Tag: political correctness

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

Free Speech Week: Time To Celebrate, Time To Reflect

As Free Speech Week gets underway today, it’s a good time to celebrate this fundamental freedom (as the week is intended to do) – but it’s also a good time to reflect on the state of free speech in America today.  Even the most cursory reflection, however, is sure to give one pause.

Freedom of speech remains under assault on many fronts.  And most people, when they think of free speech, think of the First Amendment. But it’s important to draw a distinction here.  The First Amendment only protects speech that is threatened by government control, and thus laws and regulations seeking to limit speech can be subjected to First Amendment challenges in the courts.

Paradoxically, however, the gravest threats to free speech today aren’t coming from government lawmakers and regulators, but from non-government groups and individuals who want to stifle the speech of others.  That type of speech suppression is, in its own way, even more insidious because there is no fail-safe defense against it like the First Amendment.

Media Institute President Patrick Maines has written numerous columns in this space decrying all manner of attempts to suppress free expression.  One of the most onerous threats is the political correctness (or “PC”) movement, whereby the “politically correct” try to stifle the speech of those with whom they disagree.  Nowhere is this more evident than on college campuses, which should be the ultimate marketplaces of ideas.

Examples abound of campus activist groups pushing to “disinvite” guest lecturers or even commencement speakers whose views they dislike – often with the tacit or overt support of university officials.  High-profile incidents at Fordham, Brown, and Brandeis universities have captured media attention, but they were hardly isolated occurrences.  In fact, an organization called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) exists solely to fight these and other types of PC attacks on campus.

Speech suppression beyond the reach of the First Amendment takes other forms as well.  Activist groups and their “speech police” routinely try to intimidate speakers, especially through social media.  And even some journalists and editors in the mainstream media are prone to political correctness, though here the approach might be more subtle – a story presenting a PC point of view uncritically, or a story about a contrarian viewpoint never written at all.

Free Speech Week, then, offers the chance to celebrate the First Amendment as the protector of our speech (or the vast majority of it) from government interference.  The week also invites us to celebrate free expression in the broader sense.  Yet as we applaud freedom of speech generally, we need to be aware of the threats that continue to render this a fragile freedom.  There is a vocal opposition to these threats out there, including The Media Institute, FIRE, and others – but the voices challenging these threats and supporting truly free speech need to be more widespread.  We can indeed celebrate during Free Speech Week – but we can’t afford to be complacent.

Free Speech Week (FSW) is taking place Oct. 19 to Oct. 25.  You can learn more about how to get involved here: www.freespeechweek.org.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson: Telling It Like It Is

It’s not every day that a speech given by a publishing executive is truly noteworthy, but remarks given earlier this month by Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp., are the exception to the rule.

Speaking on August 13 at Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy, Thomson delivered a powerful speech in which he decried, among other things, the business practices of “distribution” companies like Google, the commentariat’s disdain for markets, the theft of intellectual property, and the politically correct mindset of Silicon Valley.

Though now chief executive officer of one of the largest newspaper and publishing companies in the world, Thomson has spent most of his life as a journalist, having earlier in his career been an editor of the Financial Times, The Times newspaper in London, and the Wall Street Journal.  And it’s these experiences that inform his views about the media and more.

Speaking about markets, Thomson had this to say:

When some commentators speak of markets it is in the abstract, slightly pejorative sense – markets are actually an aggregation of collective effort and hope and action….  >> Read More

Posted on By Patrick Maines

‘Freedom From Speech’

Evidence that the human race is not yet won, as a former colleague used to say, is coming in the windows.  From murder in the name of religion, to widespread crime, greed, and violence, to the bottoming of popular culture, it’s pretty clear that this is not mankind’s finest hour.  But enough about mankind, generally speaking.

The subject of today’s tutorial is that little slice of homo erectus living in the USA, and practicing the politics of proto-fascism.  And who are such people, you wonder?  Well, they’re to be found among  activists, journalists, college professors; wherever, in other words, “progressives” congregate in especially large numbers.

It is these worthies who have foisted upon us the deeply undemocratic and freedom-busting protocols of political correctness.  Think about it: We have now arrived as a nation at a time when people who say anything that gives (or could give) offense to any minority – with the exception of white, Christian, heterosexual and Republican men, about whom no amount of criticism or ridicule is sufficient – may find themselves expelled or unemployed, if not under arrest, the constitutional guarantee of free speech notwithstanding.

It is a time when certain taxpayer-funded colleges and universities allow free speech on campus only within designated “free speech zones,” and sometimes not even there.  A time when textbooks must come with “trigger warnings,” lest a reader feel threatened or uncomfortable with the contents therein.

It’s a time when colleges are routinely the site of “disinvitation” campaigns aimed at preventing speakers from appearing on campuses, and when colleges formulate so-called campus speech codes.

It’s because of his concern with this cultural void that Greg Lukianoff, head of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has written a new book titled Freedom from Speech.  Published just recently by Encounter Books, this slim volume is must reading for anyone who senses that things are going badly wrong on campuses and beyond, and wants to know what to do about it.

What Lukianoff is doing, in addition to writing books, is challenging colleges with litigation, aided by Bob Corn-Revere, the terrific First Amendment lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine.  (It should be noted, in the interest of full disclosure and a measure of chest-thumping, that both Lukianoff and Corn-Revere are members of The Media Institute’s First Amendment Advisory Council.)

A justly flattering review of Lukianoff’s book, written by Ronald Collins in Concurring Opinions, provides this telling quote: “This is a surreal time for freedom of speech.  While the legal protections of the First Amendment remain strong, the culture is obsessed with punishing individuals for allegedly offensive speech utterances.”

And it’s this dichotomy: strong legal protections, undermined by weak and/or contradictory applications of the law in the culture generally, that goes to the heart of the problem, and its seeming intractability.

If this situation is to improve, two things need to come to pass: First, some of the colleges being challenged with lawsuits need to defend their positions in court (rather than just buckling under at the threat of litigation) and then lose decisively and painfully; and second, there needs to be some measure of genuine opprobrium attached to the practices, on campuses and everywhere else, of the speech police.

In the meantime, there are a few things people troubled by all this can do.  They can (1) buy Lukianoff’s book; (2) make a tax-deductible contribution to FIRE; and (3) contact Bob Corn-Revere whenever you think you’ve spotted an actionable offense in this area.

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Political Correctness Takes a Turn for the Worse

It’s widely understood that “political correctness” can be employed as a speech-killing device.   But it’s only been in recent times that we’ve been able to witness the full range of its lethality.

From colleges and universities like Fordham, Brown, and Brandeis have come recent, ugly demonstrations of intolerance, based on PC–themed arguments, which have yielded a suppression of “disfavored” speech on those campuses.

Elsewhere, columnist Charles Krauthammer reports that in February, the Washington Post received 110,000 signatures on a petition demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming!

In the midst of all this have come a number of commentaries, mostly written by conservatives or libertarians, decrying this state of affairs, and the apparent acquiescence in it of mainstream entertainment and journalism outfits.

Subjects that have prompted recent censorious acts include opposition to (1) the Affordable Care Act; (2) global warming or “climate change”; (3) same-sex marriage; and (4) abortion.

The role of the media in the growth of the speech police hasn’t been so much a matter of their overt support as of their benign neglect.  So it is that environmental organizations can brand climate change skeptics as “deniers,” whose views are unworthy of circulation or consideration, safe in the knowledge that most in the mainstream media agree with their take on the issue, even if they may not themselves encourage censorship activities.

So too with the Affordable Care Act, same-sex marriage, and abortion, opposition to all of which has been loudly and uncritically attributed to racism, homophobia, and a “war on women,” respectively.

As Krauthammer put it in his piece about the number of signatures on the global warming petition: “The left is entering a new phase of ideological intolerance – no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition….  Long a staple of academia, the totalitarian impulse is spreading.  What to do?  Defend the dissenters, even if – perhaps, especially if – you disagree with their policy.  It is – it was? – the American way.”

It’s against this backdrop that one reads with considerable relief an article published last week in … Nation magazine!  Written by Michelle Goldberg, and titled “#Cancel Colbert and the Return of the Anti-Liberal Left,” this slim offering is one of the best, and more encouraging, things written about political correctness in recent memory.  It’s one of the best because of the reasoning employed in the piece; it’s important because of its publication in the resolutely left-wing Nation.

But don’t take my word for it.  Read on:

It’s increasingly clear that we are entering a new era of political correctness.  Recently, we’ve seen the calls to #CancelColbert because of something outrageous said by Stephen Colbert’s blowhard alter ego, who has been saying outrageous things regularly for nine years….  Then there’s the sudden demand for “trigger warnings” on college syllabi, meant to protect students from encountering ideas or images that may traumatize them….

Call it left-wing anti-liberalism: the idea, captured by Herbert Marcuse in his 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance, that social justice demands curbs on freedom of expression and that “it is possible to identify policies, opinions, movements which would promote this chance, and those which would do the opposite.  Suppression of the regressive ones is a prerequisite for the strengthening of the progressive ones….”

Note both the belief that correct opinions can be dispassionately identified, and the blithe confidence in the wisdom of those empowered to do the suppressing.

What Goldberg calls “left-wing anti-liberalism,” others might characterize more harshly.  Take, for instance, the example of the group called Media Matters for America, created for no other reason than to attempt to silence conservative voices.  To characterize such a group as merely anti-liberal, or anti-conservative, would seem like a rather dainty way of putting it.

Beyond MMA, there are other groups and individuals, whose actions or theories play a role in the speech suppression business.  Robert McChesney, co-founder of the septic organization misnamed Free Press, comes to mind.

This said, there’s much to be appreciated in Goldberg’s thesis.  For one thing there’s the consoling fact that, for all the cultural and political differences currently roiling the nation, there are certain bedrock principles, like free speech, that people of vastly different perspectives can rally around.

For a nation founded on the principles of popular democracy and the Bill of Rights, this is a good thing indeed.

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Hank Williams Jr.

Even the most basic facts are in dispute.  Was Hank Williams Jr. fired by ESPN or did he quit?  Was Williams’ comment (Obama playing golf with Boehner like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu) a comparison of Obama to Hitler, or was it an analogy of the irony in meetings between enemies?  And if it was in fact a comparison of the men in question, rather than an analogy, how do we know that Williams wasn’t comparing Obama to Netanyahu, or Boehner to Hitler?  Or was Williams’ separation from ESPN, whether he resigned or was fired, a consequence of other things he said?

We may never know the answers to these questions, but there are some things we can know.  We can, for instance, know to the point of a moral certainty that this flap is not a First Amendment issue.  No court in the country would adjudicate this matter along the lines of First Amendment case law.

There is no doubt that ESPN was within its First Amendment rights to do what(ever) it did.  There was no governmental involvement in this matter, and though Mr. Williams certainly has his own First Amendment rights, they do not extend, under constitutional law, to his continued employment by ESPN.

All this said, nobody who believes deeply in freedom of speech, both as an individual right and as a vital and salutary aspect of citizenship in a democracy, can be happy about any of this.  It is, sad to say, just another example of the steady erosion of freedom of expression in an age of political correctness.

As written on an earlier such occasion, one wonders where the push to sanitize speech along PC lines will end.  There’s no gainsaying that some kinds of speech are ugly and hurtful.  But increasingly, political correctness seems to be working in a way that shuts off honest debate and discussion, and seeks to isolate politically those people whose views or statements are seen not just as offensive but as undermining aspects or elements of the status quo.

Most people with knowledge of the matter understand that the actions of the MSM, regarding issues like those in the Williams affair, can be explained by the media’s fear of damage to their “brands,” often in consequence of retaliation by organized single-issue and special-interest groups, who frequently mount campaigns against the offending media’s advertisers.  Looked at this way, the MSM’s acquiescence in things PC is understandable, but history may show that understandable was not good enough.

Media companies depend on more than the constitutional protection of the First Amendment for their free rein – they rely crucially on the goodwill they create with the public.  The problem with giving lip service to freedom of speech, while breaking it to the saddle of political correctness, is that over time this can erode the public’s confidence in the media as faithful stewards of free-speech rights broadly speaking.

Several years ago, The Media Institute created and launched a national celebration called Free Speech Week, which this year begins today. That we decided to name it this, rather than, say, First Amendment Week, was no accident.  We put free speech in the name of it because we wanted to celebrate and promote not just those kinds of speech that are constitutionally protected, but those that are not as well.  Episodes like the Hank Williams affair demonstrate why it’s so important that this movement grow and prosper.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Tucson and the Media

Never mind for a minute the opinions of those outside the media.  People, for instance, such as Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), who sees in the Tucson massacre the need for a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.  Or Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who in 2007 called on the NTIA to reexamine whether broadcast facilities are creating a climate of fear and inciting individuals to commit hate crimes, and who now says: “The shooting in Arizona reminds all of us that the coarsening of our public discourse can have tragic consequences.”  Or Rep. Bob Brady (D-Pa.), who Broadcasting & Cable reports is “working on a bill to make it a crime to use ‘language or symbols’ that could be interpreted as inciting violence against a member of Congress.”

Never mind even the astonishing comments of the ubiquitous Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, a man who, far from being just your everyday lawman, is a political philosopher and soothsayer as well.

The most disturbing thing about the coverage of this affair is the reckless and, in some quarters, even shameless commentary produced by people in the media.  Witness, for instance, Jacob Weisberg at Slate (“How anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic populism made the Giffords shooting more likely”); or Michael Tomasky at the Guardian (“In the US, where hate rules at the ballot box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time.”)

But the man whose editorial contribution to this tragic affair represents the absolute nadir of journalistic integrity is The New York Times’ Paul Krugman.  In a blog posted just hours after the shooting, and in a Times piece titled “Climate of Hate,” Krugman relieves himself of opinions that are as poisonous as they are unfounded.  Here’s but one example (among many) of the wisdom and high-mindedness of the gentleman: “So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to GOP leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual,  and go on as before?"

To their credit, and the country’s benefit, Paul Krugman and Jacob Weisberg are not the only people employed by The New York Times and Slate. Those organizations also employ Jack Shafer and David Brooks, whose comments about this matter stand in stark and towering contrast.

Still, it’s one thing when politicians propose restrictions on freedom of speech, and something else when journalists and commentators do so.

One might be inclined to dismiss this kind of commentary if it were an anomaly, a one-off event unconnected to other threats to freedom of speech.  But it’s not.  Early in this millennium the United States has arrived at a time when there is scarcely a special interest or single-issue group in the country that does not employ speech police with direct access to the media.

It’s a time when the latest edition of Huckleberry Finn will substitute the word “slave” for the “n” word.

It’s a time when, as reported here, journalists who break ranks and say something politically incorrect – whether on the record, off the record, while having dinner, whatever – are summarily fired.

Where will it all end?  There are two ways this nation could lose its freedom of speech.  It could happen by laws or regulations promulgated by government, but at the end of the day that would also require that the federal courts go along, something that, given the strong case law in opposition, is unlikely.

But the other way it could happen would be if uninhibited speech is strangled in the crib by political correctness, not only practiced but positively enforced by the political culture as reflected by and in the media.  It is this that is happening today, and the question going forward is how much further down that road will we travel before passing the point of no return?
                                               
The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not necessarily of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Juan Williams and NPR

OK, so right off the bat let’s deal with what NPR’s firing of Juan Williams is, and what it is not.  It is a free speech issue, but it is not a First Amendment issue.  This is an important distinction because while many First Amendment issues involve freedom of speech, and many free speech issues involve the First Amendment, it is not the case that all free speech issues are First Amendment issues.

At bottom, the Speech Clause of the First Amendment is a proscription on what government can do to the media, not on what the media can do themselves.  As a practical matter what this means is that NPR’s management had the right to do what they did, and that, were this matter to go before a court, its resolution would not turn on First Amendment case law.

This said, the wisdom of the action taken, and what it suggests about the future of freedom of expression generally, are very much at issue here.

People of a certain age may remember the sad case of Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder, who was fired by CBS for some bizarre off-the-cuff comments he made about black athleticism while having a meal at a Washington restaurant.  Other similar cases are those of Don Imus, and more recently Helen Thomas and Rick Sanchez.

So while there are some important differences in these cases, we’re beginning to see a pattern here: When reporters and commentators say things that arguably offend minorities (and thereby disturb the politically correct equilibrium) they get fired.  And the question is whether this is the right, or even the intelligent, way to deal with such issues, especially for media companies?

It used to be believed that the best way to handle speech that is unfair or false was for more speech, not less, and by that measure a better way to have resolved many of these matters would have been for management to issue comments that mock, or directly challenge the falsities, in the offending comments.

Though the dust hasn’t even begun to settle, it’s already clear what many people, of varying political stripes, think of the way NPR has handled the Williams affair: They think it’s a disaster.  As Howard Kurtz, formerly of the Washington Post, put it in a Daily Beast piece: “His firing has backfired, handing FOX a victory and making Williams a symbol of liberal intolerance — on the very day NPR announced a grant from George Soros that it never should have accepted.”

Indeed, the Soros revelation, combined with Republican and (especially) conservative antipathy for taxpayer support of PBS and NPR, guarantee that the Williams flap is not going away any time soon.  As lamented here, there has been a coordinated and richly financed effort underway for months that has, as part of its aim, a substantial increase in government funding for public media generally, and that would oblige PBS member stations to redirect their news programs to more local coverage — the very thing that Soros’s contribution is designed to facilitate at NPR.

But that is a story that will play itself out in days to come.  Front and center now is the question of the impact of the Williams affair on NPR, in which regard it might be useful to examine a couple statements; the offending one, made by Williams, and another, made after his firing, by the president of NPR, Vivian Schiller.

Here’s Williams’s comment: “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot.  But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

And here’s Schiller’s: “Juan Williams should have kept his feelings about Muslims between himself and his psychiatrist or his publicist.”

Under pressure, Schiller later apologized for her remark, but going forward that may not mean much.  Put it this way, of these two comments which one do you think is the most mean-spirited and intemperate?  And of the acts at issue — Williams’s comments or his firing – which one do you think does more damage to NPR?

Yes, I think so too.

                                                                           

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not necessarily of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Citizens United and ‘Hillary: The Movie’

If you’re feeling, like so many of us, that our life and times are too harmonious, smart, and principled, you might welcome something completely jumbled, uninformed, and hypocritical.  If so, here’s just the thing: an article by E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post.

The subject of Dionne’s piece is a case — Citizens United v. FEC — scheduled for oral argument today in the Supreme Court.  Like so many when reporting this story, Dionne employs the journalistic equivalent of the magician’s trick of misdirection when telling his tale.

Thus does he direct the reader’s attention not to the specifics of the case itself — which is whether the execrable campaign finance laws (read: McCain-Feingold) can constitutionally suppress free speech, and political speech at that — but to the imaginary threat that, if decided wrongly, the case “could surrender control of our democracy to corporate interests.”

What, you might wonder, could cause such fear and trembling?  A plot by corporate giants to make every man, woman, and child read The Wealth of Nations?

Well, not if it’s the Citizens United case.  Because that case isn’t about a corporate giant, but rather a small nonprofit activist organization, and its “crime” was the production and would-be distribution of a political film, called “Hillary: The Movie.” 

Now you might not like this film (if you’re a fan of Hillary you definitely wouldn’t like it), but nothing could be clearer than that this is political speech, the kind that, outside the confines of the election laws, has always occupied the highest reaches of constitutional protection under the First Amendment.

Dionne’s misdirection technique also turns a blind eye to another interesting fact: The campaign finance laws that prevent the airing of issue ads x number of days before federal elections don’t apply to newspapers, but only to the broadcast media, cable and satellite included.

Call it cynical, but some might wonder if this fact helps explain the embrace of McCain-Feingold by so many newspaper columnists and editorialists, and newspaper publishers, for that matter.

One of the problems attending any attempt to create what our associate, Professor Larry Winer, refers to as a “unitary” First Amendment is that so many people on the front lines of this battle, like reporters, demonstrate little or no interest in defending the First Amendment rights of anyone but themselves.

Thus can one count on one hand the number of mainstream media reports that have been critical of campus speech codes, or any manner of political correctness– or the suppression of political speech, as demonstrated in Citizens United.

It’s not a pretty picture.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Silence of the Lambs

The failure of mainstream U.S. journalists even to mention the abominable trial of Canadian journalist Mark Steyn speaks volumes about the state of the industry, and about the speech-killing nature of political correctness.

As my colleague Rick Kaplar posted here last week, Steyn is being tried in Canada by one of that country’s “human rights” tribunals.  His crime?  He wrote a book, subsequently excerpted in the Canadian journal Maclean’s, to which members of the Canadian Islamic Congress took offense.

Never mind for a minute the impact of this on Mr. Steyn, or on those Canadians who, even without the benefit of a First Amendment, understand and believe in freedom of speech.  The stomach-turning aspect of this affair is the ovine response of virtually the entire U.S. press corps.

With the exception only of a handful of conservative journalists, plus a New York Times reporter writing for the International Herald Tribune, the saga of Mark Steyn and his persecution by a kangaroo court, formed under the auspices of Canada’s Human Rights Commission,  has been completely ignored.

In private conversation, a number of explanations have been offered for this phenomenon: It is a foreign affair; the U.S. media, newspapers particularly, are preoccupied with more pressing matters; worse things are happening to journalists, and to freedom of speech, all over the world.

I don’t buy any of it.  In the first place, we’re talking about Canada, not Eritrea.  Secondly, how much effort or money does it take to write an editorial, news, or feature story?  And as for worse things happening, well, that may be, but this one is quite bad enough.

A better explanation would be that, second perhaps only to the academy, U.S. media are the most politically correct institution in American life.  And few people are more politically incorrect than Mark Steyn.

In February of this year Christopher Hitchens wrote a piece for Slate called “To Hell With the Archbishop of Canterbury.”  Written in the saucy style for which he’s well known, Hitchens’s ire was prompted by a speech given by the Archbishop in which he suggested that  aspects of sharia, or Islamic law, should be adopted in Britain as it would ‘help maintain social cohesion.’

There is little doubt that, had Hitchens’s piece been published in a Canadian newspaper or magazine, it would have given offense to the same people who have initiated the proceeding against Mr. Steyn.  The difference, of course, is that Hitchens’s piece wasn’t published in Canada, and so therefore neither he nor his publisher can be fined or sanctioned.

As shown in the link above, the excerpt from Steyn’s book is disturbing and provocative.  But it is also unmistakably political speech — the kind, in other words, generally accorded the highest value by those who believe the press is indispensable to a democratic society. 
 
Fortunately, there are some Canadians who understand that point.  In a press release issued last month, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association announced it had applied for leave to intervene in Steyn’s trial.  In the language of the president of the association: “Freedom of expression is a fundamental democratic value.  Citizens of a democracy should be trusted to form their own judgments about the views expressed by others, including controversial and offensive comments.  The BCCLA will seek to protect basic Charter rights so that opinions on all matters, including religion, can continue to be debated freely and without fear through all media of communication.”

Despite the mounting evidence of the harm it causes, political correctness in the U.S. has so far escaped the opprobrium it  deserves.  Far from being the language of the enlightened, political correctness is the lingua franca of those who believe in control rather than debate, the very essence of totalitarianism.

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

The Threat to Free Speech Is Just Across the Border

Note to American journalists: Step across the border into Canada and you will give up every vestige of your right to free speech and free press. If you write a piece that someone finds offensive or that merely hurts his feelings, you may end up facing trial before one of Canada’s “human rights” tribunals that collectively boast a conviction rate in the range of 100%.

Hard to believe?   Just ask Mark Steyn, widely regarded as one of Canada’s finest journalists.  He recently went on trial before one of these kangaroo courts in British Columbia because a group called the Canadian Islamic Congress didn’t like a book excerpt of his that appeared as an article in Maclean’s magazine. 

The Islamic group claimed that the excerpt from Steyn’s book America Alone engaged in “spreading hatred against Muslims” – despite praise from other journalists such as Rich Lowry, who calls the piece “a sparkling model of the polemical art” and lauds its “profound social analysis.”

No matter.  Before the national Canadian Human Rights Commission and its provincial counterparts, truth is no defense.  And there is no requirement to prove harm.  All you have to do is disagree with the writer’s point of view.  Forget freedom of speech.  Lowry quotes one of the national commission’s principal investigators as saying: “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.”

It is incomprehensible to think that freedom of speech and press have been so thoroughly brutalized within the borders of our northern neighbor.  Equally unbelievable, however, is the fact that the plight of Mark Steyn has been greeted with such a stunning and nearly universal silence by U.S. media.  With a handful of exceptions like Lowry, American journalists have completely ignored this travesty to the north. 

It’s true that Steyn and Lowry both are conservatives – Lowry is editor of National Review  – but I don’t want to say the deafening silence is driven by ideology.  (One of the few other Americans to break the silence, for example, is New York Times reporter Adam Liptak, writing in the International Herald Tribune.)  I think it’s a matter of journalistic indifference to something that’s not happening here.

Yes, it’s a Canadian matter.  But threats to free speech and free press transcend borders.  Especially when the threat is this serious, and the border this close.  That makes it our matter, too. 

Final note to American journalists:  WAKE UP!!