(Volokh Conspiracy) – Philadelphia magazine published an article called Being White in Philly, with the subtitle, “Whites, race, class, and the things that never get said.” Apparently the Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, thinks there’s not even a constitutional right to say those things; in a letter to the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission, the mayor argues,
While I fully recognize that constitutional protections afforded the press are intended to protect the media from censorship by the government, the First Amendment, like other constitutional rights, is not an unfettered right, and notwithstanding the First Amendment, a publisher has a duty to the public to exercise its role in a responsible way. I ask the Commission to evaluate whether the “speech” employed in this essay is not the reckless equivalent of “shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater,” its prejudiced, fact-challenged generalizations an incitement to extreme reaction.
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