Monday, September 18, 2017
FCC gets censorship demands
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said that “free speech in practice seems to be under siege in this country,” pointing to protests to silence speakers on college campuses and to messages that the commission receives to try to shut down news channels.
“Fewer today seem to be willing to defend to the death others’ right to say things with which they might disagree,” Pai said in a speech on Friday before the Future of Speech Online forum. He called the attempt to shut down speeches and free expression on college campuses “especially distressing,” and cited incidents at Evergreen State, Yale, and Berkeley. Conservative writer Ben Shapiro spoke at Berkeley on Thursday, amid heavy security given threats of protest and even violence.
Pai said that he also sees “worrying signs” at the FCC, pointing to Twitter messages in which “people regularly demand that the FCC yank licenses from cable news channels like Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN because they disagree with the opinions expressed on those networks.”
“Setting aside the fact that the FCC doesn’t license cable channels, these demands are fundamentally at odds with our legal and cultural traditions,” Pai said.
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5 comments:
these demands are fundamentally at odds with our legal and cultural traditions,” Pai said.
We don't need any stinking legal and cultural traditions !
They should take their stupid demands and stick them where the sun never shines
This is why we have a republic and not a democacy - there will always be people, even large groups of them at times, who think they know best how others should tbhink.
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
-Thomas Paine
A comment from (fake) blogger Godfrey Elfwick: "Free speech in theory sounds like a great idea, until you realise how many people use it to say the wrong things".
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