Filming of a Law & Order SVU episode about Occupy Wall Street was disrupted Thursday (December 8th) by over 100 OWS demonstrators who objected to the show “profiting” from their protest movement, and calling it “insulting.” About 100 police officers were called in to keep order, but just after midnight, there was an announcement that the City of New York had rescinded L&O’s filming permit.
Let’s consider the precedent: if a group of people doesn’t like the content of a television program or movie, and they get enough people together to disrupt the production, the municipality, even after granting the permit to film, will rescind it. That could pretty much mean the end of on-location filming for any television program or movie if all municipalities are equally spineless (and some programs and movies need to film on-location). If Law & Order wants to do an episode that references Fred Phelps, well, we all know how easily he can get 100 protesters together. One hundred women think that Pan Am is sexist? Shut ‘em down. One hundred pro-life advocates don’t like what they see as a show’s pro-choice agenda — or vice versa? Gone. Any hundred people can be more powerful than Nielsen families.
Let’s call this what it is: OWS acted like a thuggish mob, and the City of New York acted like spineless wimps.
Let me phrase the question a slightly different way: How much money should NYC have spent on police operations to protect the production of L&O SVU?
Media producers pay a fee to use public locations (that fee covers the fact that during production, public access is limited or even precluded). Why should the city (or whatever government unit is involved) subsidize the production by providing security services? To the extent that such costs are incurred, they should be charged to the production company, and if there aren’t enough “spare” police officers to ensure safety, then the production should not continue on location.
How much money should the police spend to protect anybody who’s going about a legal business and is being harassed?
The idea that other people’s negative reaction to your speech should be used to condition whether you get to speak is known as the “heckler’s veto” argument, and for the reasons that Bill gives, is generally regarded as a poor reason to restrict speech or disallow activities, both by academic free speech analysis, and Supreme Court precedent. In fact, if NYC’s decision is based on the reasons you give, it is most likely unconstitutional under current case law.
One might similarly ask if the (non-)World Trade Center (non-)mosque should be allowed to be built, or charged extra fees, given the likelihood that it will probably require additional police protection to deal with threats from right-wing lunatics.
You’re looking at the wrong part of the equation. NYC’s permit process (whatever it is) is not at all about speech… it is about permission to exclude others from public spaces.
Most movies and television is made in studios or on studio lots because the studio can control access 100% as the property owner… they can (and most assuredly do) exclude people who might disrupt production, whether intentionally or unintentionally. When they want to shoot on location, they either obtain permission or more likely, pay to obtain permission from the lawful property owner, and thereby again gain the right to exclude people from the location. But when they want to use public spaces, the authority to exclude people is murky, at best… to what extent does a film permit allow the production company/studio to eject people who are otherwise lawfully using public property? To, say, exercise THEIR free speech rights?
(Note: Based on what I know, which is limited, I don’t support the OWS activists on this… but if the city is faced with any reasonable likelihood of riot, the most responsible thing to do is to defuse the riot)
The reasons you give are all excellent reasons that a city can have content-neutral rules or fees on filming in public areas. They are not good reasons that for a city to have content-based rules or fees on filming in public areas. A city could constitutionally refuse anyone the right to film in public areas, but once they allow some the right to film, they have a moral obligation, as well as a constitutional obligation, to not exclude certain speakers based on the content of their speech. (Similarly, having a march in public areas excludes others from using those areas during the time of the march, which allows the city to regulate the march, but that doesn’t necessarily allow content-based rules for the march.) A rule that bars certain speakers, or imposes greater costs on them, based on the “heckler’s veto,” is a content-based restriction since it imposes higher costs on speakers of unpopular views, and thus needs to passs strict scrutiny. The desire to avoid additional police costs, while understandable, is not a compelling state interest, and such a rule thus fails strict scrutiny.
In both of your comments you’re justifying the general ability to regulate film production, but what you actually need to justify is the content-based differentiation of the regulation.
I’m not justifying content-based regulation because that’s not what happened here. It would have been content-based if the city had refused the permit initially, which they did not. In fact, as best as I can tell, the city did in fact provide a large number of police officers at the scene. When those officers were unable to provide order (and presumably, would not have been able to maintain order without having to call out enough officers to strain the law-enforcement in other parts of the city.) The city’s response is not to the content of the production (they’d love to have SVU continue to film in NYC, despite the fact that it highlights the number of sex offenses committed within the city!). Rather, the city responded to the results of the production. I’m reasonably certain that the producers have many, many film permits in the pipeline, which have not been suspended and will be issued in due course. It may or may not have been spineless for the city to revoke this particular permit, but I don’t buy that it’s censorship.
It troubles me not at all that it costs more to provide physical security for “offensive” speech than for “non-offensive” speech… the Constitution provides a right to speak freely without consequences from the government; it does not provide a right to speak freely without consequences at all.
I’m restricting myself to the legal issue under current precedent, as Bill has already covered the normative issue much better than I would have, and without recourse to free speech issues, in his one sentence comment of 12:47.
Your observations as to NYC’s motivations, while (presumably) correct, go to show that the city is viewpoint neutral towards L&O SVU, not that it’s content neutral. Under the justification you propose, the city will deny permits based on the reaction of third parties to speech, and this burden will fall more heavily on unpopular speech. Such a rule may not “trouble [you] at all,” but it’s certainly not content neutral, as that term is currently legally define, and thus requires passing strict scrutiny.
I still don’t see a free-speech issue, I see only police-power and property-law issues.
If the city were denying permits based on what they were afraid they would see, maybe. But when the city reacts to what is actually happening, they’re not reacting to the content at all. In fact, they aren’t restricting the SVU producers from telling the exact same story… they’re restricting the SVU producers from doing it a specific way (by shooting in public spaces). If the SVU producers want to, they can rent a private space and create the exact same scene with paid actors. I still don’t see any censorship, and I don’t see anyone’s rights being infringed. (In fact, if anything, allowing a film crew to exclude people from a public space seems more likely to produce a free speech violation than does denying one… as the person speaking in a public space is denied a forum.)
Filming of a Law & Order SVU episode about Occupy Wall Street was disrupted Thursday (December 8 ) by over 100 OWS demonstrators who objected to the show “profiting” from their protest movement, and calling it “insulting.”
(First of all, your 8 and parenthesis got converted into a smiley.)
Here’s some more questions: Since when does Hollywood care what 100 people think? Last time I checked, that’s small potatoes compared with the viewing audience.
How exactly did they “disrupt” the shooting? Did they throw urine-filled water bottles at them? Did they shout protests when the camera ran?
And 100 police officers for 100 people? That means everyone got their own cop.
There’s more — and less — to the story here.
Maybe the “occupiers” that rushed the stage were fake as well; is this all some big publicity gimmick for L&O?
Proginoskes, Hollywood doesn’t care what 100 people think: but those 100 people nonetheless have the power to shut down production if the city doesn’t accept their responsibility to provide, well, law and order.
In answer to your other question, the occupiers kept attempting to “occupy” the area where filming was supposed to take place. Geometry being what it is, it took what seems like an excessive number of police officers to create a secure perimeter.
If there’s one thing more annoying than auto-correct, it’s auto-smiley.
It is relatively easy to disrupt film and television production; the cast and crew will routinely disrupt it themselves by accident even when operating in a tightly controlled environment (i.e., inside the studio).
A group of people dead-set on disrupting production can probably do so consistently if the shoot is on location in a public place. They really can’t if the production is in a studio.
by over 100 OWS demonstrators who objected to the show “profiting” from their protest movement,
So, wait. People who are protesting the guys with the big bucks not sharing their money by, say, employing the unemployed, were upset because the guys with the big bucks wanted to use them as unpaid extras?
If that’s the case, I’m glad the shooting got shut down.
No, L&O wanted to do a story related to OWS, and some OWS protestors objected to the commercialization of their cause.
As noted above, the permit process is in place to balance the needs of film and TV producers (who don’t want anyone in view of the camera who isn’t supposed to be) and the general public (who want to use public streets and public parks normally without being told they’re off-limits). At a certain point, the city is well within its rights to say “This filming of yours is causing a disruption, and we can’t spare hundreds of officers to provide security for your filming. We’re shutting it down.”
They should be glad the police don’t work the same way the fire department does… at a certain point, they realize that no matter what they do, they can’t save a particular structure, so they do their best to make sure there are no more live people inside, then move their efforts to protecting the other, nearby structures.
Replying to James@3:53 PM:
All the points that you make I’ve already addressed before. You’re confusing content-based and viewpoint-based. Whether the city is reacting to what they’re afraid might happen or what’s actually happening is irrelevant to the issue of whether the rule you propose is content-based. A rule that results in greater costs or barriers for speakers of unpopular views (such as those that attract angry mobs) isn’t content neutral, regardless of whether or not the city has imposed those rules with the intent of discriminating against a specific viewpoint. That’s how content neutral is defined under the law, whether or not you see this as a free-speech issue or not. The fact that the city rationally and correctly perceives that those unpopular positions will require additional police protection goes only to whether they have a compelling interest for their content-based rules, not to whether the rule itself is content neutral.
To readdress another point that I’ve already addressed: Yes, allowing filming excludes other people from using the space, and that could justify a general rule that disallowed all filming. But it’s the fact that filming of some sorts are allowed, and filming of other sorts that are disallowed that’s problematic, and the fact that filming excludes other from using the space is manifestly irrlevant to justifying that, because L&O SVU and other film crews in public areas equally exclude others from using the space. The same goes for your argument that L&O is free to film somewhere else – that’s true of any film production. If these were valid arguments, they would justify cities differentially banning marches and rallies on any viewpoint- or content- based grounds whatsoever. Your need to supply justifications that differentiate L&O SVU and for other film crews, and these don’t. The only justification that you’ve provided that differentiates L&O SVU and other film crews is the additional police protection argument, and as I’ve already pointed out, that justification results in a rule fails to be content neutral.
So, if a person creates a hazard by inciting to riot in a public space, and the city reacts by closing the public space and dispersing the crowd (including the speaker who created the riot condition in the first place), the city is in the wrong (i.e., violating the first and 14th amendments.)?
No, since “inciting to riot” is illegal, and not protected by the First Amendment. But that’s not really relevant here, since you incite a riot by urging people to riot, not by saying things which make people opposed to you angry, even if they might get so angry that they riot.
Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement is precisely on point here as to the question of whether your restrictions based on costs associated with hostile responses are content neutral:
If the OWS people felt that they were being made fun of or defamed, then they should be able to protest.
Suppose, hypothetically, that L&O:SVU did a story about ugly, money-grubbing Jews who kidnap and rape young Catholic girls. Would the Anti-Defamation League stepping in and insisting the episode be cancelled, be considered a violation of the First Amendment? (Yes, I know the ADL has lawyers, but OWS doesn’t, and they would have had no other recourse.)