Free speech covers all speech

By Bac To Trong
Photographer
The Wausau (Wis.) Daily Herald

Posted: June 6, 2003

I’ve learned a lot about my feelings about free speech in my first year at The Wausau Daily Herald. Several recent incidents have made me take a closer look at the rights and responsibilities behind free speech.

Bac To Trong

In one incident, several members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., came to Wausau to protest the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County’s production of "The Laramie Project," the story of Matthew Shepard’s death.

Members came to Wausau to protest not only the school but the community’s police department and six churches that they said were "friendly" to gays.

Whether I agreed with either side was not the issue; I had to cover these people. Going into the photo assignment, I knew that the church members had a right to say what they had planned to say. But as I covered them and noticed their inflammatory behavior and name-calling, I asked myself if I really thought that they had the same right to free speech as I did.

These people angered me and others around me. But I had to remind myself that the First Amendment covers their speech as well as mine, no matter what I might think of their speech.

Local anti-war protests are a second example. Every weekend there are groups of people, including students, who peacefully protest the war in Iraq.

These people are not inflammatory. They are rather quiet and, for the most part, don’t make those around them angry. That is, until recently.

The most recent protesters chose to wave tattered American flags upside down. For many in the community, this was simply too much. There were screams from car windows. Some screams were unintelligible; some were quite clear. Some were encouraging; most were not. A few citizens stopped to talk with the protesters. Some argued with them.

I had to remind myself that their use of the American flag for political protest is protected. It is equally as protected as my right to be there taking pictures of them.

These two lessons were difficult. I knew the law and had to keep my feelings in check.

Bac To Trong was a Summer 2001 Scholar at The Wausau Daily Herald, where he now is a photographer and an ASNE/APME Scholar.

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