CR5 Issue167 April 2019

The Price of Free Speech
We live in divided times. Everyone seems to
have an opinion, and wants to share it. Now
that’s fine as far as it goes but when holding and
stating a contrary opinion earns you not just
an acknowledgement of a disagreement but
threats and abuse, something’s gone
horribly wrong.
Now it’s easy to put the blame on
social media. Facebook and their peers may
have started out as a way of friends to exchange
holiday photos and contact distant relatives
without the bother of writing a letter or the
expense of a phone call but have turned some
people into serial arguers, a gaggle of folk who
pick a verbal fight at the slightest excuse.
Some have found a degree of solace, and have
managed to surround themselves with a cadre
of like/small-minded posters for whom there’s
no way but their way, the system/world is
against them and for which factual evidence
and logical argument hold no sway.
But the mainstream media is no less to blame.
When my wife was at school, which was a
little while back, a teacher asked her class to
go through a selection of newspapers across
the spectrum and highlight any facts that were
to be found. Even then, they were few and far
between. Spin, opinion and frankly out-right lies
were far more prevalent. It hasn’t changed.
I suspect, though I cannot prove the point
without considerably more research, that the
position has worsened.
Newspapers are desperate to shift
copies, never more than now when all the
traditional channels are under pressure from
online services and diminishing advertising
revenues. A fact is a fact and if reported at face
value there’d be no differentiation.
What is needed is an angle, a way of marketing
the fact to make your version more appealing
to the audience. Trouble is that the marketing
has overtaken the fact. Often the actual truth
of the matter isn’t just a detail, it actually gets
in the way of what the paper wants to say. And
television is as prone to this. Radio too.
In the race for higher and higher
readership/viewing figures, sensation wins over
sense. It’s hardly surprising that we have an
entire generation of politicians for whom being
flexible with the truth has moved from being
an occasional necessary evil to standard
operational procedure. There is a movement
to hold politicians to account. That when they
stand and make a promise or statement that is
untrue, they’re penalised. It has yet to gain any
real traction but surely it ought to be law? If a
businessman lies about the profitability of his
company he can go to jail. But the leading
politicians of the day can claim that black is
white, that a massive cut in funding represents
record spending, anything that makes their
position look good, without ever being held to
account.
And that’s what it comes down to. The lack of
responsibility. Someone mouths off in the pub,
gets abusive, bullying, they risk getting into an
argument, possibly even decked. But online,
they’re ‘wrapped in cotton wool’ safe.
The newspapers have in recent times
accused high court judges of being ‘enemies
of the people’ for upholding the law and the
Justice Secretary barely raised an eyebrow.
They’ve run story after story, flawed and untrue,
that have demonized every believer of Islam as
being somehow a terrorist set on the downfall of
Western civilisation (by which they mean white,
Anglo-Saxon civilisation). And nothing. Not a slap
on the wrist even.
Now a maniac, fuelled on media lies, walks into a
New Zealand mosque and kills 49 unarmed men,
women and children.
One of our new neighbours, in the course of a
conversation, waited until she was just with my
wife before very cautiously letting her know she
was a Muslim. She was scared of our reaction.
And this was before this latest outrage. Is this
what we’ve come to?
From the government, to the media, to every
individual. We must be held responsible for our
actions, our words and deeds. So that if there’s a
doubt, we pause. If what we say, what we do will
cause innocents harm, we stop. And if we don’t
we should be held accountable.
Free speech has a price.
Paul M Ford
Graydorian – The Writing Bureau
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