Live Blog: “The Media’s Right to Offend: Exploring the Legal and Ethical Limits on Free Speech”

Hate speech. Offensive speech. Free speech. Where do we draw the line? Where should we draw the line?

J-Source contributors Elizabeth McMillan and Cigdem Iltan are live blogging this one-day symposium.

When: Saturday, November 1, 2008, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Where: University of King’s College, Halifax

Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente will give the keynote address. For a list of panelists and our bloggers’ bios, scroll down below the live blog.

Scheduled panelists:

• Stephen Ward, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, director, Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s Freedom of Expression Project
• Ezra Levant, lawyer and former publisher, the Western Standard
• Kelly Toughill, associate professor of journalism at King’s and Toronto Star columnist
• Wayne MacKay, Dalhousie Law School professor and expert in constitutional and human rights law
• John Miller, associate chair, Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto
• David Swick, lecturer on journalism ethics at King’s

Blogger bios:

Elizabeth McMillan is a journalism student at the University of King’s College in Halifax.  She is former editor of the campus paper, The Xaverian Weekly, at St. Francis Xavier University. While working with a local women’s rights organization in Accra, Ghana in 2007, she blogged from internet cafes across the country.

Cigdem Iltan is a journalism student at the University of King’s College. She is a former writer and news editor at the student paper, The Gazette, at the University of Western Ontario and currently writes freelance for Scene magazine.