A special UN Tribunal has convicted three Rwandian media executives of genocide for publishing the stories that helped generate a massacre of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority. Atrios adds a one-word commentary: Good!
I tend to agree. But I’m waiting for all the defenders of freedom of the press who were upset when the IRC shut down al-Arabiya for helping Saddam Hussein incite murder in Iraq why this case was different. If you can punish “speech” as murder afterwards, why can’t you stop it at the time?
Update Juan non-Volokh thinks the convictions were “richly deserved,” but worries — reasonably, I think — about the risk that the precedent set in this case might be extended to what he calls “less stark” cases.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
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