A rchive Date
[ 12-08-2017 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.torontosun.com/2017/07/01/how-the-media-killed-free-speech
How the media killed free speech
By Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun
First posted: Saturday, July 01, 2017 02:18 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, July 01, 2017 02:26 PM EDT
One of the reasons free speech is under attack in Canada is that we in the media have failed to defend it. We mock people who question the theory of man-made global warming as lunatics, scaring them into silence.
But we let politicians like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau babble on unchallenged about his so-called “carbon pricing” scheme that anyone who can add knows will never lower greenhouse gas emissions the way his government is promising.
We unfairly and hysterically attacked Sen. Lynn Beyak for making the truthful statement that not every residential school was a horror show - a view shared even by some of Canada’s indigenous people who were in them.
We avoid making any connection between Islam and terrorism, even when the terrorists themselves scream out the link in the midst of terrorizing us, because, in our arrogance, we believe our audiences are not as smart as we are, and are incapable of distinguishing between the majority of Muslims who do not engage in terrorism, and the minority who do.
We have bought into identity politics and the idea that groups identified by our courts and human rights commissions as “historically disadvantaged” should never face tough questioning when they make absurd statements, or commit illegal acts for which any other group of Canadians would be arrested.
We engage in the racism of lowered expectations, where we do not hold these groups to the same journalistic standards we do everyone else, because we do not expect any better of them.
We pretend this shows our “sensitivity” to these groups, when what it really shows is how we have infantilized them, as if they were children who are not responsible for their actions, instead of adults who are.
Poll after poll on issue after issue - from wearing the niqab at citizenship swearing-in ceremonies, to whether there are “Canadian values” that we should ask immigrants and refugees if they accept - reveal we are regularly on the wrong side of public opinion.
But instead of pausing to reflect how we could have strayed so far from the views of the public we claim to represent, we double down in our smugness, attacking and mocking Canadians for holding the views that they do, simply because they are not what we think of as our more enlightened views.
We write for each other, instead of our readers. The irony is we have helped to make public discussion in Canada so politically correct, that it is now coming back to bite us.
Now, a mild joke by a few journalists on social media about the often silly hysteria generated by the issue of “cultural appropriation,” leads to a witch hunt of those journalists by the same groups we have coddled. That, in turn, has led to journalistic mea culpas, resignations and job re-assignments carried out by politically-correct media overseers, out of all proportion to anything that was actually said.
In a way, it serves us right, because by giving a platform to those whose view of the world is that people who disagree with them are not only wrong, but evil, and who seek to silence opponents rather than debate them, we have emboldened them to come after us, as well.
The lesson being, you reap what you sow.
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