Private Property vs. Freedom of Speech

Op-Ed

The ideal case in the interaction between private property and freedom of speech is their unison. I think America is the epitome of that harmony: freedom of speech is one of the greatest achievements of our time and it is firmly and perennially guaranteed to be kept up by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The tricky part of the deal though is that America knows exactly the measures and boundaries of free speech, never shoving it into disagreement with the value, called private property, which is just as important an accomplishment of the civilized part of Mankind.

We in Georgia have heard and learnt all that could be perceived about democracy and freedom of speech, but I think we have misconceived the phenomenon of private property. At least, this is the impression one gets based on what we are witnessing in the latest and the bulkiest cause celebre about one of the Georgian TV stations under the name of Rustavi-2.

I have lived under the bright skies of the Free World for many long years and I have personally tasted both the sweetness of freedom of speech and the greatness of private property, garnished with a solid sense of human responsibility for both. Once in America, when I, the soviet citizen, saw for the first time in my entire life a sign saying, ‘No Trespassing’, I was shocked, and I certainly asked the colleague accompanying me what the sign was all about. She smiled at me generously, although a little sarcastically, and gave me an immediate heads-up not to step on the land which belonged to somebody else, or else . . . Yes, in the West in general and in our beloved America in particular, private property is what capitalism firmly stands on and is valued very highly not only as a material but a moral category too. This said, I would like to ask a question: if Rustavi-2 TV station is private property – and it sure is – why should somebody have the temerity to trespass the rights of its owner to do with his private property whatever he desires to, only, within the limits of the jurisdiction of the currently functioning law in the country?

Following the final court ruling after the procrastinated legal litigations here in Georgia and there in Europe on the subject of the television’s ownership, the manager, appointed by the owner of the station, comes to his job to attend to business as usual and all of a sudden is surrounded by the excited staff of that station with a visibly brash attitude, demanding from him guarantees for the safety of their jobs and the intactness of their editorial policy. Question: Why do they have the right to dictate their conditions of work and journalistic behavior to the owner of the company? I understand that freedom of speech is holy and democracy sacred, but how about private property and the freedom of the owner to dispose of his own property at his own discretion?

I will never understand the flagrantly dubious declaration of some of the brave big-mouthed public figures that Rustavi-2 belongs to the people of Georgia. No, it does not! It belongs to the owner of the station. Period! The belonging of a mass medium to people is an egregiously romanticized symbolic socialist liberal stance which has nothing to do with the reality of a purely capitalistic life-style, which we fought for here with all our blood and conscience thirty years ago. Finally, the cherished capitalism is here, and now we want to defy its most significant rule of thumb – respect for private property! I am not diminishing the significance of freedom of speech but at the same time I have no desire to reduce the importance of private property in our lives.

Journalists who are impetuous and rash enough to stick their demands right into the sensitive nose of the station’s owner and his manager are certainly the promoters and fulfillers of freedom of speech but they are, in the first place, the hired personnel of the property owner. If I were in his shoes, I would fire anybody without any second thought who dares to say anything against my business intentions, based on my right of ownership. The morale: long live freedom of speech, but my property is what I rely on, and please be generous enough not to touch it!

By Nugzar B. Ruhadze