For most of my career in publishing this newspaper — 45 years this December — I had a
policy to allow letter writers to say whatever was on their minds and most of them did, some calling me or others “commies” or using profane and sometimes racist language. We used to have one local racist letter writer who would submit things to us that we might only correct his grammar.
Then one day, that I remember quite clearly, RLn’s Latino second-chair editor turned around to me and said, “James, I refuse to print this letter” from that racist letter writer. He had the support of the entire newsroom. And I said, “You know you are right.” We are under no obligation to spread these words no matter how much I believe in free speech.
I decided that it wasn’t my job to broadcast hate speech and it was morally and ethically wrong to do it. I then spent some time rethinking what free speech is and what it is not. A close friend of mine recently challenged me to listen to a podcast from a right-wing libertarian who was defending Donald Trump as not a racist. This I found quite perplexing after all of the public hate speech this candidate is known for, and since my friend is far from being a racist, how could she defend him?
Let me say that my consideration of censorship in a free democracy that is enshrined in the
First Amendment has shifted. Sure, we the people have the right to say anything and that
political free speech has more protections than any other form, including writing and publishing. It’s the foundation of our free press. There are some restrictions. You cannot scream “fire” in a crowded theater: You can’t call in a terrorist bomb threat to the airport; and you can’t threaten to harm another person with violence under the terrorist threat law 422. I mean you may feel free to do all these things, but you can be arrested and convicted for doing them.
Publishers especially have an ethical, professional and legal responsibility to print or broadcast what they know is true. Yet so many right-wing so-called news outlets don’t do this routinely. Like Fox News in the Dominion voting fraud machine case, they can and have been sued in civil court. Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million and acknowledged the court’s earlier ruling that Fox had broadcast false statements (lies) about Dominion. The settlement did not require Fox News to apologize. It is the largest known media settlement for defamation in U.S. history.
Some have called Fox, Newsmax and Epoch Times, as well as others, some of the biggest
threats to our democracy because they’re purveyors of rightwing propaganda- they often hide behind the First Amendment as they spread lies. However, there is such a thing as slander and libel that often are settled in civil cases but the best defense for any news media is to stand behind publishing the truth as they know it. And if we get it wrong then there’s a retraction. Nobody has ever had to retract a statement or article that called Trump a racist, bigot and a threat to our democracy. Even though Donald would probably sue a lamppost for not leaning in his direction or casting him in a bad light.
What we have seen over the last 40-some-odd years is that with the lifting of restrictions on media ownership, more and more ultra-rightwing billionaires and conservative investment groups have gone around this nation buying as much media as possible, they have become monopolies in certain areas like Live Nation to the point that a newspaper such as this one has become the rare exception. RLn remains independent of big corporate ownership and is still locally owned. This is very rare these days. Our editorial coverage is not held hostage to any corporate influence and we are not a PR mouthpiece for billionaires or government agencies.
For the last many years, the conservative parties and pundits have accused “the media” as
being “liberal” so much so that many in the broadcast media have bent over backward to prove that they are fair and unbiased- allowing some very unfounded and at times irrational opinions to be aired without fact-checking. And fact-checking itself has become something of a MAGA battle cry against any media not hewing to the Republican party line. Rare are the news sources where independent voices can be heard and where journalists dare to call out a lie.
All I can say to anyone who argues that the ex-president and convicted felon is not a racist: I can say with great confidence it’s a provable fact based upon his very own words and actions. And that any person of intelligence can vote for this criminal is beyond my comprehension.
No free speech doesn’t mean you can say anything in every context without consequences, but it seems that Trump denies this and has elevated lying, hate speech and bigotry to the public marketplace of political discourse and no one has yet stopped him from spouting his vitriol and slanders. Kamala Harris may just do this come Nov. 5, but I doubt that even after losing he’ll go away quietly unless he’s finally put in jail.
*Academic studies tend not to confirm the popular media narrative that liberal journalists
produce left-leaning media bias, though some studies suggest economic incentives may have that effect. Instead, the studies reviewed by S. Robert Lichter generally found the media to be a conservative force in politics.