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from the I-Disapprove-of-What-You-Say,-But-I-Will-Defend-to-the-Death-Your-Right-to-Say-It dept.
From an editorial in the Otago Daily Times out of New Zealand, Censorship a Trojan Horse:
It's an oft-cited maxim that the news media is the "fourth estate" upon which a healthy democracy stands.
It ensures the three traditional powers of state — the legislature, executive and judiciary — can be critiqued, challenged and curbed from quietly drifting into the arms of corruption and authoritarianism.
A free, fair, open and uncensored media is an antidote to state power and, for all its failings (and there are many), should be treasured as such. There are many countries around the world whose people would give anything for such a freedom.
Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront.
Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator, though it is one used by many in power.
[...] It pays to query what those demanding censorship — be they celebrities, social-media activists or anybody else — see their ultimate goal as being.
To reduce hurt? To make the world a better place? Possibly, and those motivations are laudable. But the method employed to achieve them is not.
While censorship may be meant as a figurative horse upon which a better future rides, inside the belly of that horse lurks an army of conformity, quite capable of unwitting oppression.
History shows what happens when the fourth estate is no longer free to table all opinions.
It is a bleak picture. Without the disinfectant of exposure, power and ideals tend to corrupt even the most seemingly incorruptible.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:36PM
That's fine, but then those journalistic companies must surrender their claim to "facts." They don't get to have it both ways. They don't get to pound on facts, to weaponize a claim to authority, and then selectively disclose those facts or cut them from a skewed angle to show a different face amenable to their narrative. It doesn't work. People don't buy it, unless they also buy the narrative to begin with, prior to the publication of those "facts."
Because those companies have gotten away with that misbehavior for a couple decades now, they have come to believe it is their god-given right to tell the rest of us what is writ. Meanwhile, they've ridden that hubris as a reason to fire all their reporters who used to investigate to uncover facts and evidence, because they cost so darn much. As the internal pushback from reporters vanished, because they no longer worked there, the spin-meisters felt even more empowered to vomit forth whatever they wanted in a fact-free, consequence-free fashion. Now we've collectively arrived at a moment where those companies are making shit up out of whole cloth, and screaming insanely at the public for not swallowing it like good little sheep.
They don't have any facts left. They only have their Narrative, and the spittle dribbling off their chin as they scream it.
Washington DC delenda est.