Wednesday, April 08, 2020

Don't let free speech be a casualty of coronavirus. We need it more than ever

In times of crisis, liberal democratic institutions and values are vulnerable to authoritarian power grabs, or corona coups, as we are seeing around the world today. One of the first victims, as always, is freedom of speech. But the current attack on free speech is particularly dangerous, because it does not only target, reasonably, “fake news” on coronavirus, but also critique of inadequacies in hospitals by healthcare workers.

These are the people best informed about the situation, and thus the best potential antidotes to fake news. Yet, according to the Independent, British NHS doctors are being gagged over protective equipment shortages, while NHS England has taken control of communications for many NHS hospitals and staff.

In the US, one of the few western democracies without a universal public healthcare system, individual private hospitals are doing the censoring. Prioritizing their brand and profits over the health of their patients and staff, private hospitals across the US have threatened staff with termination if they speak out about the lack of protective gear. Several hospital staff have already been fired after speaking out, an incredible waste of crucial but sparse resources during a pandemic.

Leaving aside the problem of employers regulating the speech of their employees, incidentally an increasingly common development (even at universities), censoring healthcare professionals is outright dangerous to the broader community. These are the people who actually have day-to-day experience with the coronavirus and risk their lives to help others – particularly if their employers don’t provide them with adequate protective gear.

SOURCE  


1 comment:

Stan B said...

This is the tension between private rights. If you are my employee, how much are you allowed to say that may disparage or hurt my business before I can fire you? Since there is no way for an independent 3rd party to ascertain the truth of what you say without some sort of investigatory capacity, on whom does the onus of "truth," and proving the "truth" fall?

All businesses have problems - personnel, supply, etc - and most are having such problems right now. Most businesses also have clear guidelines for employees about who is allowed to talk to the press about the business in an "official" capacity. Healthcare businesses are no different. I'm sorry, but I don't know what some people want - "you need to be free to say the truth" is a very tough standard to meet, and when an employee gets fired for speaking their "own truth" because they violate policy, that's an unfortunate "cost of business" IMHO.

There are "whistleblower" laws - and if you believe something is truly endangering the public, I suggest you avail yourselves of them. If you are wrongly terminated, you have the courts to fall back on. That's the way the system works - not blanket protection for every disgruntled employee to open his pie-hole and see how many clicks he can get speaking out.