So last night after bowling I was chatting with Mike about Britain's ban of Michael Savage. I thought the discussion was interesting, but apparently Mike is not a blogger so I thought I'd post a few things on this issue to generate a little discourse:Here's an article on this from Savage's website. For more, go to: http://michaelsavage.wnd.com
Here's a couple of differing views from Common Dreams:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/06-10
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/06-7
Whaddya think? I tend to side with Greenwald on this one...
Greenwald sounds reasonable to me.
ReplyDeleteMichael Savage might indeed be a bad influence upon England's fine shores, and I can see why they do not want him. However, the inherent problem with censorship lies with the act of who will decide to censor what. The danger of unqualified and biased censorship decisions far outweighs the danger of inflammatory or bad information.
Anyone publicly calling for violence against a minority group, in this case immigrants of Hispanic origin, is forfeiting their First Amendment rights. It reflects extremly poorly on our FCC that a foreign government is doing a better job of monitoring the dangerous hate-speech in our media than they are. Perhaps they're just too busy censoring oh-so-offensive swear words on television and traumatic split-second wardrobe malfunctions.
ReplyDeleteI don't know Tom...
ReplyDeleteThis guy may be a pretty extreme case, but do you want the precedent for a politician deciding the fine line as to what should and should not be heard by the public?
Imagine an iteration of 10 censors appointed by a George-Bush-like-president. Each one is censoring an increasingly broader message.
The power over information is too much power for anyone.
You don't think calls on the radio to ethnic violence present a greater danger to the public than nudity and foul language on television?
ReplyDeleteSal, I'd be much more concerned over the "too much power" represented by largely religious-value-based censorship than censorship obviously intended to protect the public from harm.
Any claims calling this case a violation of free speech are misrepresenting the First Amendment. You can't shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater just as you can't call for violent action against any individual or group. Really now, Savage has already provided the ammunition, he's just a step away from actually providing the weapons themselves.