{"id":83581,"date":"2021-01-26T17:05:21","date_gmt":"2021-01-26T15:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=83581"},"modified":"2021-01-26T08:53:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T06:53:00","slug":"02-05-60","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=83581","title":{"rendered":"Journalists Mobilize Against Free Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"center alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.reunion68.com\/Biuletyn\/img\/tablet-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"35%\"><\/a><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #000080;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #000080; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/sections\/news\/articles\/jounalists-against-free-speech\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Journalists Mobilize Against Free Speech<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>ARMIN ROSEN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\">\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\">A new generation of media crusaders clamors for government control over what you see, hear, and read\u2014and for banning their competition<\/h4>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/1183c60f6d1f34ec1f321767e38bb853a9649914-1540x2048.jpg?w=1250&amp;q=70&amp;auto=format&amp;dpr=1\" width=\"100%\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>Tablet Magazine<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">American journalism once thought of itself as being inherently and institutionally pro free speech. Visitors to the Newseum, the media industry\u2019s temple of self-glorification on Constitution Avenue in Washington, were once greeted with the First Amendment inscribed across 74 vertical feet of lofty marble. The Newseum has been closed since late 2019, its operators having discovered the hard way that the public doesn\u2019t share the media\u2019s heroic level of regard for itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The museum was an anachronism in more ways than one: The idea that journalists themselves look upon the constitutional right to free expression with quasi-religious awe is nearly as quaint as the idea the media could be the basis for a major D.C. tourist attraction. A publicly beloved press that earnestly believes in free speech now feels like it belongs to some fictive era of good feelings. These days, the American public&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-9069-e26b21c283a9.html\">distrusts the media<\/a>&nbsp;more than it ever has.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Confronted with this crisis of legitimacy, today\u2019s corporate media increasingly advances ideas that would delight would-be power trippers of any party\u2014like establishing novel forms of government control over what you can see, read, and hear and identifying people with a broad range of unpopular or unapproved views as domestic terrorists. Public discourse is now a \u201cconflict space\u201d with social media serving as an \u201cinformation warzone,\u201d the public intellectual Peter W. Singer&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.defenseone.com\/ideas\/2021\/01\/superspreader-down-how-trumps-exile-social-media-alters-future-politics-security-and-public-health\/171295\/\">declared<\/a>&nbsp;in an essay published a few days after the alternately scary and farcical Trump riot on Capitol Hill, seamlessly adapting a framework of state-level physical violence to a discussion of constitutionally protected speech.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In recent years the United States has seen more severe acts of political violence and deadlier riots than the events at the Capitol\u2014but American guarantees of free speech apparently should not survive the shocking image of Nancy Pelosi\u2019s office being ransacked. The notion that free expression is sedition\u2019s handmaiden or that the prevention of treason should be a higher goal than the open exchange or exposure of allegedly dangerous arguments are not controversial views anymore; they pop up frequently, among putatively liberal-minded commentators in&nbsp;<em>The<\/em>&nbsp;<em>Washington Post<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>The New York Times<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Media skepticism toward free expression actually began long before the Capitol riot \u2013 and before Trump was elected.&nbsp;<em>The<\/em>&nbsp;<em>New Yorker<\/em>\u2019s Kalefa Sanneh anticipated the rising ambivalence toward the existing First Amendment regime when he likened \u201cspeech nuts\u201d to \u201cgun nuts\u201d in a 2015&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2015\/08\/10\/the-hell-you-say\">essay<\/a>. Today, support for the mainstream American free speech norms of earlier, less-Trump-addled times is increasingly cast as a kind of sinister eccentricity, as when Slate&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/news-and-politics\/2021\/01\/republicans-impeachment-speeches-first-amendment.html\">declared<\/a>&nbsp;in the days after the Capitol assault that \u201cWe have come to a moment in which one half of the country is fighting to be free of crippling, life-ending acts of stochastic terror, while another half of the same country is chillingly preoccupied with their right to just talk shit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">How chilling, to be preoccupied with one\u2019s individual rights\u2014or at least to not understand that the legitimacy of one\u2019s constitutionally guaranteed freedoms depends on the \u201cmoment\u201d that \u201cwe\u201d might be \u201cin.\u201d Sanneh wasn\u2019t quite so sneering, and in the end he predicted that custom would override any late-breaking sense of national emergency: \u201cPerhaps America\u2019s First Amendment, like the Second, is ultimately a matter of national preference,\u201d he mused. In any case, Sanneh wasn\u2019t calling for anyone to suffer criminal penalties for protected speech.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Sanneh\u2019s seeming lack of enthusiasm for fining or jailing people who disagree with him is getting less common among members of a media class determined to show that \u201cenemies of the state\u201d are its enemies, too. In a 2019&nbsp;<em>Washington Post<\/em>&nbsp;opinion piece, Richard Stengel, the former managing editor of&nbsp;<em>Time<\/em>&nbsp;magazine and co-author of&nbsp;<em>The Long Walk to Freedom<\/em>, Nelson Mandela\u2019s now-classic autobiography,&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2019\/10\/29\/why-america-needs-hate-speech-law\/\">argued<\/a>&nbsp;that the U.S. was in need of hate speech laws, contending that \u201cthe First Amendment &#8230; should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another.\u201d As the Biden administration\u2019s&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2020\/11\/25\/biden-transition-meets-with-former-media-agency-leaders-ousted-by-trump-appointee.html\">transition team leader<\/a>&nbsp;for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, he will no doubt find plenty of support for his vision for state-regulated speech among a long list of regimes that journalists once professed to abhor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Here\u2019s a look at other outlets and media figures who have gone into hall monitor mode, revealing themselves to be skeptics of the very system of law and custom that enables their profession to exist in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:&nbsp;<\/strong>\u201cIt\u2019s time for this question to be front and center: Should Fox News be allowed to exist?,\u201d the author, MSNBC talking head, New York University journalism professor, and former&nbsp;<em>New York Times<\/em>&nbsp;writer, Vice talk-show host, and Aspen Institute fellow recently&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AnandWrites\/status\/1352601886780698624\">tweeted<\/a>. \u201cBrain-mashing as a business model shouldn\u2019t be legal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">He&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AnandWrites\/status\/1352603202672324615\">continued<\/a>: \u201cI\u2019m not a lawyer, but I don\u2019t understand why you\u2019re not allowed to manufacture bucatini that doesn\u2019t have a certain threshold of iron in it but you can broadcast brain-mashing falsehoods and goad people toward terrorism.\u201d Shocking that Giridharadas is still permitted to roam free, given how \u201cbrain-mashing\u201d I consider this entire line of reasoning to be (the Bill of Rights lacks a pasta standards amendment, for starters). But there\u2019s an inherent arrogance, perhaps even an optimism, to pro-censorship arguments. No one ever expects their self-invented standards to be turned back against them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>STEVE COLL:<\/strong>&nbsp;There are few figures who can speak as a kind of one-person voice of all institutional journalism, but if the two-time Pulitzer winning dean of Columbia Journalism School can\u2019t do it then no one can. It is a jarring development when someone in Coll\u2019s rarefied position wonders whether this whole freedom of speech thing is really worth it anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In a December&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/journalist-steve-coll-questions-facebooks-support-of-free-speech-it-has-been-weaponized-against-journalism\">appearance<\/a>&nbsp;on MSNBC, Coll decried the wide latitude of political self-expression that Facebook permitted in the aftermath of a presidential campaign awash in conspiracy theories. \u201cThose of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle that we hold sacred, is being weaponized against the principles of journalism,\u201d Coll warned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The notion of a dichotomy between free speech and journalism is bizarre enough on its own; stranger still is the idea that in this totally invented standoff between \u201cfree speech\u201d and \u201cjournalism\u201d the latter should be given higher priority. When one considers Coll\u2019s decadeslong history of contact with the CIA and other security agencies in the course of his prize-winning journalism, perhaps this dichotomy looks a little less weird.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Coll\u2019s statement might have been logically and intellectually incoherent, but like Stengel\u2019s piece it was at least an honest look into what various journalism popes are thinking these days: They\u2019re thinking that it\u2019s more honorable, and perhaps better for society at large, for the Fourth Estate to defend what it believes to be its prestige and its few remaining privileges than it is to uphold free expression, which isn\u2019t the business these people are in anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>RICHARD STENGEL:<\/strong>&nbsp;Stengel\u2019s&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2019\/10\/29\/why-america-needs-hate-speech-law\/\">argument for American hate speech laws<\/a>&nbsp;is worth revisiting, since its author, unlike everyone else mentioned here, has a record of senior government service and is close with the people who have just won control of the American leviathan. \u201cWhen I was a journalist, I loved Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.\u2019s assertion that the Constitution and the First Amendment are not just about protecting \u2018free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate,\u2019\u201d wrote Stengel, the undersecretary of state for public affairs and public diplomacy during the second Obama administration. \u201cBut as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">True! Just listen to the leaders of states like China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, North Korea, Egypt, and many dozens of others, friend and foe. They\u2019ll tell you how silly and dangerous the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is. Why should America insist on being some kind of weird exception to global norms? Besides, it\u2019s so much easier and more pleasant to wield power without annoying little gnats contradicting you at every turn and printing baldfaced lies about people going hungry or books being banned or the Great Leap Forward being a failure\u2014not that it could ever, ever get to be like that in the United States. Right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cAll speech is not equal,\u201d Stengel writes. \u201cAnd where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails.\u201d Given the almost limitless power of the executive branch under the current incarnation of the American constitutional system, it isn\u2019t totally paranoid to think Stengel\u2019s outlook could have something like the force of law sometime in the near future.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>THE NEW YORKER:<\/strong>&nbsp;Masha Gessen and Andrew Marantz have become a veritable tag-team of free speech skepticism at one of America\u2019s leading magazines. Gessen, an author and professor,&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/our-columnists\/mark-zuckerberg-doesnt-know-what-the-first-amendment-is-for\">looked with puzzlement<\/a>&nbsp;and perhaps even alarm upon their college students\u2019 soberly and sensibly non-instrumental view of the First Amendment and free expression in general. \u201cThe news media have traditionally borne the responsibility for insuring that the actual purpose of the First Amendment is fulfilled,\u201d they write. \u201cYet Americans are content to leave this essential component of democracy to profit-driven corporations with next to no regulatory oversight.\u201d Perhaps free speech can only fulfill its \u201cpurpose,\u201d whatever Gessen thinks that might be, with the help of government coercion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In the course of researching a book about internet-based radicalization, Marantz&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/10\/04\/opinion\/sunday\/free-speech-social-media-violence.html\">became convinced<\/a>&nbsp;that \u201cfree speech absolutism\u201d is akin to a civic suicide pact, and that a proper balancing of liberty and security must be introduced into the First Amendment as implemented. \u201cHis thesis was that free speech is good,\u201d Marantz&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/daily-comment\/mark-zuckerberg-still-doesnt-get-it\">lamented<\/a>&nbsp;about an address given by Mark Zuckerberg. \u201cOf course, everyone apart from Kim Jong Un agrees with this; the question is whether free speech is the only good worth pursuing, and whether it leads inexorably to truth and progress.\u201d Really? That\u2019s the question?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>EMILY BAZELON:<\/strong>&nbsp;America is \u201cdrowning in lies,\u201d the essayist and journalist declared in the midst of a&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/10\/13\/magazine\/free-speech.html\">long piece<\/a>&nbsp;in&nbsp;<em>The New York Times Magazine<\/em>&nbsp;last summer, titled \u201cThe Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Sure is! But whose lies, exactly? What are they? How can an average person be expected to tell lies from truth? Perhaps government censorship is the answer to this \u201cproblem.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Like many of the other proponents of controlled speech mentioned here, Bazelon\u2019s writing has a detectable winking quality to it: Don\u2019t worry, dear reader, YOU\u2019RE not the one who\u2019s going to be censored. THEY are. In fact, the censorship, so-called, won\u2019t even be that bad. You\u2019ll hardly notice it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">One thing that people might not immediately recognize when they hear scary-sounding words like \u201ccensorship\u201d is that the act of controlling other people\u2019s speech can be gratifying, a psychic net-positive for those who dream of a purified information space. Supporting censorship even shows that you\u2019re in touch with the most advanced currents of continental ideas. In Europe, they might have \u201cmore regulations on speech\u201d\u2014which is a nice way of saying that the government can fine or imprison you for speech that is constitutionally protected in the United States\u2014but \u201cthese countries remain democratic; in fact, they have created better conditions for their citizenry to sort what\u2019s true from what\u2019s not and to make informed decisions about what they want their societies to be.\u201d Thinking about censorship should inspire warm and cuddly thoughts, perhaps of sipping&nbsp;<em>gluhwein<\/em>&nbsp;up in a&nbsp;<em>schloss<\/em>, or digging into a plate of steaming&nbsp;<em>oliebollen<\/em>&nbsp;beside a canal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">By contrast, America suffers from a predictably gross excess of speech. \u201cCensorship of external critics by the government remains a serious threat under authoritarian regimes,\u201d Bazelon writes. \u201cBut in the United States and other democracies, there is a different kind of threat, which may be doing more damage to the discourse about politics, news and science. It encompasses the mass distortion of truth and overwhelming waves of speech from extremists that smear and distract.\u201d We simply can\u2019t have a First Amendment with so much truth being distorted by people who disagree with us, can we?<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>BILL ADAIR:<\/strong>&nbsp;Although he founded Politifact, the Duke University journalism professor now realizes that a mere website can\u2019t go far enough in protecting the public from the dread disease of misinformation\u2014which is this month\u2019s successor to \u201cdisinformation,\u201d a foreign-threat-oriented term that is apparently being retired now that Russia and China are threatening to become models for the U.S. Why should weak, pitiful facts be forced to do battle against error without American government forces to back them up?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/white-house\/533823-misinformation-fueled-the-capitol-riots-a-biden-commission-could-chart-a\">an op-ed<\/a>&nbsp;co-written with Stanford professor Philip M. Napoli, Adair, gravely noting that \u201cfact-checking didn\u2019t persuade the mob that stormed the Capitol,\u201d called for \u201ca bipartisan commission to investigate the problem of misinformation and make recommendations about how to address it,\u201d perhaps through \u201cregulations and new laws.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Adair and Napoli\u2019s essay traces a subtle redefinition of the terms of the censorship debate. Back in the more innocent world of the first Trump electoral campaign, the alleged civilizational scourge of \u201cfake news,\u201d a term originally invented by Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign to describe accusations made against her by Donald Trump which was then gleefully appropriated by Trump to describe the entire mainstream American news media, generally referred to stories that were entirely fabricated, or that had been pushed out through verifiably state-controlled information channels. \u201cFake news\u201d later morphed into \u201cdisinformation,\u201d or information that someone believes was intentionally meant to mislead. The prime suspects were usually the Moscow-based lords of the American information ecosystem, with the all-powerful Russians working in presumed collaboration with prime fake news purveyor and accuser Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The new enemy is no longer \u201cdisinformation\u201d but \u201cmisinformation,\u201d or information that somebody, somewhere\u2014perhaps a presidential commission, perhaps an FCC bureaucrat, perhaps a faceless content moderator, perhaps a college professor with a website\u2014deems punishable by virtue of its allegedly being untrue, or not true enough. The \u201cmis\u201d in \u201cmisinformation\u201d is a conveniently slippery and expansive term that can include things that might be conventionally regarded as \u201ctrue,\u201d and in fact are true, but might lead someone to conclusions that fail to conform to a higher truth and are therefore undesirable. What are facts, anyway?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>PETER W. SINGER:<\/strong>&nbsp;For Adair, public discourse was swept with a \u201ctidal wave of misinformation\u201d prior to the Capitol attack. The metaphor of choice from Singer, a trendy big-thinker with a nifty title at the New America Foundation\u2014<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newamerica.org\/our-people\/peter-warren-singer\/\">Strategist!<\/a>\u2014is actual warfare. That\u2019s right: Words aren\u2019t just violence, but violence in its most organized and systematized form, violence on an industrial scale. \u201cThey are not just tech creators or even the equivalent of news-media editors,\u201d Singer wrote of social media companies a few days after the Capitol siege in the Atlantic Media-owned national-security-industry-focused publication Defense One. \u201cAfter years of dodging it, they get that they are running information warzones. And there is a key change that comes from understanding that social media is not just a communication space but a conflict space. In Clausewitzian terms, the forces of toxicity now face a whole new type of \u2018friction.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">That\u2019s mongo kinetic, brah! By the way, incidentally or maybe not so incidentally, Singer has been&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwsinger.com\/biography\/\">a member of both<\/a>&nbsp;the National Security Agency\u2019s advisory council and of the State Department\u2019s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>CNN:<\/strong>&nbsp;The network that arguably did more than even Fox to turn cable news into an infotainment-powered anger binge, radicalizing middle-aged centrists and stranded air travelers the country over, now has second thoughts about its particular racket, or at least it has second thoughts about other people participating in its racket now that Donald Trump isn\u2019t around anymore to goose its ratings. Clearly what the 24-hour news network needs to preserve its business is to get better at its job of breaking news\u2014or else, to pick up new viewers by having its weaker competitors in the cortisol-boosting industry run off the air.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cJust a reminder that neither @Verizon, @ATT, nor @comcast have answered any questions about why they beam channels like OAN &amp; Newsmax into millions of homes,\u201d media reporter Oliver Darcy recently&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/oliverdarcy\/status\/1350842810489065472\">tweeted<\/a>, in promoting a CNN segment dedicated to the urgent issue of throwing other cable networks off television. \u201cDo they have any second thoughts about distributing these channels given their election denialism content? They won&#8217;t say.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">One wonders if CNN has second thoughts about carrying nearly every single lie-filled Trump rally live during the 2016 presidential election campaign, including during the primaries, an in-kind donation the network made to no other candidate\u2014or any second thoughts about its breathless wall-to-wall Russiagate coverage, which accused literally hundreds of people of various crimes based on anonymous sources, some of whom seem to have been deliberately lying. Probably not: The drama of the Trump era, which CNN had no small hand in creating, was&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/hollywood\/la-fi-ct-cnn-jeff-zucker-20190528-story.html\">very good<\/a>&nbsp;for the channel\u2019s bottom line.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>PROPUBLICA:<\/strong>&nbsp;Isn\u2019t it strange, the nonprofit newsroom&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/twitter-and-youtube-banned-steve-bannon-apple-still-gives-him-millions-of-listeners\">wondered<\/a>&nbsp;in a Jan. 19 article that required four reporters , that former Trump consigliere Steve Bannon has been kicked off of Facebook and YouTube, while Apple persists in carrying his podcast? Right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Well, no, it\u2019s really not that strange: Apple delisting Bannon from its podcast app would mean making a series of tricky judgment calls about what exactly constitutes an exhortation to committing real-world acts of violence, creating a range of legal and moral and practical dilemmas for the conflict-averse tech company. Even so, the story expresses a clear hope that Apple and other formerly neutral content carriers will apply sweeping and politically motivated content tests to the material they carry. What could be better, right\u2014especially in a democracy that is in obvious need of strengthening.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cAudio files themselves are supported by a much more fragmented network of hosting services\u2014which costs money, unlike simply being catalogued by a portal like Apple\u2019s,\u201d the article warns. Bannon\u2019s podcast, for instance, \u201cis hosted by Podbean, which did not return a request for comment. Its terms of service forbid content that is \u2019malicious, false, or inaccurate.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">There is something unsettling about journalists exhibiting this kind of enthusiasm for corporate censorship and citizen snitching.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>THE WASHINGTON POST:<\/strong>&nbsp;The 1798 Sedition Act is traditionally looked upon as a low point in the history of the early republic, single-handed proof that something like the First Amendment had been necessary in order to prevent the new United States from lapsing into European-style despotism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Well, not anymore: On Jan. 14, the air still pungent with smoke from the smoldering Capitol , Notre Dame history professor Katlyn Marie Carter&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/2021\/01\/14\/what-1798-sedition-act-got-right-what-it-means-today\/\">informed readers of the&nbsp;<em>Washington Post<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;that maybe the Act had an idea or two worth considering after all. Maybe the Sedition Act was actually a missed opportunity to make our democracy better through government censorship, especially when it came to the horror of rhetorical attacks on government office holders.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">True, Carter noted, \u201cthe legislation has long been vilified as a partisan ploy to suppress the Federalist Party\u2019s political opponents \u2026 But that partisan weaponization shouldn\u2019t cloud the fact that the Sedition Act was also advanced as a response to a perceived crisis of misinformation and its potential to undermine trust in elected officials.\u201d For Carter, \u201cProponents of the Sedition Act did something important. They highlighted the real threat misinformation posed\u2014and still poses\u2014to democracy and recognized that people are often either unable or unwilling to arrive at the truth amid a deluge of material.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Like a lot of censorship fans, Carter doesn\u2019t define the exact legal remedy for speech she finds unacceptable, or define notably elastic terms like \u201cundermin[ing] of trust in elected officials.\u201d But rest assured, some kind of remedy is needed to stave off the deluge. \u201cTruth\u201d must be protected by some external authority. Today, \u201cthe task of safeguarding the truth is functionally left up to profit-driven tech companies, which is no better a solution than that offered by the Sedition Act. Though social media giants seem to have finally awakened to the danger of misinformation spread on their platforms, it took a violent insurrection to spur meaningful action. It may be too little, too late.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>MAX BOOT:<\/strong>&nbsp;The S-word was also thrown around liberally in a post-Capitol siege column from the maverick foreign policy thinker turned repetitive center-left take-slinger, a&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2021\/01\/18\/trump-couldnt-have-incited-sedition-without-help-fox-news\/\">pro-censorship broadside<\/a>&nbsp;that was also published in&nbsp;<em>The Washington Post<\/em>\u2014which is owned by arch-monopolist Jeff Bezos, who is contracted to provide secure cloud computing services for the CIA. Boot argues for legal and extra-legal consequences against \u201ca whole infrastructure of incitement\u201d guilty of aiding and abetting Trump\u2019s grotesque riot. \u201cWe need to shut down the influencers who radicalize people and set them on the path toward violence and sedition\u201d he wrote, in a sentence whose hilariously misplaced modifiers both he and his editors missed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Tellingly, the \u201cwe\u201d here includes \u201clarge cable companies such as Comcast and Charter Spectrum\u201d who Boot believes should drop Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News. What\u2019s a little censorship among friends? Surely, we won\u2019t be censoring anything too important or vital to the healthy functioning of society by shutting down outlets that pander to the wrong half of American society\u2014while we pander to the right half. Surely the very act of censorship won\u2019t prove corrosive to the country\u2019s civic and moral baseline, however evil these networks might be. The combined forces of&nbsp;<em>The Washington Post<\/em>&nbsp;and Comcast only have the public\u2019s best interests at heart.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Boot helpfully notes, in a parenthetical, that he is \u201ca global affairs analyst\u201d at the aforementioned CNN, meaning that he is explicitly arguing for his personal competition to be thrown off the airwaves by the combined forces of government and corporate power.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>THE ASSOCIATED PRESS:<\/strong>&nbsp;Like ProPublica, the AP has&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-media-misinformation-social-media-b7bb0ace8a617af733357f6ee15aca03?utm_medium=AP&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_source=Twitter\">discovered<\/a>&nbsp;a shocking \u201cloophole\u201d exploited by ideological extremists: podcasts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cPodcasts made available by the two Big Tech companies let you tune into the world of the QAnon conspiracy theory, wallow in President Donald Trump\u2019s false claims of a stolen election and bask in other extremism,\u201d reports the AP, warning that \u201cPodcasting \u2018plays a particularly outsized role\u2019 in propagating white supremacy,\u201d according to \u201ca 2018 report from the Anti-Defamation League.\u201d Has anyone investigated comic books yet? The lyrics of rap songs? If you haven\u2019t noticed yet, seditious, violence-inducing content is everywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The lone and very much welcome note of balance comes from Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who observes that censorship \u201cgoes with the tide against what\u2019s popular in any given moment.\u201d Today, people considered part of the radical right are targeted. \u201cTomorrow,\u201d she cautions, \u201cthe tide might be against opposition activists.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">For the rising, pro-censorship voices in media and beyond, history has no tides, just correct answers. What objection will today\u2019s anti-speech intellectuals mount if someone in power decides they\u2019re the ones who have it all wrong?<\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><strong>Armin Rosen<\/strong> is a staff writer for Tablet magazine.rmin Rosen is a staff writer for Tablet magazine.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\">\n<div id=\"content\" class=\"content-alignment\">\n<div id=\"watch-description\" class=\"yt-uix-button-panel\">\n<div id=\"watch-description-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><em>Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion&#8217;68,<\/em><em><br \/>\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion&#8217;68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.<br \/>\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:<br \/>\n<\/em><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><em><a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"mailto:webmaster@reunion68.com\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr style=\"width: 100%;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Journalists Mobilize Against Free Speech ARMIN ROSEN A new generation of media crusaders clamors for government control over what you see, hear, and read\u2014and for banning their competition Tablet Magazine American journalism once thought of itself as being inherently and institutionally pro free speech. Visitors to the Newseum, the media industry\u2019s temple of self-glorification on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83581"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83601,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83581\/revisions\/83601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}