ACLU Says Innovative New Website on American Politics Is a Boon for Voters, Online Free Speech

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON — Opening the Internet to political speech from all points of view, a new website launched today provides voters free access to short video clips of presidential candidates, political parties, and America’s leading issue groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ira Glasser, Executive Director of ACLU and a member of the Advisory Council for the new site, FreedomChannel.com, said the project highlighted the importance of the ACLU’s work to preserve free speech online.

“FreedomChannel.com is exactly the kind of initiative the ACLU anticipated when it went all the way to the Supreme Court to preserve an Internet free of government censorship,” Glasser said.

In doing so, he added, the Court recognized the tremendous speech-enhancing qualities of cyberspace, declaring in its landmark 1997 ruling that “government regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it.”

The site offers each candidate for President, as well as the parties and issue groups, 90 seconds to make their case on a specific issue, ranging from health care to affirmative action to moral values.

For the launch of the site, Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU, recorded eight video clips on the following subjects*:

• Moral Values

• Internet filtering

• Reproductive Freedom

• Racial Profiling

• Drug Legalization

• Campaign Finance Reform

• Affirmative Action

• School Vouchers

The ACLU said it expected to contribute more video messages from Strossen and other ACLU leaders in the future. Users can view the message in three ways: video, audio or read a transcript.

FreedomChannel.com is a non partisan, nonprofit site that does not take advertising of any kind. Under an agreement with Yahoo! Inc., the videos will also be distributed on Yahoo! Politics at http://politics.yahoo.com

*Please Note: Many browsers already contain the plug-in necessary to view the videos. If you are having trouble, make sure you’ve downloaded a copy of RealPlayer G2?