We may not realize the degree to which free speech is under attack

Free speech is under attack across the country. The censoring of conservatives on Google, Twitter and Facebook is one form, and another form of censorship occurs in the news media when many of the nation’s largest and most read newspapers, and most watched and listened to broadcast media, report only some of the relevant news.

This bias of selecting some news over other news is dishonest and dangerous. It creates a situation where millions of Americans are quietly forced, through their reading, listening and watching habits, to make a wide variety of often significant decisions with only some of the important information they may need.

Free speech is also under attack at many of America’s institutions of higher learning. Colleges and universities once were the places where the expression of a variety of ideas was highly regarded and encouraged.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recently released the results of what it called “the largest free speech survey of college students ever performed,” consulting roughly 20,000 students at a variety of institutions. 

The 55 colleges involved were chosen “to represent a variety of colleges in the United States, including large public universities, small private colleges, religiously-affiliated colleges such as Brigham Young University, and Ivy League colleges.”

The results are not encouraging.

Sixty percent of students said they could not express an opinion because of how students, a professor, or the administration would respond. This position was held by 73 percent of “strong Republicans” and 52 percent of “strong Democrats.”

Black students are most likely to report an instance where they censored themselves, with 63 percent taking this position. Here are three examples from survey participants on self-censoring:

* “I was in a class where the professor pretty much made you feel as if your participation grade was at risk if you disagreed with them.” — Black female at Georgetown University

 

* “Whenever it is obvious that some of my professors are on the left, I felt like I couldn’t express my political opinions due to my grades.” — Asian male at Clemson University

 

* The professors within my college tend to be conservative. I worry with certain professors that my opinion would cause them to unfairly grade my projects. — Hispanic female at the University of Arizona

The survey also found that just 15 percent of students — 11 percent of females and 19 percent of males — felt comfortable publicly disagreeing with a professor about a controversial topic.

The FIRE report notes that “a number of questions focused on a tension between feelings, or emotional reasoning, with logical inference and deduction.” And some faculty members explained that “a number of their students place a ‘supreme importance’ on their own feelings even when what they ‘feel’ is right is contradicted by empirical evidence.” Here are two students’ responses on this:

“Just in general. You have to be very careful of your words in order to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. Sometimes it is very hard to debate on topics because of this.” — Multiracial male at Northwestern University

“Nearly every day I feel like I cannot express my opinion without hurting someone’s feelings.” — White female at Georgetown University

Over the last couple of years there have been several instances of speakers invited to campuses to speak, but were shouted down and sometimes threatened. Many of those speakers were unable to complete their speaking engagement.

FIRE found that Ivy League school students were slightly more in favor of using violence to stop a campus speech. Twenty-one percent — one of every five — expressed some level of acceptance for violence in such situations.

And, on whether it is “always” or “sometimes” acceptable to shout down a speaker in extreme conversations, only 15 percent of extreme conservatives agreed, while more than 60 percent of extreme liberals agreed.

FIRE rated the universities on a numerical scale, and color-coded them for Speech Code, meaning “whether college policies restrict student speech that is protected by the First Amendment.” The codes are: Green = Best; Yellow = Intermediate; Red = Worst; Pink = Warning.

The five institutions with the highest level of free speech are: University of Chicago, Kansas State University, Texas A&M University, University of California, Los Angeles, and Arizona State University, all with Green codes.

The five institutions with the lowest level of free speech are: Syracuse University, Dartmouth College, Yellow codes; and Louisiana State University, University of Texas, and DePauw University, Red codes.

No West Virginia institutions were among the 55 that were ranked, but two Virginia institutions were included. The University of Virginia was ranked 6th on the list with a high level of free speech, and a Green code. The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI) was ranked a respectable 8th with a mid-level Yellow code.

Censorship is a serious issue, one that is at odds with America’s First Amendment. Free speech is a cornerstone of this nation. 

There really is only one reason why someone or some group would exercise censorship: They are afraid their ideas will not be able to win when competing with different ideas, and therefore they will be unable to inflict their will on others. It’s about control.

Reining in social media censorship, and ending the debate commission

 

There is increasing evidence supporting the idea that certain social media platforms are getting too big for their already huge britches. Two of them, Twitter and Facebook, cannot seem to kick the habit of censoring some of their participants.

As the owners of a platform, Twitter and Facebook have complete control of it, of course. And both of them have millions of users, thereby putting them in a very small class with a lot of weight to sling around.

And because of their huge number of users and the influence that those big numbers carry with them, they should not arbitrarily restrict or block what some users post, while leaving others alone to post as they please. 

We also need to keep in mind that these platforms are under no legal obligation to monitor the postings of their users for accuracy, only for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, as are those sites classified as “publishers.”

In fact, social media are protected from legal action for what their users post by 47 U.S.C. § 230, a Provision of the Communication Decency Act (CDA), unlike media that are considered publishers, such as newspapers and broadcasters.

Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." 

This means that online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. Twitter and Facebook are not responsible for the truth/accuracy of any posts made by users, beyond the criminal and intellectual property-based claims mentioned earlier.

Despite the protections the CDA provides to social media, both Twitter and Facebook routinely block user posts/comments that breach their nebulous “rules of the road,” often on the premise of inaccuracy.

So why are Twitter and Facebook so concerned with what their users have to say on their platform, when they are under no legal obligation to be concerned about accuracy and such?

And, as it turns out, most or all of those censored posts/comments are made by … wait for it … conservatives/Republicans.

Among users that have been, and perhaps still are, arbitrarily blocked or restricted are President of the United States Donald Trump, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, the satire site The Babylon Bee, and the 219-year-old New York Post, the fourth largest newspaper in the country. The latter had all references to a story it published on the Hunter Biden email situation removed/blocked by Twitter, even when made by other users.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week called it “unacceptable” that his site blocked users from sharing links to the Post story without providing a clear message as to why it was taking the action. But is that all that Twitter did that was improper?

“Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech. But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai tweeted recently.

Pai recently announced that the FCC plans to “clarify the meaning” of Section 230 that protects these tech giants from being held responsible for content posted by their users.

“The Commission’s General Counsel has informed me that the FCC has the legal authority to interpret Section 230. Consistent with this advice, I intend to move forward with a rulemaking to clarify its meaning,” Pai added.

Perhaps, if social media platforms are going to act like publishers, they will be held to the same legal standards and eligible for the same potential penalties, as are newspapers and broadcasters. Most likely, arbitrarily censoring some users for certain infractions, but not all of them, will carry serious penalties.

These Left-leaning platforms are all too happy to cheat to help push their political agenda. They should not be allowed to use their platforms to affect the beneficial information that users see, and perhaps especially when that information has influence on election choices.

* * *

The Presidential Debate Commission has come under criticism, particularly from President Donald Trump’s campaign and his backers on the political right, for what those critics charge are politically motivated actions.

Without getting into the weeds of those charges, the Commission is the sole agent that organizes the presidential debates, with all details based upon what its members alone decide.

Instead of using an independent commission, that could conceivably be biased, why not allow the campaigns of the two, or perhaps three, candidates who have the most support to work together to establish the details of the debates, including the number of debates, their locations, who the moderators will be, what topics will be included, etc.

With campaign officials agreeing on these details, there would be much less for individual campaigns to disagree with, and it might even produce better debates.

The debate commission system has been around for a long time. Maybe it is time for a new approach to presidential debates.