We have been discussing the latest Irish law to crackdown on free speech. Yet, even with the criminalization of speech, there is apparently still the danger of citizens reading or hearing facts from reporters that are best kept from them. Thus, Kitty Holland, a correspondent with the Irish Times, is defending the media’s decision to suppress stories that would “incite hatred” and undermine journalistic viewpoints.
The comments came in a BBC interview regarding the victim impact statement of the boyfriend of Ashling Murphy, who was murdered in 2022 by an immigrant. Ryan Casey stated in part:
It just sickens me to the core that someone can come to this country, be fully supported in terms of social housing, social welfare, and free medical care for over 10 years… over 10 years… never hold down a legitimate job, and never once contribute to society in any way shape or form… can commit such a horrendous evil act of incomprehensible violence on such a beautiful, loving and talented person who in fact, worked for the state, educating the next generation and represented everything that is good about Irish society.
I feel like this country is no longer the country that Ashling and I grew up in, and Ireland has officially lost its innocence when a crime of this magnitude can be perpetrated in broad daylight. This country needs to wake up. This time, things have got to change, we have to once and for all start putting the safety of not only Irish people — but everybody in this country who works hard, pays taxes, raises families and overall contributes to society — first.
We don’t want to see any other family in this country go through what we have gone through and are continuing to go through. I myself have a little sister and honestly, just the thought of her walking the streets of any village, town or city in this country alone makes me physically sick and quite frankly absolutely terrifies me as this country is simply not safe anymore!
This time, if real change does not happen, if the safety of people living in this country is further ignored, I’m afraid our country is heading down a very dangerous path and you can be certain that we will not be the last family to be in this position.
The host asked: “Those were very interesting comments, weren’t they?”
Holland disagreed and said that they had to be suppressed in the best interests of the public:
“I think elements of them were not good,. They were incitement to hatred, and I think that’s why the media left out aspects of them. I think they were right to not include [Casey’s full comments in news reports]. I don’t think that they were helpful, and this is the kind of thing that the far right latches on to.”
What was striking was the ease with which Holland moves directly into the suppression of a story as the guardian of the public good. Some news is simply “not helpful” so the media should not allow the public to be exposed to it.
Holland previously won the Journalist of the Year, News Reporter of the Year, and the Overall winner of the Justice Media Awards.
Holland’s view is consistent with many in the media in the United States today.
I have long been a critic of what I called “advocacy journalism” as it began to emerge in journalism schools. These schools encourage students to use their “lived expertise” and to “leave[] neutrality behind.” Instead, of neutrality, they are pushing “solidarity [as] ‘a commitment to social justice that translates into action.’”
For example, we previously discussed the release of the results of interviews with over 75 media leaders by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Saying that “Objectivity has got to go” is, of course, liberating. You can dispense with the necessities of neutrality and balance. You can cater to your “base” like columnists and opinion writers. Sharing the opposing view is now dismissed as “bothsidesism.” Done. No need to give credence to opposing views. It is a familiar reality for those of us in higher education, which has been increasingly intolerant of opposing or dissenting views.
Downie recounted how news leaders today
“believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”
There was a time when all journalists shared a common “identity” as professionals who were able to separate their own bias and values from the reporting of the news.
Now, objectivity is virtually synonymous with prejudice. Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press declared “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”
In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”
Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”
Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism.
Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.”
At the same time, outlets like National Public Radio have abandoned the rule that journalists should not engage in public protests.
NPR declared that it would allow employees to participate in political protests when the editors believe the causes advance the “freedom and dignity of human beings.” So it remained up to the editors if a reporter could join a pro-life protest (unlikely) or a pro-gun control protest (very likely).
Likewise, American politicians (including Barack Obama) have called upon the media to actively frame news to shape public opinion. This includes support for the widespread censorship of opposing views on social media.
The Holland interview shows how matter-of-fact the cause of censorship has become for reporters. The immediate question is not whether it was news to report (which it certainly was), but whether the news would further the cause or narrative of the media.
There has always been media bias, but it is now openly acknowledged and embraced by reporters. They view themselves now as the guardians protecting citizens from harmful information or news that they cannot put into the proper perspective. Information is treated like sugary drinks under the Big Gulp laws, you are better off having others decide what is healthy for you to consume . . . or to know.
Here is the full victim impact statement.
JournoListic misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation to steer, tend, and domesticate demos-cracy.
Discussion Topic: Responsibilities of Public Speech
Today, I’m kicking off an invitation to comment on the flip-side of free speech — what are the responsibilities that attach to speaking publicly (publishing)?
Let’s start with the question: Since public spaces are venues where conflicts are aired, are these spaces supposed to work more towards conflict resolution or conflict intensification? Assuming the former, what aspects of speech responsibility are obliged? Is a neutral moderator or referee role indicated? What rules (responsibilities) does a moderator impose in exchange for access to an audience of listeners? How does ad-hominem personal attack impede the process when conflict resolution?
Go groom a child, pedo.
are these spaces supposed to work more towards conflict resolution or conflict intensification?
You’re asking the wrong question. Why? Because it is a question designed to invite arbitrary censorship based on the moderator’s subjective view of whether the speech at issue advances or impedes the alleged goal of conflict resolution. All human moderators come with built-in biases and corruptions. That is inevitable because . . . it’s human nature. Speech the moderator believes impedes conflict resolution, and thus would be subject to suppression, may in fact help such resolution in ways the moderator can’t see, or in ways the moderator doesn’t want. You need to find a better question, one that is not subject to such arbitrariness.
OldManFromKS,
Well said.
Seconded! I made a similar comment, but it took me for our five long paragraphs to say the same thing. Way to go, oldmanfromKansas!
My experience working on design teams and leading teams says just the opposite. The goal is to manage conflict constructively. If the leader is authoritarian in an arbitrary, biased way, it stifles creativity. On the other extreme, if the leader is too weak, and allows zealotry and ad-hominem forms of conflict to brew, that also freezes goal-directed creativity.
Yes, leaders and referees come with some biases, but the good ones are self-aware and quell those impulses in order to run a fair, open process.
If your highly suspicious view of moderators were true in the real world, we wouldn’t have successful companies because people would not be able to cooperate to solve problems. Just the opposite is true.
The exceptions are the failed organizations and families where cooperative problem-solving breaks down.
One observation I keep coming back to is how poorly our national government is doing at problem-solving compared to the smaller entities we participate in….churches, businesses, families. And the reason is poor leadership at the national level….going back to when the Reagan-Bush 12-year run ended, and the Clintons were elected.
My experience working on design teams
‘
If you managed those teams, then you came with your own incentives. That’s how you make your decisions. Your corporate overlords are constantly prioritizing your goals.
Those are your incentives(if you want to keep and advance in your job)
There is a difference between a space that is individually owned and a public space. Your job description was defined as your goals. Management would fire you if you deviate too much from the preset goals.
You changed the context from public forum to corporate design teams. Your stated observations are limited to the latter. When it comes to speech in a public forum, what is at stake? Not private corporate success, but the resolution of public issues relating to the country as a whole. Corporations are inherently kept in check by the realities of a competitive marketplace. The government has no competitors, so different restraints are needed. The government rules over a whole nation, so greater constraints are needed.
The Founding Fathers realized that the government is ruled by corrupted men, not angels. Hence the need for three co-equal branches to keep each other in check, and the need for a government of limited powers.
OldManKS, you start out by impugning my motives, and incorrectly. I’m vehemently opposed to censoring ideas that are well-intended toward conflict resolution, because that crimps off consideration of the full panoply of options.
I’m asking a nuance-question. What responsibilities attend to public speech in a healthy, functioning free society (one that makes good decisions in realtime that, in retrospect, are broadly viewed as good decisions)?
Being able to consider all options in a meritocratic competition before deciding the best option should be an obvious feature of the infospace. But, “anything goes” opens the door to intimidating threats and deceptive manipulation, and those work against a fair competition of ideas (it’s also how dictators remain in power). Therefore, my question is really about how to regulate an infospace to maximize good public choicemaking (as seen broadly and retrospectively).
Any ideas? This is the right question….for any organization or nation that wants to be successful.
“anything goes” opens the door to intimidating threats and deceptive manipulation
Having to live with bad speech is a price we pay for freedom. As the ACLU says, the answer to bad speech is more (better) speech; which discredits the bad speech without censoring it. If the forum is private – e.g., someone’s private literary salon – it is a different matter as each person is ruler over his own private property.
Any ideas?
We have 50 states that are said to be laboratories of democracy, per Justice Louis Brandeis. My idea would be to have a central repository where we can objectively view the results of the different ideas that get put into practice, and this repository would encompass the implementation of policy ideas in every area of public policy. I admit that’s pretty simplistic and would take a lot of fleshing out. But I’m just commenting on a blog, not writing a scholarly research paper.
“that are well-intended ”
How do you know what is not well-intended?
We have laws regulating violent speech, libel, etc. One can fiddle with them a bit, but what you are looking for is impossible in a free public domain.
Why don’t you provide examples of free speech within the law that you believe should not be permitted and cannot be managed by fiddling with the existing laws?
Fiddling with existing laws?…that’s exactly what I want to discuss.
I don’t think in terms of speech “not being permitted”. That’s too harsh, and inactionable in advance. I think in a more nuanced way, for instance, if someone defames you — ruining a reputation you’ve invested decades in building — you can sue for $ damages. With a favorable judgment (e.g. like Nicholas Sandmann got), you can get back your reputation, and simultaneously deter wannabe defamers, protecting others.
Examples of free speech I would favor being sued in some kind of Public Frauds Court:
Mike Morell, Antony Blinken, CIA: Pushing out a false narrative that Hunter Biden’s laptop content
was “likely Russian disinformation” 3 weeks before the 2020 election (tilting the result toward Biden)
Trump, Giuliani, Eastman: Pushing out the whopper that the 2020 election was stolen after
state courts had agreed to consider any evidence — and having not been presented with anything more
than speculative grievances, leading to attempts to “Stop the Steal” (impede the Constitution)
Ahmed Chalabi, CIA: Pushing out a false-intelligence psy ops claiming that Al Qaeda and Saddam
Hussein had nuclear weapons and were likely plotting to attack NYC and Washington DC with one
(leading to an unnecessary and costly war)
Do you think public frauds lawsuits could at least partially deter wholesale fabrications intending to dupe the public? Do you think that new legal tool would put a chill on free-flowing political speech?
Do we have to put up with the most brazen infowarfare not being legally challengeable in order to have free speech? Might some approach work (civil torts) where govt. officials can be sued by the public for use of false narratives as a tool of political competition?
“Examples of free speech I would favor being sued in some kind of Public Frauds Court:”
Fraud is already punishable criminally and civilly. Provide an example of how you wish to expand the law and what you want to cover if that is your agenda.
“Mike Morell, Antony Blinken, CIA: Pushing out a false narrative that Hunter Biden’s laptop content was “likely Russian disinformation”
I would love to punish them, but how does one punish opinion? The agencies should do more as they have power since they control pensions, advancements, etc.
“Trump, Giuliani, Eastman: Pushing out the whopper that the 2020 election was stolen after
state courts had agreed to consider any evidence — and having not been presented with anything more.”
I agree with them, but part of the question revolves around the meaning of the word stolen. There is plenty of evidence that it could have been, and more proof as time passes.
There was lawlessness. The ballots weren’t secured and lacked continuous legal custody. Mail-in voting is ripe for fraud and makes it nearly impossible to prove fraud within the required timeline adequately. The solution to the problem you provide is to have better voting procedures, which include ending mail-in voting.
So far, to provide a couple of examples, I have yet to see the evidence from 2,000 Mules or James O’Keefe disproven. Presently, cases are in court. There are too many problems that occurred with that election. We have several people on the blog who have made an excellent case of election fraud.
Is opinion fraud? Can we read minds well enough to convict someone of fraud because we know they are lying, but we are absent proof?
OldManKS, you start out by impugning my motives, and incorrectly.
pbinCA… you put your motives on public display when you attempted (rather sophomorically) to insinuate a structured setting with you as the proud monitor (properly compensated for doing that, I assume) is no different than free speech in the public space.
Public space free speech being that where people such as YOU don’t get to decide the questions, establish rules – and of course, decide what the objectives must be for the discussion.
Public speech is free in that it doesn’t have rules that it will be moderated, where there won’t be a moderator declaring that the rule is that it is supposed to be managed/censored towards arriving at some fix to some problem (as defined by who? The moderator?), etc.
Free public speech may even be meaningless – or actually unhelpful. When that is true, that’s simply the cost of allowing free speech, rather than having speech which is controlled and censored by moderators, paid or not.
Moderated speech, even if the agenda of the moderator is as pure as those of God’s angels, is not free public speech.
OK, if I understand your point, the whopper that Blinken & Morell concocted and pushed out with CIA help (51 signatures) to tilt the vote in Biden’s direction is the “cost of free speech”. If a Presidential election is decided by voters who were successfully duped, is that a free and fair election?
My suggestion for how to deter such corrupt machinations is some new branch of lawsuits similar to defamation, but where the injury is intentionally duping the public for political gain. I’d point out that this approach does not require any moderator of the public conversation. It has no preemptive force — except a kind of self-censoring where the actor thinks twice before pushing blatant lies for political advantage.
Taking up the Blinken-Morrell whopper, and all the sympathetic media running with it, are you OK to see this style of deceitful political competition become routine and accepted? How about ever more deceptive using deep fake AI? You seem to be saying “yes”. Is that because you think 1A broadly confers a right to dupe?….or just that you can’t see a practical, gentle way to qualify the reach of 1A?
PbinCA, I note many of your complaints have to do with politicians or agencies. I should have made it simpler. If what you see is wrongdoing, then treat it at the source. Don’t wait until it gets to court. Same with all agencies and the CIA. Where politicians are concerned, do not vote for them.
Can you provide examples of situations where managing the problems at the source doesn’t cause substantial improvement?
Interesting that you point to the letter supporting the suppression of the Hunter laptop story as an example of free speech. In fact that’s a case in which speech was suppressed, in the sense that the news media and social media blocked the (true) story of the laptop. So it was not an “anything goes” scenario, but the opposite.
my question is really about how to regulate an infospace to maximize good public choicemaking (as seen broadly and retrospectively)
Sure, fair enough, but the problem is that your (meaning anyone’s) idea of “good public choicemaking” is going to be different from mine (meaning anyone’s else’s). And we can’t live retrospectively.
There is no way to put a fence around public speech that doesn’t chill public speech. Even demanding simple etiquette has a chilling effect (one we are willing to put up with in some fora – not using obscene language in certain places, for instance).
What you’re asking for, no matter what you think you’re asking for, is similar to the science fiction trope of the Rule of the Scientists: they’re so smart, so rational, we can trust them to act in the best interests of Humanity. As they define it. I guarantee that, for instance, an American one-child policy that would have seemed rational and wise and in the interests of Humanity to the Scientists (capital S on purpose) back in the Population Bomb! days would not have appeared to be “good public choicemaking” to my parents with their three kids, and only two generations later do we discover that it would have been terrible public choicemaking.
Basically history tells us that we should all, always, be leery of anything we’re told is “for our own good.”
Since public spaces are venues where conflicts are aired, are these spaces supposed to work more towards conflict resolution or conflict intensification?
You’re starting from a false premise: that “public spaces” in which speech takes place have a uniform purpose with regard to speech. This premise assumes that public speech must serve the purpose of either the connotatively positive “conflict resolution” or the connotatively negative “conflict intensification” – why? How do you dismiss speech’s simply informing, for instance?
Here’s how, it seems to me: Implicit in your formulation is the connotative weight I indicated above. If speech accords with what we call, in shorthand, The Narrative, then it’s positive. If it doesn’t, then even if it’s true, it’s negative. Informing listeners of facts has no value on its own, according to this formulation; it all depends on whether the facts support a predetermined narrative conclusion.
Probably I shouldn’t try to comment like this before coffee, but do you see what I mean? An analogy might be something like this: if you start from the unshakable idea – with great moral weight – that God created the universe in seven 24-hour days, then any public speech not in support of that idea is definitionally bad and leads to “conflict intensification,” because the speech people hear – which may include logical argument, scientific evidence, theological reasoning – causes them to question your initial morally weighted premise. OTOH, any speech that does support the seven-day creation idea is definitionally good and leads to “conflict resolution” in that people’s beliefs are not only not challenged but not even opposed by stupid alternatives, much less reasonable ones. You can’t have conflict when there’s only one side, so the more one-sided speech is, the better.
Speech in itself is value-neutral. Any societal structure that attempts preemptively to allow or disallow speech on the basis of how listeners will respond to it is assuming that listeners’ response defines whether particular speech is allowable. That’s not free speech.
“Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press declared “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”
Does she and others of her illustrious group, actually believe that the evil, murderous one-of’s actually read her biased nonsense?
Deb,
I would ask her, since when are things like truth, facts and common sense standards limited to White, educated, and fairly wealthy?
I am not white.
I may not be educated but I can define what a woman is. I know there are two biological sexes. I know pornography in elementary schools is wrong.
Depending on ones metrics I likely am fairly wealthy.
I do believe that is what we call a “cover up” and it has no reason to exist in journalism, only in politics and business (and these days in medicine and education).
Independent journalism is a ‘buy.’ I expect the attack on platforms like X to intensify as information seeks to be free.
“I don’t think that they were helpful . . .”
To what end — you bootlicking lackey?
People are concerned about the West degenerating into dictatorship, and rightfully so. A precondition of that descent is a culture of servile people. They are everywhere.
Just wait until the media and the democrats get hold of AI to completely control the narrative. Guess who programs the Algorithms. My guess is the good professor will still vote Democratic
OT but related,
“Inflation Is Your Fault” And Other Self-Loathing Liberal Lies
https://open.substack.com/pub/quoththeraven/p/inflation-is-your-fault-and-other?r=qtpff&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
There is no such thing as totally objective journalism, now or ever for that matter. In fact, the supposition that there ever was is actually subjective. Journalism has always been limited by the questions it can ask, and by living within the realm of the cliche.
“There is no such thing . . .”
Thank you for agreeing that total objectivity is possible and desirable.
Funny what they call hate speech, anyone with any degree of critical thinking skills calls truth, facts, or common sense.
Well said Upstate!
Upstate, you’re exactly right. If a person doesn’t like the speech, for whatever perception they view it as “hate speech” etc., then they don’t have to read or listen to it. They are free to present what “they” believe the facts are that counter the other person’s speech. But they don’t have the right, in a free society, to shut down what they don’t want to hear by giving it a label that they think empowers them to silence others.
The essence and cornerstone of the 1st Amendment is a free society cannot exist and persevere without the free and unfettered flow of speech, in whatever form, manner and content, regardless of who might be offended by it.
If you just don’t talk about it, the problem will go away right?
It is naive and stupid for the globalists to gaslight the population by saying nothing will change in your society after importing millions of people you have little in common with culturally, ethnically, religiously or in anyway else.
Look at the problem of Northern Ireland. It exists because the English deliberately imported thousands of Scots Protestants in the early 17th century. People while different in religion and culture, were much more similar to the native Irish than the people being brought in now.
How did that work out?
The left doesn’t want to debate this because they have no answers except to double down and call you a slur.
And calling me a “Nazi” for writing this is not a reply.
antonio
Early 18th century, I think, Antonio, but a good example nontheless.
@kevin t kilty
The British Isles has historically consisted of 4 distinct peoples – English, Irish, Scots and Welsh.
Four peoples who look the same in appearance and are similar culturally; and yet they have all had the conflicts in the past – often violent ones.
And the globalists tell us that accepting millions of people with whom we have nothing in common will somehow “enrich” and improve our societes.
And when conflict arises it is somehow the native societies fault for not being “nice” enough.
So tell me s@@tlibs, which Western country has ever voted for open borders? Let me save you the trouble, there aren’t any but the elites know what is best for us rubes, don’t they?
Democracy – the god that failed.
antonio
Medicare and Social Security are effectively Ponzi schemes that will be bankrupt soon. They were invented by Democrats to corrupt the populace and buy their votes. Similarly, Democrat narcistic policies that promote abortion; male-hating feminism; homosexuality; gender bender cross dressing; etc. all discourage heterosexual family formation. So now the country’s reproduction rate is far below the replacement rate which means the numbers do not work for the Ponzi/vote buying schemes.
Worse, there are no politically viable options to “fix” these Democrat created problems.
So the politicians of both parties turn a blind eye to the illegal invasion of tens of millions of people. They know a significant portion of the invaders will use fake identities, including stolen and otherwise unauthorized Social Security numbers, to get employment. Then the employers will confiscate on behalf of government Social Seurity and FICA taxes to keep the Democrat created Ponzi schemes afloat for a while longer. That allows the politicians to “kick the can down the road” until it all unravels into a bigger, more catastrophic mess.
When it does, we know Republicans will be blamed for the catastrophic disaster Democrats created because that’s how the world works.
Isaiah 5:20
Confucius Say: Look Not | Listen Not | Speak Not
Look not at what is contrary to propriety;
listen not to what is contrary to propriety;
speak not what is contrary to propriety;
make no movement which is contrary to propriety.
“see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”.
The three monkeys are:
Mizaru (見ざる), who sees no evil, covering his eyes,
Kikazaru (聞かざる), who hears no evil, covering his ears,
Iwazaru (言わざる), who speaks no evil, covering his mouth.
Confucius Say: Look Not | Listen Not | Speak Not
Look not at what is contrary to propriety;
listen not to what is contrary to propriety;
speak not what is contrary to propriety;
make no movement which is contrary to propriety.
“see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”.
The three monkeys are:
Mizaru (見ざる), who sees no evil, covering his eyes,
Kikazaru (聞かざる), who hears no evil, covering his ears,
Iwazaru (言わざる), who speaks no evil, covering his mouth.
The media has come to believe that we are either too stupid or too dangerous to know the facts that allow us to formulate our own opinions. As the guardians of truth they want to lead us around by the nose because they know what is best for us.
pretty obvious at this point the globalist leftists…are backed by people who wish to destroy the west!
As NO ONE can point to one good purpose for unrestraint immigration from the WORST Cultures on planet earth!
so leftist reporters are tools for fascism. Check!
We just finished watching The Man in the High Castle and in light of today’s world, I think it should move from the fiction section, to the non-fiction. I can not get that show off my mind because every day is a reminder that we are heading down that path.
Yes! “The Man in the High Castle” is worth the watch, IMO. I viewed the series a few years ago.
What is the purpose of a victims impact statement?
If is impossible to have a welfare state and open borders.
Justice never happens in secret.
The term ‘useful idiots’ comes to my mind..
DO not know why though..