...) are all dependent on the preservation of personal integrity. I respond to two objections, one pressed by Andrew Koppelman and the other by Richard Arneson, to the claim that personal integrity is valuable, and to a further argument by Arneson to the effect that it is unfair to others claiming accommodations to exempt those with conscience-based claims. (shrink)

Tracking the relationship between the theory of press control and the realities of practicing daily press censorship prior to publication, this volume on the suppression of dissent in early modern Europe tackles a topic with many elusive and under-researched characteristics. Pre-publication censorship was common in absolutist regimes in Catholic and Protestant countries alike, but how effective it was in practice remains open to debate. The Netherlands and England, where critical content segued into outright lampoonery, were unusual for hard-wired press freedoms (...) that arose, respectively, from a highly competitive publishing industry and highly decentralized political institutions. These nations remained extraordinary exceptions to a rule that, for example in France, did not end until the revolution of 1789. Here, the author’s European perspective provides a survey of the varying censorship regulations in European nations, as well as the shifting meanings of ‘freedom of the press’. The analysis opens up fascinating insights, afforded by careful reading of primary archival sources, into the reactions of censors confronted with manuscripts by authors seeking permission to publish. Tortarolo sets the opinions on censorship of well-known writers, including Voltaire and Montesquieu, alongside the commentary of anonymous censors, allowing us to revisit some common views of eighteenth-century history. How far did these writers, their reasoning stiffened by Enlightenment values, promote dissident views of absolutist monarchies in Europe, and what insights did governments gain from censors’ reports into the social tensions brewing under their rule? These questions will excite dedicated researchers, graduate students, and discerning lay readers alike. (shrink)

this paper argues that people are entitled to keep some true facts about themselves to themselves, should they so wish, as a sign of respect for their moral and political status, and in order to protect themselves from being used as a public example in order to educate or to entertain other people. The “outing” - or non-consensual public disclosure - of people’s health records or status, or their sexual behaviour or orientation is usually unjustified, even when its consequences seem (...) to be beneficial. Indeed, the paper claims, the reasons to reject outing, as inconsistent with democratic commitments to freedom and equality, are reasons to insist on the importance of privacy to freedom of expression. While a free press is of the utmost importance to democratic government, it is not identical with the free expression of individuals and, on occasion, the former may have to be constrained in order to protect the latter. [Barendt, 2007, 231]. Hence, the paper concludes, we should distinguish the claims of individuals to publish reports about their lives – even if this necessarily involves revealing the private lives of others – from journalistic claims to publish information about the sex lives of consenting adults. I will start by briefly situating my argument within a democratic approach to privacy, before using the “outing” of Oliver Sipple to examine people’s claims to privacy and their implications for freedom of expression and of the press. I will be assuming that some forms of privacy are legitimate, in order to focus more closely on the question of what information, if any, people may keep to themselves. (shrink)

The constitutional right to self-expression, used by societies professing democratic values (Constitution, Article 25), is a highly important feature for forming the political will of the citizenry. A broad, multi-sided public discussion on all issues of public interest is only possible with the existence of an appropriate amount of freedom of information. A strong mechanism for disseminating information that operates between citizens and the parliament is able to generate a sphere for discussion and mutual influence which are essential for (...) indirect democracy. A discussion’s depth, quality and comprehensiveness constitute important factors which determine the correctness of choices made by citizens and politicians. Mainly, it is the free press which fosters communication between political parties and citizens. The role of the “watchdog” is fundamental to revealing the circumstances under which politicians or other public persons make different political and administrative decisions. This is what permits the identification of motives for rulings and the circumstances under which they were approved. (shrink)

A Hegelian Liberal Theory of the Penal Law Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 219-224 DOI 10.1007/s11572-011-9119-8 Authors Alfonso Donoso, Pontificia Universidad Cat’olica de Chile, ICP, Santiago, Chile Journal Criminal Law and Philosophy Online ISSN 1871-9805 Print ISSN 1871-9791 Journal Volume Volume 5 Journal Issue Volume 5, Number 2.

Appearing in the “Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam” as an undefined referent for the limits on freedom of expression in Islam, Shariah is still to be chased as an indefinable referent which restricts freedom of the expression in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran’s Press Law as well as Constitution unveil Shariah’s referent to be a person: the Jurist-Ruler around whom a cult of personality is legalized in terms of “Imamate” and around whom all the limits (...) on freedom of expression revolve. Interpretation of Shariah is not a solution but part of the problem in Iran. Such problem can be dealt in terms of three modes of self-expression which were invented by the Iranian Reformists to avoid self-censorship. The notion of master-signifier can be the key to unraveling the problem of self-referentiality in freedom of expression and its Reformist solution in Iran’s legal system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Early Critics on Freedom of the Will ed. by Jörg Noller and John WalshDai HeideJörg Noller and John Walsh, editors. Kant’s Early Critics on Freedom of the Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xlvii + 297. Hardback, $105.00; paperback, $32.99.This volume collects new (and in many instances the first) English translations of eighteen works—by Johann Fichte, Salomon Maimon, Karl Reinhold, August Heydenreich, and Hermann (...) Pistorius, among others—that engage with Kant’s critical theory of freedom as it is encountered in his three Critiques and other writings from the late 1780s and early 1790s. The essays were written between 1786 and 1800. Noller and Walsh open the volume with a thorough and penetrating introduction to Kant’s historical context, Kant’s theory of freedom, and the newly translated essays themselves. Given how central Kant’s theory of freedom is to every aspect of his systematic philosophy, and how intensely scholars have focused upon it in recent decades, this volume is a welcome addition to the existing literature. Not only is it important to have these essays translated into English, but it is also helpful to have them collected in a single volume. This volume will thus be an invaluable resource, and not merely for English-speaking scholars of Kant. For considerations of space, I cannot discuss every essay in the volume. Instead, I emphasize those contributions that strike me as especially noteworthy or relevant to contemporary discussion.The standout of the first group of essays, on “Freedom and Determinism,” is the contribution by Hermann Andreas Pistorius (1730–98), which reinforces his status as one of Kant’s most trenchant Leibnizian critics. Pistorius subjects Kant’s account of “the concept of freedom itself, its origin, its content, and its objective validity” to a withering critique, contending that this is “the most obscure aspect of his system” (5). Pistorius raises the now familiar worry that Kant’s relegation of transcendental freedom to things in themselves violates his own epistemic strictures. He goes on to argue that even if this worry can be evaded, we must “assume that the human being’s actually free actions (which likewise are things in themselves) appear as necessary to him, as a thing in itself ” (8). In other words, our representations of deterministic sequences are representations of things in themselves “obscured and distorted by the fog of sensibility,” which renders Kant’s philosophy ultimately a version of “the Leibnizian idealism which the author so strongly rejects” (8). Also of note here is the set of careful objections by Johann August Heinrich Ulrich (1746–1813) to the notion of timeless agency that appears to be required for Kant’s account of transcendental freedom, an issue that remains alive and well in contemporary discussions of transcendental freedom.The section on “Freedom and Imputability” begins with two contributions by Carl Christian Erhard Schmid (1762–1812), who contends that only morally good actions are imputable, a claim he takes to be grounded in the doctrine of intelligible fatalism: “the [End Page 669] assertion of the natural necessity of all actions of a rational being according to laws of the causality of things in themselves” (78). Johann Christoph Schwab (1743–1821) responds directly to Schmid’s intelligible fatalism in two essays published in the Philosophisches Archiv. The first essay criticizes Schmid’s endorsement of Kant’s appeal to “a supersensible I in addition to the empirical I” (84, emphasis in original). He contends that this requires Schmid “to attribute predicates to the rational I that elevate it to the rank of the deity” (86). In the second essay, Schwab responds directly to Schmid’s intelligible fatalism, arguing that intelligible fatalism is not superior to ordinary determinism. He concludes by speculating that Schmid’s intelligible fatalism is “at bottom identical with Leibnizian-Wolffian determinism” (91). This section of the book concludes with the attack moved by Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823) against intelligible fatalism, which Reinhold sees as incompatible with fundamental aspects of the critical philosophy.Each of the essays in the third section, on “Freedom and Consciousness,” takes up Kant’s discussion of the “fact of reason” in his... (shrink)

Freedom of association holds an uneasy place in the pantheon of liberal freedoms. Whereas freedom of association and the abundant plurality of groups that accompany it have been embraced by modern and contemporary liberals, this was not always the case. Unlike more canonical freedoms of speech, press, property, petition, assembly, and religious conscience, the freedom of association was rarely extolled by classical liberal thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Indeed Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Adam Smith, and (...) others seem to have regarded freedom of association with some trepidation because of the violent, irrational, and factional behavior of groups. This chapter illuminates these anti-associational assumptions in the writings of James Madison. Although Madison famously deplored political associations as sources of faction and civil dissension, he differed from other members of the Founding generation in his willingness to defend associational freedom. Madison's writings also shed light on the unenumerated status of the freedom of association in American constitutional law. (shrink)

Must privacy and freedom of expression conflict? To witness recent debates in Britain, you might think so. Anything other than self-regulation by the press is met by howls of anguish from journalists across the political spectrum, to the effect that efforts to protect people’s privacy will threaten press freedom, promote self-censorship and prevent the press from fulfilling its vital function of informing the public and keeping a watchful eye on the activities and antics of the powerful.[Brown, 2009, 13 (...) January]1 Effective protections for privacy, from such a perspective, inevitably pose a threat to democratic government via the constraints that they place on the press. Such concerns with privacy must be taken seriously by anyone who cares about democratic government, and the freedom, equality and wellbeing of individuals. But if it is one thing to say that privacy and freedom of expression cannot always be fully protected, it is another to suppose that protections for the one must always come at the expense of the other. After all, the economics of contemporary politics and journalism would seem to be partly responsible for our difficulties in protecting personal privacy while sustaining robust and informative forms of public discourse. [Moore, 2010, 10 -141]2 Most newspapers are loss-making businesses and the need to reduce those losses and, if possible, to turn a profit, make investigative journalism an increasingly expensive proposition as compared to both “comment” and more or less elevated forms of gossip. At the same time, politics has increasingly become the prerogative of a narrow group of people with access to the large sums of money necessary successfully to compete for high office. In those circumstances, the need for critical scrutiny is as important as it is difficult. Revising our ideas about privacy and its protection cannot alone reduce the tensions between freedom of expression and personal privacy typical of our societies, necessary though such revision may be. Moreover, this paper can only touch on some aspects of the ways in which we need to rethink our interests in privacy, in order adequately to reflect people’s diverse interests in freedom of expression, and the important role of a free press to democratic government. Nonetheless, I hope to suggest ways of thinking about people’s claims to privacy which can be generalised fairly readily, and can help us to think constructively about the nature, causes and solutions to some important social and political problems, even if, in its nature, philosophical analysis rarely tells us what to do. More specifically, this paper argues that people are entitled to keep some true facts about themselves to themselves, should they so wish, as a sign of respect for their moral and political status, and in order to protect themselves from being used as a public example in order to educate or to entertain other people. The “outing” - or non-consensual public disclosure - of people’s health records or status, or their sexual behaviour or orientation is usually unjustified, even when its consequences seem to be beneficial. Indeed, the paper claims, the reasons to reject outing, as inconsistent with democratic commitments to freedom and equality, are reasons to insist on the importance of privacy to freedom of expression. While a free press is of the utmost importance to democratic government, it is not identical with the free expression of individuals and, on occasion, the former may have to be constrained in order to protect the latter. [Barendt, 2007, 231]. Hence, the paper concludes, we should distinguish the claims of individuals to publish reports about their lives – even if this necessarily involves revealing the private lives of others – from journalistic claims to publish information about the sex lives of consenting adults. I will start by briefly situating my argument within a democratic approach to privacy, before using the “outing” of Oliver Sipple to examine people’s claims to privacy and their implications for freedom of expression and of the press. I will be assuming that some forms of privacy are legitimate, in order to focus more closely on the question of what information, if any, people may keep to themselves. (shrink)