I cannot recall any time during my days on earth when the threat to free speech has been so widespread and chilling. The calls for shutting down conservative speech are coming from sources that should be supporting the First Amendment's most important right. Nicholas Kristof is one of the foremost Op-Ed writers at the foremost paper in the country, the New York Times. Yet, he seems to have accepted the description of Fox News given by Media Matters for America: "It's not a news channel. It's a propaganda operation mixed with political smut." Of course, we have heard this before; but that was from Obama and top officials in his Administration. Not a surprise that Obama and his people would attempt to denigrate the one news source that actually challenged them. But this attack is from another media outlet. They should know better; but their left-wing agenda has supplanted their belief in a free press.
Here are the sins committed by Fox. "Covid misinformation." "They fomented racial animus and promoted white supremacy as a response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations." They "laid the ground work for the attack on the Capitol by challenging election results." Kristof shies away from demanding that the government take Fox off the air. But he calls for advertisers to not promote their products on Fox, and for cable companies to drop Fox altogether.
It is beyond disappointing that so many of my fellow Americans on the left actually believe whatever they read in the New York Times or Los Angeles Times or any other mainstream paper. Talk about misinformation. I am pretty sure that no mainstream paper has apologized for the Russian collusion story which they thrust on the public, even though Robert Mueller found no evidence of that collusion. But the mainstream media is filled with misinformation. It is why 44% of Americans who identify as liberal believe that the number of unarmed blacks killed by the police in 2019 was greater than 1000, when it was actually 27. They also believe that most people killed by the police are black, when it was about 25%.
Here is Margaret Sullivan, formerly one of the Public Editors at the New York Times, and now a columnist at the Washington Post: "The mob that stormed and desecrated the Capitol on Wednesday (January 6) could not have existed in a country that hadn't been radicalized by the likes of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham (all Fox News hosts with their own shows) and swayed by biased news coverage." As someone who regularly watches Fox, I have never heard a single one of them advocate anything they are being accused of advocating. And if questioning election results now subjects people to various sanctions, then what do we say when Pelosi and Clinton and Stacey Abrams challenged, and continue to challenge, election results. Should we lock them up or worse, such as when election results are challenged in dictatorial countries? But using Sullivan's logic, does that mean that CNN, MSNBC, and the mainstream papers were responsible for this past summer's riots across the country? After all, the media was repeatedly referring to the riots as "peaceful," which only encouraged them to continue. And Kamala Harris, the Vice President, said these "demonstrations" should not stop. That is a direct incitement. What should happen to her?
If you are on the Left, do not be too quick in thinking "well, that's only Fox." Who cares. The Wall Street Journal reports that "a petition now urges publishing houses to reject book proposals from anyone who worked in the Trump Administration." That petition does not just target individuals - it targets history. If there are no insiders able to write the history of the Trump years - good, bad and otherwise - then it's as if the Trump presidency never happened. I thought that the erasing of history only occurred in totalitarian societies, such as the USSR. Or in George Orwell's 1984.
Here is yet another writer in the New York Times: "Several experts I spoke with recommended that the Biden Administration put together a cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a 'reality czar.'" During the Trump years, the Washington Post adopted the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness." I have always thought of our First Amendment right to speech as the foundation of our democracy. How would that work if a "reality czar" gets to decide what speech is permissible, and what speech is "disinformation?" Would this blog fall into the category of "disinformation?" If I still have readers on the Left, I ask you if you would approve of that designation for this blog.
Here is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "We're going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can't just spew disinformation and misinformation." Rein in our media environment? Is she familiar with "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." I am sure she is familiar with the First Amendment to the US Constitution. But, as with many on the Left, she has no use for the Constitution. Here is a government official all-in with the mainstream media on how they are going to censor speech, which will obviously be conservative speech.
Here is Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Congress needs to create a Truth and Reconciliation process - a commission, perhaps, or even just an open forum - that will allow some or hopefully most to acknowledge Biden's victory, state for the record that there was no election fraud in 2020, and maybe even apologize for saying otherwise." Apologize? What happens to someone if they do not apologize? And, just to be clear, Pelosi needs not apologize for saying the 2016 election was hijacked. Clinton needs not apologize for saying the the 2016 election was not legitimate. Stacey Abrams needs not apologize for continuing to claim victory in the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia. We all understand that these attacks on speech are aimed at conservatives and conservative media outlets only.
The Democrats have a cozy relationship with the mainstream media. White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, had been at CNN. Jon Meacham, formerly at MSNBC wrote speeches for Biden. Also leaving MSNBC for helping the Biden Administration are Barbara McQuade, Richard Stengel and Dr Ezekiel Emanuel. We have a risk of the media and the Democratic controlled White House and Congress all working together to limit speech, conservative speech.
We need to ask: what is going on? How is it possible that in the United States of America we are hearing calls for essentially shutting down Fox News, for preventing insiders in the Trump Administration from writing history, for a "reality czar," for "reining in" the media, for a "Truth and Reconciliation" commission. Of course, it is all under the guise of preventing "misinformation" and "disinformation." But long time readers of this blog may recall the various posts over the years discussing the lies of omission and commission written by the mainstream media. Will the New York Times have to apologize for over two years of daily reporting on the unsubstantiated "Russian collusion" hoax? But as Jim Rutenberg wrote in the New York Times, during the 2016 presidential race, "if you view a Trump presidency as something that is potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that." As Martin Gurri wrote in the City Journal, describing the attitude of the editors at the Times: "Trump could not safely be covered; he had to be opposed." And oppose Trump the Times did, during the two elections and during Trump's 4 years in office. And much of the mainstream media followed the lead of the preeminent mainstream paper.
Is there any hope? The University of Chicago is a beacon of free speech. The Wall Street Journal reports that in 2016, the University advised all incoming freshmen that "we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own." Imagine that - a university adhering to policies that were once considered standard at all universities. Before college students started being treated as if they were children. And when administrators had a backbone.
Now, the Journal reports, there is a new group of students on campus, conservatives and libertarians who have an online journal called "Chicago Thinker." Here is what these students have to say: "We demand not to be coddled. Embracing the experience of unfettered inquiry and free expression is precisely the point of these years of intense study: to rigorously confront and challenge our most deeply-held beliefs - and to emerge as more thoughtful, informed human beings." Now imagine if the New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media actually believed these things, if they actually believed that speech is to be challenged by more speech - not by shutting it down.
"Freedom of speech, of the press, of association, of assembly and petition - this set of guarantees, protected by the First Amendment, comprises what we refer to as freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has written that his freedom is "the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other freedom." That, my friends, is from the ACLU.
