22 December 2004
Wednesday 22 December 2004 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
Philip Dodd and guests ask whether the internet is a genuinely democratic outlet for free speech, and explore how it is quickly becoming in the 21st century the battleground for control and cultural domination.
Programme Details
Philip Dodd and guests look back over a year during which a war abroad in the name of freedom has perhaps prompted a threat to civil liberties and free speech at home. New bills going through parliament will add further controls on the movement and use of information, identity cards are now being planned, and legislation regarding our use of language in all walks of life sets out to make religious incitement a criminal offence. Newspapers, radio and television are becoming increasingly sensitive to what can and cannot be said and there is a new element of self-censorship in media activity.
In tonight's Night Waves:Undercurrents Philip Dodd explores the current state of our personal liberty and asks whether we feel more or less free than a year ago. Is our basic freedom of speech really under threat at present? And is any curbing of our freedoms of speech a fair trade off to exist in a safer and more controlled society? The programme also explores the internet as another area of vibrant free speech which governments around the world are keen to curb. Is the internet really such a bastion of democratic free speech and significant new journalism o merely a chaotic illusion of freedom?
Philip Dodd is joined by the writer Sadie Plant, Professor of English Jonathan Sawday, the Times columnist and prospective Conservative MP Michael Gove, and, from Florida, the American writer and political commentator Diane Roberts.
Night Waves: Undercurrents, this Wednesday night at the slightly later time of 9.40pm BBC Radio 3.
