Journalists for censorship
A point-counterpoint from the little angel and the little devil who live on my shoulders.
Former Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron has some ideas about combating misinformation and hatred in the media. Jail is involved.
Fox News' former chief political correspondent has joined a chorus of voices calling for serious repercussions against Tucker Carlson - one of the network's most prominent voices.
Carl Cameron was asked: 'Do you think the Murdoch family in charge of Fox will ever pull the plug on Tucker?' during an interview with CNN's Jim Acosta on Saturday.
Cameron, 60, went on to compare Carlson's broadcasts to falsely shouting fire in a crowded movie theater.
'The fact of the matter is, if you disturb the peace by starting a riot in a movie theater, cops are going to arrest you and you might end up in jail or you might end up in something worse.'
Cameron went on to challenge President Joe Biden to take serious action against Carlson and social media.
'The president has to be more forceful and sooner or later the law enforcement and the US government is going to have to stop the lying because it's causing people's deaths,' he said.
'It's not just Fox, it's social media in general. It's on the internet. And we have to remember that a good portion of what we read is coming from folks who aren't Americans, pretending to be Americans in order to gaslight them even worse.'
[…]
Saturday's comments were Cameron doubling down on comments he made in an interview with MSNBC's Nicole Wallace on May 17.
In that interview, Cameron said that the President Biden should be 'taking some names and putting people in jail' following last week's white supremacist massacre in Buffalo.
It’s at times like this that the little cartoon angel on one of my shoulders, and the devil on my other, have it out to determine how I should feel.
First, the case for Carl:
Not long ago, a teenager radicalised by racist hatred on the internet actually carried out a murderous attack against innocent people. Ten of them died. And it’s not the first time someone who believed in the “Great Replacement” conspiracy took up arms as a result.
No rights are completely unlimited, and freedom of speech should be no exception. It has never been so easy for malicious actors to spread their poison so quickly and effectively to so many people. Surely the Founders, writing almost 250 years ago, never foresaw such a development.
And if social media platforms and dubious propaganda “news” outlets won’t do anything about it, it is long past time for the state to step in. Many other countries have already started, and despite the expansive and uncompromising wording of the First Amendment, the United States government has suppressed harmful speech in the past.
Especially during wartime. And when innocent people are actually dying as a result of this trash, are we not in a war?
You aren’t allowed to shout “fire” in a crowded theater. And far too many people are doing just that.
And now for the counterargument:
It absolutely blows my mind when I see people who make a living in an industry that exists because of freedom of expression demand that the state rein it in. And I go into full Frank Grimes meltdown mode when people want to follow up four years with an authoritarian fascist in the White House, and facing the very real possibility that said fascist and his allies could take power once again, by arguing in favor of tools he can use to actually shut down his critics and opponents instead of just whining about it on Twitter Truth Social.
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