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In Shanksville, Pennsylvania. | |
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| Welcome back. | ||
| We're joined now by Catherine Brodsky, who's the author of the book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in an Age of Outrage. | ||
| She's also the host of Forbidden Conversations podcast. | ||
| Welcome to Washington Journal. | ||
| Thank you so much for having me. | ||
| Can you talk a little bit about your personal background? | ||
| I understand you've had quite a journey. | ||
| Yes, thank you for asking. | ||
| My journey actually began in the former Soviet Union in what is Ukraine. | ||
| I was born there and my family grew up there, you know, during the reign of the Soviet Union and ended up moving around a bit, eventually ending up in Canada. | ||
| I also spent a lot of time living in New York and visiting many different parts of the world. | ||
| And it was something where, you know, especially when we consider the topic, topics that I currently write about a lot, like freedom of speech, that's something that has really influenced my work quite a bit. | ||
| Can you talk about that? | ||
| How has that experience influenced how you approach this writing and the topic in general? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And I think I grew up in a household that was essentially, you know, I was one of those typical rebellious teenagers where my parents constantly told me about their life in the Soviet Union. | ||
| And, you know, I thought they were over-exaggerating things and that some of the things that they had experienced would never happen in any, you know, of the Western countries that I was familiar with living in because I was quite a young child when we left. | ||
| But, you know, for them, that experience was actually involved a lot of restrictions. | ||
| It was a low trust society, so you didn't know who you can say, what you can say. | ||
| You know, that typical animal farm thing where everyone's equal, but some animals are more equal than others. | ||
| So my family is Jewish, so we experienced a lot of discrimination based on that. | ||
| And, you know, in terms of people's speech, you know, you don't know if you end up paying with your life, you know, end up in a gulag somewhere for saying the wrong thing. | ||
| And the other thing that we would see is a lot of subversiveness in art and with writing, where people tried to say the things that they wanted to say without ending up in jail. | ||
| So there were a lot of creative ways to do that. | ||
| And so how do you think that shapes the work that you do today, especially in terms of your professional activities? | ||
| You're an author, journalist, essayist. | ||
| How do you incorporate that background and that experience into your writings? | ||
| Yeah, I think for me, it's really listening to more subtle cues as to what's happening. | ||
| For me, the big realization was that what happened in the Soviet Union and what has happened in numerous other countries where speech was taken away, that could happen anywhere. | ||
| We're not necessarily safe in the West just because it's better here in that regard. | ||
| That it takes a small minority often, but a small and radical minority to take over the discourse, to take over policies and laws and where culture goes, because a lot of people are basically silenced and are afraid to speak up and actually say what they mean. | ||
| And we can see that in other countries as well. | ||
| Like, for example, during China's Cultural Revolution, it wasn't that most people agreed, but it took, you know, if children were turning in their parents and denouncing their parents or their professors, there's a chilling effect. | ||
| And sometimes these kinds of revolutions, they'll start, you know, culturally rather than necessarily being led by the governments. | ||
| But then around the world, we're seeing just a lot of enroachment, a lot of kind of attacks on free speech. | ||
| And a lot of that is also coming through different laws. | ||
| So we have a lot in the UK, in Canada, in Ireland, and other parts of the world. | ||
| And in the U.S., the U.S. is so unique that it has the First Amendment. | ||
| But even that, to me, that isn't guaranteed. | ||
| And you hear people talking about changing the Constitution. | ||
| There's a lot of people, there's a growing trend of intolerance where people are saying, well, for speech that is offensive, people can, you know, maybe should be punished. | ||
| And there was a survey or a study that was done in Yale University that was really shocking where about 50% of the students agreed that there is some speech that is so offensive that it could merit the death penalty. | ||
| So culture can change. | ||
| And, you know, what had happened in the Soviet Union can absolutely happen today as well if we're not careful. | ||
| How would you describe yourself politically? | ||
| And do you consider yourself an advocate? | ||
| I'm an advocate for, you know, I would say for certain principles like free speech. | ||
| I'm an advocate for having better conversations and discourse, for having greater tolerance, for personal freedoms. | ||
| But politically, I sort of identify more like a liberal, maybe a centrist kind of liberal. | ||
| And it's something, it's interesting because politics wasn't something that I grew up really thinking too much about. | ||
| I sort of knew approximately where I stood. | ||
| And I like to kind of mishmash, you know, good policies wherever I find them. | ||
| But I feel like today in today's environment, it's become that political identity has become something we're so utterly fixated on that we start to identify each other. | ||
| Like the first thing that we do when we meet somebody isn't to just figure out what their personality is like, what they like to do, you know, what their passions are, what they believe. | ||
| It's very often where they stand politically, and then we maybe get to know them as a person if they pass the filter test. | ||
| You're also an advisor to an organization called the Pro-Human Foundation. | ||
| Can you tell us about that group and their work? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So the foundation was actually co-founded by Darrell Davis, who's this amazing, you know, he's an inspiration and kind of a role model to me, has been for years. | ||
| He is a jazz musician and a civil rights activist who he's most famous for basically getting people who were members of the KKK to give them their hoods because they end up quitting as they got to know him. | ||
| And a lot of them didn't even know somebody was black and had all these kinds of ideas and thoughts in their head that once they got to know him, they couldn't really hate him. | ||
| And so that was really inspirational to me. | ||
| And so the Pro-Human Foundation focuses on really our shared humanity and what makes us unique as individuals. | ||
| And then working through the demonization and the division and radicalization that we're seeing in the world today. | ||
| And they do a lot of educational programs and leadership programs and work with a lot of people in different communities to really bridge that divide and have better discourse. | ||
| You're the author, as we mentioned at the top of the recent book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage. | ||
| And you say that the book is about silencing culture and threats to freedom of speech in the West. | ||
| How is freedom of speech being threatened in the West and by whom? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, and we have different, this is what I think people often don't understand is that they see it very clearly, those threats, when it comes from their political, from the opposite political side, but not when it comes from their own. | ||
| So in the West, we have a lot of laws. | ||
| For example, in the UK, people can get arrested for memes. | ||
| There was a comedian who was just arrested, I believe, last week for writing something on X that was offensive, and he got arrested for that. | ||
| There was a woman whose story is one of the things I talk about in my book. | ||
| She got arrested for citing a rap lyric, which was just a tribute to her late best friend who really loved the rap song. | ||
| It was just the, it was the N-word that she, you know, quoted the entire lyric, including the N-word. | ||
| She got arrested. | ||
| Charges were later dropped, but damage was done. | ||
| So we're seeing things like that in Canada. | ||
| There's a whole bunch of restrictions on, for example, sharing news articles and also the Online Harms Act. | ||
| In Ireland, there's like pre-crime basically. | ||
| So if they think that you might, if you have something on your computer, maybe you even wrote it as a fiction, essentially you can get arrested for having offensive material, you know, or hate speech on your computer. | ||
| And then in the U.S., you know, we've seen a lot of restrictions. | ||
| So for example, during the pandemic, we saw voluntary, so-called voluntary requests to censor certain information by the government. | ||
| But of course, when the government tells big tech, well, this is one thing that we want you to look at, and this is one thing we want you to take off, that's a whole lot of pressure that's coming from a government that has actually enormous power over them. | ||
| And so they were even censoring information that was true in the interest of public safety. | ||
| And then we had like the disinformation governance board that was launched, which was compared to the Ministry of Truth of 1984 or the book 1984. | ||
| So that was something that was going on during the Biden administration. | ||
| And then of course today with Trump, just I think like last week, there was an executive order signed to ban flag burning, which I don't like flag burnings. | ||
| I don't think that's the best way to make your grievances known, but it is still part of free expression. | ||
| And so banning that, I think, goes against that. | ||
| You have things like in the press pools, bans on certain outlets. | ||
| So, for example, with the Associated Press, because they wouldn't call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, they get banned, which sends this message of, you know, you have to comply or you lose your access. | ||
| We've seen the whole visa situation with student activists speaking up about Gaza. | ||
| And it's something where, you know, I know it's a bit of a complex situation legally because of their student status and they're not necessarily citizens. | ||
| But at the same time, it does go against the spirit of the law. | ||
| And do you really want to restrict speech for all these people who have maybe different kinds of visas and not yet citizens? | ||
| So we have things like that. | ||
| And then I was very triggered, as they say. | ||
| There was a tweet from Donald Trump, just as I saw it very recently, where he was saying how he would take away Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship. | ||
| And then the White House account retweets that and also, you know, chimes in. | ||
| And I know it was meant to be trolling, but the idea of like trolling a private citizen, which is, you know, she's a public figure, but she's still a private citizen, and the president doing that and the White House doing that with a threat to take away one's citizenship. | ||
| So targeting someone for their speech, even if they don't have the intention of taking away that visa, or sorry, that citizenship, that is to me very alarming. | ||
| And regardless of what side you're on, should be alarming. | ||
| I want to read a bit, an excerpt from your book about your own journey in sort of speaking out more about these issues. | ||
| And you write, seemingly overnight, certain narratives started to dominate not only public put, but also in many cases, private discourse. | ||
| By now, we are all familiar with these narratives, the ones that see everything through the lens of race, gender, and sexuality, and that define people accordingly. | ||
| Like many, I had deep concerns about the way words were being twisted and identities were being weaponized, but I kept my concerns hidden and unexpressed. | ||
| And then gradually, I made the decision to speak up a little, at least in person, in private conversations and spaces. | ||
| Even so, it felt good. | ||
| Finally, I was speaking the truth as I was seeing it, that this burgeoning ideology and many of the policies and proposals and social pressures connecting with it were at best illiberal and at worst authoritarian. | ||
| To my surprise, I wasn't alone in my thoughts and reflections. | ||
| The term authoritarian has been thrown around a lot lately. | ||
| Can you talk about why you think that some of these policies that you're seeing are illiberal and potentially authoritarian and what it was like for you getting to this point of starting to speak out about it? | ||
| Yeah, I think to me what I'm saying is when I use the words authoritarian is when you are told that you can only use certain words. | ||
| There's a massive difference between being told, hey, look, maybe this language is a little bit outdated. | ||
| What do you think of this? | ||
| And maybe explaining things to people and getting them on your side by having really good arguments. | ||
| And I think most people want to, you know, to treat people well. | ||
| They want to express themselves in ways that aren't undermining people or hurting people. | ||
| And most people are going to listen to it. | ||
| What's been happening and what I was seeing in the culture, and also we're seeing that institutionally because these very specific words are being used, and this is happening so quickly, and it feels like it's because of social pressures. | ||
| This new language that we were seeing, and this is something that I've been really trying to track a lot, is the evolution of language. | ||
| We're seeing it happen so quickly and it feels forced as opposed to, you know, language certainly changes over time and we change our usage, but it doesn't usually come so quickly. | ||
| And it doesn't come with this, like, you know, essentially, if you don't comply socially, if you don't comply, you will be ostracized, you'll lose your jobs, there'll be pylons. | ||
| I have canceled cancel culture, yeah? | ||
| Yeah, essentially, it's cancel culture. | ||
| I mean, it doesn't always, you know, it's not always the situation where somebody, you know, is mass attacked, right? | ||
| Sometimes it's little things. | ||
| I see, we see a lot of self-censorship because of people's fears culturally, institutionally, of what's going to happen to them. | ||
| So, we see, like, I think it's something like 40% of students. | ||
| There was a survey by FHIR, which is a free speech organization. | ||
| They conducted a large survey on college campuses in the U.S. in 2022, 22 and 23. | ||
| And they found that 40% of students are uncomfortable disagreeing with their professors. | ||
| That means that they're limiting, you know, the free exchange of ideas in a place where that really is something that should be held in such high regard, where we should be able to, you know, discuss anything and have counters. | ||
| And what we're experiencing is that there is no real conversation about really difficult topics because people are afraid to say what they mean. | ||
| And by the way, when they say what they mean, they might be wrong, right? | ||
| It's okay, but they can say the wrong thing. | ||
| But part of the importance of being able to say the wrong thing is that somebody will then come and join that conversation and give you more context and you learn more through that and you change your own thinking and you test your own thinking. | ||
| So when that's not happening in the culture, that's a broken culture. | ||
| That's a culture that doesn't grow. | ||
| It's a culture that regresses. | ||
| So I'm seeing a lot of that, especially when I wrote the book. | ||
| I think we were at the peak of that happening and cancel culture happening where, you know, the stories in my book, there are people who kind of made it, they fought back. | ||
| But the stories that are not in my book are all the people who didn't. | ||
| And I had spoken to so many people who, because of a little bit of wrong think, right? | ||
| They were never able to actually get, you know, continuing their careers. | ||
| They lost their social networks. | ||
| They lost their jobs that they loved, including artistic jobs that like that's your passion and what you express and you can't. | ||
| And then that stifling effect. | ||
| You know, you see it in, for example, in TV room writing rooms, where if there's one person that seems like they're, you know, going to report you for microaggression, there are people who will self-censor themselves and not play. | ||
| And because writing and creativity and art is all about playing and exploring and pushing boundaries and should be done in a way that's not, you know, ideally is not hurting other people. | ||
| But at the same time, in that writing room, you should be, anything should go and you should, and without, you know, the fear that your life is going to get destroyed. | ||
| Well, if you have a question for Catherine Brodsky about free speech or her book, Our Line for Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We have a question from Kevin on X. | ||
| It says, criminalizing speech as hateful, mortally wounded, genuinely free speech. | ||
| Can it be revived? | ||
| Can it be revived? | ||
| I mean, I don't think it's dead. | ||
| So I don't think it's dead, but I think there is this backlash. | ||
| So I think it's going this very extreme way is what I'm seeing, where, especially on a platform like X, because it's like almost absolute free speech, though, you know, some posts will get taken down and others won't. | ||
| It doesn't always make sense. | ||
| But essentially, I think people are embracing their free speech to say things maybe not in the way that maybe one would hope, where it's about discourse and discussing really difficult, complex, challenging, controversial topics. | ||
| Sometimes it's people just, you know, saying terrible things. | ||
| But at the same time, that is the price of free speech is having that opportunity to say whatever people want to say, even if we think it's like offensive speech, where we really need to be careful. | ||
| And this is where it's, you know, I'm really concerned because we're having this cultural pushback now, but legally, we're seeing more and more controls around free speech. | ||
| I think the pressures have been good on big tech platforms where they, you know, because there is all this public pressure, there is more easing on some platforms, maybe less on others. | ||
| I think they also have the right to dictate what rules they want to have on these private platforms on their own, and people can decide whether they want to be on a platform where anything goes and maybe you see some things you don't love or you want a more protected environment where everything's nice and comfortable. | ||
| Another question we received on X or comment, I should say, free speech debates are always timely, especially with tech changing the game so fast. | ||
| Curious to hear Catherine's perspective on where we're headed. | ||
| And before you respond, Catherine, I want to point to a piece that you wrote for Skeptic titled Outsourcing Our Memory, How Digital Tools Are Reshaping Human Thought. | ||
| And I'm wondering if maybe you can bring some of those ideas into your response to Blake Analyst. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I mean, I think the digital tools that we use, very often we don't predict the consequences. | ||
| So we embrace this new tool because it's exciting, it helps us do things better, it's creative. | ||
| And ultimately, what happens with our minds and what happens to us socially, that's not something that we consider. | ||
| So twofold. | ||
| So with my memories, in that article, I talk a lot about how it's literally rewiring how we are thinking and we are outsourcing the process of how we write, how we think, how we build ideas, what we remember and what we don't, what we choose to, what we don't, to machines, often without thinking that through. | ||
| So it's really important for us to be able to determine, okay, what are the things that are important for us to put that work into versus letting ChatGPT do it? | ||
| What memories we want to have? | ||
| Do we want like our primary contact number in case of an emergency? | ||
| Because our technology can fail and probably will. | ||
| We want that in our brains. | ||
| And we want to keep our brains active and thinking. | ||
| And then we have this technology that's coming in that's going to store our memories. | ||
| And then with the same thing with social media platforms and AI, I think that's having a profound effect on how we also communicate. | ||
| So, you know, you have a situation where ideally, you know, the answer to bad speech is more good speech and sunshine is the best disinfectant. | ||
| Those are usually the phrases that get thrown around. | ||
| And in theory, they're great, but I think technology has really changed that. | ||
| So we have, you know, we have an incentive structure where the things that get shared are things that are, you know, rage bait and things that are very polarized, very political, sensationalist, and divisive. | ||
| So I think in very large part why we have this level of divisiveness is actually because of these platforms. | ||
| And then you throw in AI and AI, you know, A, can be used by foreign players and has been used to, you know, with all the bots and things like that to push certain narratives and amplify division that's already there, but make it bigger. | ||
| It changes our sense of reality because, you know, my algorithm might be one thing, your algorithm is something else. | ||
| And we're not even seeing a shared version of reality. | ||
| And on top of that, like say I am shown for a month, like stories about knife crime in New York. | ||
| I'm just a random example. | ||
| Well, I'm going to think New York is extremely dangerous and people are constantly getting stabbed. | ||
| But is that actually the reality statistically? | ||
| It's not necessarily true. | ||
| So certain narratives are over-amplified. | ||
| And then we have this thing where false stories, they travel far quicker and are shared far more than true stories. | ||
| So there was, for example, a study in 2018 in Science magazine that showed that false stories are 70% more likely to be shared. | ||
| And viral stories, I mean, they can reach, they can travel about 10, 20 times faster than a true story as well. | ||
| And we don't have a mechanism necessarily always to correct things. | ||
| Like if somebody publishes this was false, very few people see it compared to the original thing that's that's a false claim. | ||
| Let's hear from Jonathan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jonathan. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Wonderful, important, and timely conversation. | ||
| Really appreciating what the guest is having to say. | ||
| I would just add that free speech is not really free. | ||
| It's very expensive, actually. | ||
| It's owned by, you know, like the media in this country is owned by five companies. | ||
| I think that when we think about freedom of speech, we need to think about the idea of how do we feel about speech we don't like? | ||
| Because that's the speech that actually needs to be protected. | ||
| And I think often we don't think about free speech in that way. | ||
| We think about the speech we want to hear. | ||
| And free speech is how do you feel about hearing the speech that offends you? | ||
| In the current time when we're sort of having these sort of pushbacks against free speech, the use of anti-Semitism to shut down dissent on college campuses is very similar to the McCarthy era. | ||
| You know, we've seen this before. | ||
| And that's usually about protecting war, people who like war, people who profit off war, the military-industrial complex. | ||
| And then the use of anti-Semitism, well, there's an active genocide on a Semitic people called the Palestinians, is just bizarre. | ||
| And being a Jewish person and having to hear that word thrown about so often, anti-Semitism, well, there's a live genocide, and those people have no humanity. | ||
| They have no representation in our media. | ||
| They have no representation on C-SPAN, none, is just infuriating to me. | ||
| Like, that's where I rage. | ||
| I don't rage when people have ideas that I disagree with. | ||
| Jonathan, I want to give Catherine a chance to respond to some of these points you're making. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So thank you for the comment. | ||
| And we probably have some disagreements on this particular topic. | ||
| However, I think where we share an agreement is that it is as free speech is for speech you don't agree with as well. | ||
| And I definitely think there is certainly in the way that the word racist was being misapplied. | ||
| I certainly know that there's a lot of real cases of anti-Semitism, which I think people should be able to have conversations about and call out, even if there is a difficult situation in the Middle East where a group of people are dying. | ||
| It is also something that does get weaponized in certain instances as well, just like the word racist, where racism does exist and there are people who experience it and they should be able to talk about it. | ||
| But it is also a word that sometimes gets misapplied and is weaponized to shut down speech. | ||
| So I think it's similar in that way. | ||
| What do you think of how particularly charges of anti-Semitism were deployed against particularly those protests on college campuses against the war in Gaza? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I am somebody who has a different view on that particular issue. | ||
| However, I do think that there were, and I mentioned this earlier too, I mean, the deportations, for example, of students who are in student visas. | ||
| I think there's an argument that can be made if somebody is certainly inciting violence, which goes against the First Amendment, which is a very hard bar, by the way, legally to meet. | ||
| But there is a difference between that and somebody, you know, chanting certain things. | ||
| I do think there is an overreaction in terms of, you know, how people are targeted for their speech. | ||
| And so that is something that I, you know, I have to be consistent in my defense of free speech. | ||
| So it is indeed something where, regardless whether you like it or not, you should be defending. | ||
| And I think people, you know, what's interesting to me is that for the most part, a few years ago, where I would hear people defending free speech were conservatives, which was kind of shocking to me personally because I, you know, I grew up in a very liberal environment. | ||
| I went to a very liberal school. | ||
| And free speech was just such a fundamental thing that we were taught and, you know, talked about a lot and debated a lot and held very dear. | ||
| And then, you know, you suddenly hear people say, well, there should be no free speech. | ||
| And, you know, some speech, you know, free speech is good, but not hate speech. | ||
| Well, then you don't believe in free speech. | ||
| And at the time, I was hearing really conservatives more suddenly starting to fight for free speech. | ||
| And then when the campuses, the protests started, and once they started to sort of come under attack, you know, suddenly the same people that I felt were trying to shut down free speech because their free speech was under attack, now they were suddenly proponents of free speech. | ||
| And I'm glad to have more people, you know, defending free speech. | ||
| But I think it's so important for whichever group to really look at it as a fundamental principle that you defend no matter whether it's your speech that's being shut down or somebody else's. | ||
| Earlier we were talking about cancel culture and another question on X. For many people, it's quite rational to watch what you say to avoid personal and professional repercussions. | ||
| What would you advise to those who believe that for themselves? | ||
| I think one should be able to choose for themselves what they feel comfortable with. | ||
| I think it's important for us to really speak the things that we think are important because that shapes how we have healthy discourse around really complex issues that we as a society cannot solve if we stay silent. | ||
| Also, when people stay silent, we don't have a sense of what people really believe. | ||
| Only people who are incredibly vocal, which tends to be more the fringes and the more the radicals. | ||
| So we don't know what the average person believes if they're just afraid to speak. | ||
| That said, you know, I think that each individual has to choose for themselves what they feel comfortable with. | ||
| And, you know, for a long time, I didn't necessarily feel that comfortable being public about my views on different things. | ||
| I still have a lot of fear around that because there are consequences. | ||
| But also, I think it's really important. | ||
| And I think you have a much more authentic relationship with yourself, the world, your friends, if you're able to be honest about what you think. | ||
| That said, you can also be very thoughtful about what you think. | ||
| And there's a difference between saying something because you're exploring an idea or trying to make somebody understand what you believe versus, you know, just trying to be hurtful to other people, which I think is not necessarily a great thing. | ||
| And while people are free to do that, I would probably not recommend that. | ||
| Can you tell us about your podcast, Forbidden Conversations? | ||
|
unidentified
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Because I believe this is what you try to do there. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| So my podcast, Forbidden Conversations, is all about having these kind of challenging conversations about different topics. | ||
| You know, the guests that I've had on, I sometimes agree with them, sometimes I don't. | ||
| It's really about having the conversation. | ||
| And I remember, I think my first, very first episode that I did was on the trans issue, which was probably the one that I was most afraid to speak about. | ||
| And I don't have any kind of like radical views there, but just to have that conversation was scary. | ||
| And it shouldn't really be. | ||
| Not when people are coming in good faith, they're not being hateful or trying, you know, you should be able to talk about things. | ||
| So, and I've had now that kind of that conversation on that particular topic with people with very different opinions and different experiences. | ||
| I've talked to people, somebody who is a cult member. | ||
| I talked to someone who's like, you know, sees what, how the economic world order, she uses that term, changed, you know, vaccine injury, which doesn't mean that like everybody's injured, but people have their own experiences. | ||
| And I think we should be able to talk about that. | ||
| Comedy, all sorts of topics. | ||
| Having discourse that's a little bit challenging, a little bit scary, but having that conversation in good faith. | ||
| And I think that's an important distinction because you have like debate formats where people want to destroy each other. | ||
| You don't have a lot of conversations where it's good faith to just try to understand the other person. | ||
| You don't have to agree with them, but understand what it is that makes them tick and give grace to each other and try to steel man each other's arguments to try to best understand and represent. | ||
| Terry is in Dixon, Illinois on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Terry. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| Yeah, I'm Colin in reference to. | ||
| I understand the U.S. Open received or sent out an email to all the networks telling them to censor to the American people when the President is announced. | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, due to, I don't know, some of the scandals that swirl around this administration, my question is, have you looked into this? | |
| And who ordered the U.S. Open to send this email out? | ||
|
unidentified
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Did this come from the administration? | |
| That's what I want to know. | ||
| So just because this might be new information to some folks, here's some reporting on this in the Hill. | ||
| U.S. Open asks broadcasters not to air possible reaction to Trump at final match. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's according to reports. | |
| This is originally reported by several outlets, including the New York Times. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| The United States Tennis Association, the host of the U.S. Open, asked broadcasters not to air distractions that may arise from President Trump's attendance at the Sunday opening ceremony for the men's singles finals match multiple outlets report. | ||
| With respect to broadcast coverage, the President will be shown on the World feed and in the Ashcourt feed during the opening anthem ceremony, read an email to broadcasters first obtained by Bounces and reviewed by multiple outlets, including the New York Times. | ||
| We ask all broadcasters to refrain from showcasing any disruptions or reactions in response to the President's attendance in any capacity, including electronic news gathering coverage, it reportedly continued. | ||
| Yeah, to be honest, I'm not familiar enough, but it doesn't sound to me like something that would have come from the Trump administration because just because I imagine they wouldn't mind having reactions and coverage, so it's probably much more to like have less destructions, less focus on Trump because a little bit more of that article says the message comes after a 2015 appearance from Trump warranted jeers from the crowds. | ||
| And so it seems that may be some follow-up information there. | ||
| But go ahead. | ||
| No, I mean, that might be. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I mean, obviously, I don't think wherever that order comes from, I mean, it's certainly controlling free media coverage. | ||
| And I don't think that's a good way to go. | ||
| Bill is in Reading, Connecticut, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, hi. | |
| I pretty much agree with everything you're saying. | ||
| During the Biden administration, on the day he was inaugurated, my Twitter account was canceled. | ||
| And I tried to get a new one back. | ||
| And that was canceled as well. | ||
| And I didn't say anything that I would consider cancelable. | ||
| I mean, it was just basically my opinion on a variety of issues. | ||
| And Facebook, I found the same situation. | ||
| When I would make comments about the Hunter Biden laptop, that was entirely censored. | ||
| I wasn't allowed to post anything about it. | ||
| And it continues to this day. | ||
| And my question to you is, how do you feel about private, like Facebook? | ||
| They hide behind the fact, well, we can censor you because it's our right to decide. | ||
| And they have these fact checkers, which are essentially, you know, why are they given the discretion of finding out what is true? | ||
| It just doesn't make any sense at all. | ||
| And do you think the government should step in to take this ability away from them from censoring people? | ||
| That's essentially it. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't recommend the government step in. | ||
| I do think that private platforms should have the right to decide for themselves, but then you have public pressure and public interest, which may cause them to have a different view. | ||
| I do think there should be a lot of transparency about what's going on. | ||
| When it came to censorship on Twitter, you know, with the Twitter files and all of that, I think the big concern for me was that there were directions coming from the government. | ||
| So there was a whole pressure mechanism. | ||
| The same thing was happening with Facebook. | ||
| And I would say, you know, I think it's such a slippery slope if we start telling private companies what they can and cannot publish. | ||
| There are certain legal requirements that they have to abide by, but everything else, I think they can determine. | ||
| What I would like to see these companies, though, and maybe that does require some regulation, is a lot more transparency about, you know, their algorithms, how things work, and also our own choices. | ||
| You know, so if I go on a platform, I would rather, you know, I can choose, hey, I want the quiet, peaceful mode. | ||
| I only want to see content that comes from people that, you know, I follow versus somebody might, somebody else might say, I want to see it all, show me everything. | ||
| And I think having more control over our own experience and more transparency is actually where maybe the government can introduce some regulations, but I wouldn't want to go in the direction of like, okay, we tell them exactly what we should do. | ||
| And then in terms of fact-checking, I mean, you do have some interesting systems that are not perfect. | ||
| You're never going to get a perfect system. | ||
| I do like community notes on X. | ||
| I think we're going to have more probably, you know, I don't think we should go in the direction of banning any of censoring content, but providing more context, especially if we're dealing with like disinformation or false things, giving people more opportunity to see more context, or if, you know, somebody put in a false date or a picture that isn't from the place that they're claiming it is, | ||
| those kinds of things can be corrected with something like community notes or with AI systems and things like that while maintaining the content on the platforms. | ||
| Well, thank you so much. | ||
| Catherine Brodsky is host of the Forbidden Conversations podcast and also the author of the book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage. | ||
| Thank you for joining us on Washington Journal. | ||
| Thank you so much for having me, and thank you so much for the questions. | ||
|
unidentified
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