America has a New York Times-doesn't-get-the-First Amendment problem

[Nevilledog]

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Will Bunch
@Will_Bunch
It's pretty alarming the NYT lacks a fundamental understanding of Americans' free-speech rights. Here's what's worse: The paper's unsupported alarm over a left-wing 'cancel culture' only fuels the actual war on your rights - from the right

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inquirer.com
America has a New York Times-doesn’t-get-the-First Amendment problem | Will Bunch
A New York Times editorial uses a deeply flawed take on free speech to overinflate cancel culture and downplay the real threats to democracy.
10:13 AM · Mar 20, 2022

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/new-york-times-free-speech-editorial-20220320.html

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https://archive.ph/WpY9D

It may be the most classic bit during the nine-season run of the iconic TV sitcom Seinfeld: The time that Jerry shows up at the airport car rental place with his reservation, only to be told there aren’t any cars. Like every other annoying aspect of everyday life, the mishap causes the comedian to go into full didactic, observational-humor mode about the meaning of a reservation, sparking the annoyed clerk to blurt out, “I know what a reservation is!”

“I don’t think you do!” Jerry responds. That was hilarious, but how funny is it when the most prominent news organization in the United States — the one that tends, for better or worse, to set the agenda for all the smaller fish in the media pond — launches what it hopes will be a decade-defining campaign around free speech in America with a gobsmackingly wrong-from-the-git-go misunderstanding of what free speech in America actually means.

“For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned,” begins the New York Times editorial board in its roughly 2,500-word broadside headlined simply, “America Has a Free Speech Problem.”

I don’t think the New York Times knows what a fundamental right — those enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights — actually is. The First Amendment’s rightly revered protections of free speech and a free press only hold that the government can’t silence your rights to speak freely. When someone in the wider public conversation puts forth an opinion that’s controversial or even highly unpopular, America’s free speech protections say the answer is not censorship but criticism — which in its not-prettier forms can comprise getting “shamed or shunned.” The nation’s leading journalistic outlet has the First Amendment bass-ackwards.

*snip*

[I_UndergroundPanther]

1. The company is run by

Godamn republicans and republicans being fascists do not want any other pov but thier own propaganda out there.

They wanna cancel free speech and the press.

[Ocelot II]

2. The NYT editorial was pretty much of a pantload.

IMO, "shunning" someone for certain speech is also free speech. If, for example, a university or a tv show or doesn't want to engage a speaker whose opinions it disapproves of, that isn't "cancellation" because that person can still express their opinions in some other forum. Nobody is getting cancelled; some people are just finding out that other people disagree with them - which they also have the right to do.

[KPN]

5. And if more or most people disagree with and don't want to listen to what

they have a free speech right to say, too fucking bad. Free speech doesn’t equal free access to whatever audience you want.

[spooky3]

3. He's right. The reader comments in response to the ridiculous NYT editorial

Were equally blistering.

I’m letting my subscription expire. There have been too many instances like this over the years.

[markie]

4. 1st Amendment...

the NYT's article uses that term loosely... doesn't seem to be a well thought out opinion piece... they seem to be writing about what some U.S. citizens perceive as the 1st Amendment

"It is worth noting here the important distinction between what the First Amendment protects (freedom from government restrictions on expression) and the popular conception of free speech (the affirmative right to speak your mind in public, on which the law is silent).... free speech as it is experienced and understood by Americans today."

[Hekate]

6. Kinda what I thought. If I slander the NYT, does this mean there are no consequence? Naaaah.

[kimbutgar]

7. It's gotten to the point when I see the byline NY Times I treat the article with caution and

Skepticism. They are so pro republican it’s disgusting.

[Scruffy1]

8. In other news-water is wet.

The old "grey lady" has always tipped its editorial hat to the right wing BS. I quit reading them after the run-up to the Gulf War. Besides Aaron Neville had right: "You have freedom of speech as long as you don't say too much".

[Initech]

9. Fox News made up the whole "cancel culture" bullshit and people are buying into it.