First Amendment

The public square is for everyone

The public square is for everyone

Kevin P. Martin

Recent advances in communications technology have made it easier than ever for speakers to spread their messages and for listeners to find the content they are after. I emailed the final draft of this column to the NewBostonPost yesterday, and today it might be read by someone on the opposite side of the world on a smartphone.

Those same technological advances have, paradoxically, made it easier than ever to ignore unwelcome speech. The half dozen television channels of my youth have been multiplied a hundredfold, and television itself is increasingly irrelevant in light of internet media. There is a dedicated content provider for every point of view. The Right watches Fox News, the Left has CNN or MSNBC. Even within the broader political labels, the media is extraordinarily differentiated: Depending upon one's precise views, a liberal reader might focus her attention on the New Yorker (limousine liberals), the Nation (quasi-socialists), or Mother Jones (blame-America-firsters).

FBI shifts focus to terrorism in California massacre
crime

FBI shifts focus to terrorism in California massacre

Associated Press

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — The FBI announced Friday that it is investigating the mass shooting at a Southern California office party as an act of terrorism, but the agency's director said there is no indication that the slain husband and wife who killed 14 and wounded more than 20 were part of a larger plot or members of a terror cell.

While authorities did not cite specific evidence that led them to the terrorism focus, a U.S. law enforcement official revealed that the wife, Tashfeen Malik, had under a Facebook alias pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and its leader. A Facebook official said Malik praised Islamic State in a post at 11 a.m. local time Wednesday, when the couple were believed to have stormed a San Bernardino social service center and opened fire.

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