We have long discussed the collapse of free speech values in France as the left criminalizes an ever-widening scope of opposing viewpoints. Conservative groups are denouncing a new such case targeting conservative media. CNEWS was fined and forced to apologize on air after a journalist referred to abortion as the world’s leading cause of death.
CNEWS is owned by Catholic businessman Vincent Bolloré. Presenter Aymeric Pourbaix made the statement during a Catholic program called “En quête d’esprit” (or “In Search of Spirit.”) Whatever that search may have found in terms of spirit, it certainly found censorship.
The program showed a graph on the causes of death that put abortion on top, with 73 million deaths each year worldwide. That constitutes 52% of annual deaths, far ahead of cancer (10 million) and smoking (6.2 million).
The French media regulatory authority Arcom imposed a fine of 100,000 euros and compelled CNEWS to apologize on the air. It was the full monty of censorship, combining a penalty with compelled speech. Arcom found that the network had failed its “obligation of honesty and rigor in the presentation and processing of information.” It declared that “Abortion cannot be presented as a cause of death.”
Obviously, many people around the world view abortion as the death of a human being. However, the press and pundits on the left went ballistic at the statement and called for a crackdown by the government. It is now a violation of law to call abortion a cause of death.
Journalists joined the call for censorship and accused the network of publishing biased and dangerous ideas.
The network was beaten into submission and apologized “for the people who may have been hurt by this infographic.”
Barring people from calling abortion a cause of death is only the latest speech crackdown in a nation that prides itself as a cradle of liberty.
France has been a leader in the rollback on free speech in the West with ever widening laws curtailing free speech. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar. At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism.
In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.”
This is a nation that still echoes the cry of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (“liberté, égalité, fraternité”). However, in today’s France, “liberté” is no longer valued. Individual rights of religion and speech are routinely sacrificed in the name of “equity” and “fraternity.”
In my book The Indispensable Right, I discuss how free speech is in a virtual free fall in Europe. As we face our own growing anti-free speech movement, citizens need to take a long look at countries like France to see what awaits us down this path. Europe went down this slippery slope of censorship decades ago, and the desire to silence others has now become an insatiable appetite.
If we are to protect a right that, more than any other, defines us, we must hold the line against this global movement.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
I note that any scurrilous remark about America or Americans will be tolerated.
We may be talking about France here but this is so clearly an American (US) right-leaning conservative writing. The American formatted date, the American spelling and the American hyperbole about ‘free speech’ and censorship because a Catholic TV show presented misinformation as fact and got pulled up on it.
The “Left” which is mostly just corporations and universities executing policies made by arrogant billionaires– who used to be called “Capitalists” but are now the “donor class” or “plutocracy” or “oligarchs” — we know who they are; but these institutions, including the ossified western state bureacracies, are all enemies of the people. In France, in the USA, all over the decaying West.
The good news is, for every idiotic move they make like this, it will bite them eventually. Imagine the glee with which the censors of yesterday, will be be censored. And perhaps meet Madame G in the Professor’s picture, in person!
Or perhaps it will be more humane. “Vocational Training Camps” so that the former journalists, bureaucrats, DEI execs, and lawfare specialists can learn new useful skills to help them contribute to the new society! IT will all start with a first semester program of irrigation ditch digging and self-sufficiency gardening in the desert.
Sal Sar
“No, judge, I didn’t cause the death of my neighbors, I aborted them which is legal.”
Why Are They Here Every Day?
Dennis Jonathan: What do you do when DJT’s pics for his new administration get shot down? You avoid discussing them. You try to divert attention
Gigi Tom: NO it isn’t–because of the insulated bubble you live in, you MAGAs think that everything your orange hero does “is the rage”–but you are wrong. Most of us Americans do not approve of Trump,
You come here every day to both insult your host in his blog and then lie and dissemble to everyone else here. Every. Single. Day.
You don’t get enough attention looking in the mirror every morning while popping pimples? This is the only other way to fulfill your need for attention?
Why not get married and then you can get all the attention you want and inflict your internal misery only on each other?
Tom: Yes, how DARE people push back against misinformation and disinformation with citations to reliable authorities? And, Tom, did the irony of you insulting us, calling those of us who do push back names, and accusing us of lying occur to you when that’s exactly what you MAGAs do every time one of us posts something? MAGA is a distinct world, made up of gullible, mostly non-educated people who rely on media started by billionaires who invested their money in this media because they want to sway public opinion to get massive tax breaks and roll backs of regulations. So MAGA media spews out anti-science, anti-climate change, anti-government rhetoric, racism, xenophobia, misogyny and anti-Democrat rhetoric and lies–and, it’s working! Substantial numbers of Americans actually believed that the country is headed in the wrong direction and that the economy is on the brink of recession—despite the fact that Biden created the most-successful economy in the world right now, with record low unemployment, the stock market setting records, inflation being brought under control and personal wealth growing. He got passed an infrastructure bill that will repair roads, bridges and airports and create thousands of jobs that Trump will try to take credit for–but, we’ll push back. Biden got COVID under control and got America back to work, back to school, and now we can have leisure travel. MAGA media endlessly lies about Biden, falsely accusing him of receiving bribes from the Chinese–and “weaponizing” the DOJ and FBI–all without anything resembling proof—and you MAGAs believe it. All the lies, racism, misogyny and xenophobia managed to get the most-unfit, most-unqualified candidate for president in US history elected in a squeaker that MAGA media claims was a “mandate”. They lie about everything regarding Trump–his criminal behavior, his sexual assaults, paying off women, falsifying business records, falsifying loan applications, his theft from his charitable foundation, theft of classified documents, trying to rig the 2020 election, his utter failure as president and his criminal indictments. They preach distrust of prosecutors and judges who won’t kow tow to Trump. Part of the MAGA media message is to not only avoid mainstream media, but to distrust everything it says. So, now, you, Tom think that only the MAGA messages should be posted. At least Turley isn’t doing that–so far.
The problem, Gigi, is everything you post is verifiable garbage. You truly live in an alternate universe…
They should list the cause of death as “health care” and let them ponder the implications of that.
So “experts” want to force you to believe it is dishonest to assert that crushing an innocent preborn child’s skull with a pair of forceps; decapitating its crushed head from its body; and surgically ripping its arms and legs off causes death?
Just as you must believe a man who has his penis and testicles removed, or simply likes playing dress up in women’s clothing, is REALLY a woman. Honest.
Make it make sense.
Never-before-seen documents released under a California public records request show Planned Parenthood supplying “viable nonanomalous” fetuses up to 23 weeks old from elective abortions to UC San Diego, as part of its contract to sell the University “proprietary” “fetal material” in exchange for the “valuable consideration” of owning any “patents” and “intellectual property” developed experimenting with them.
https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/2024/11/breaking-viable-nonanomalous-6-month-old-fetuses-sold-from-planned-parenthood-abortions-to-university-of-california-new-documents-show/
* The caduceus used by this organization is unsettling, chilling. Perhaps the new DOJ and congress can prohibit such.
Chilling…
The article today is a rough topic.