An open letter to a group of misguided liberal activists

[thatcrazycajun]

Sent to James Rucker of Color of Change at info@colorofchange.org today:

Dear Mr. Rucker:

I have received your mass e-mail asking me to join your "Turn Off Fox" campaign. While I am in sympathy with your group's mission and many of its positions on policy issues, I must take issue with your attempt to persuade businesses and other public establishments to turn off a cable television network because you disagree with the views it presents.

Please believe that I loathe the right-wing propaganda Fox News spews every bit as much as you do, and wish mightily that it were not as successful as it is. But trying to silence any media outlet whose views you dislike is morally wrong...and sets a dangerous precedent for freedom of speech. We are hypocrites if we seek to deny our opponents the right of expression that we demand for ourselves. It makes us look craven and our opponents more credible. The proper response to speech with which you disagree is with your own speech in rebuttal - and never, ever to try to shout down or silence the speaker...for the same can be done to you. If Fox's First Amendment rights can be abridged, then ours can be taken away next.

I urge you in the strongest possible terms to reconsider this campaign, and devote your group's energy and resources instead to exposing the lies and half-truths Fox News spreads, to counteract its propaganda with facts and opposing views and spread them as widely as you can. It's easy to defend freedom of speech when the speech in question supports your worldview; the real test of your principles is to defend speech you abhor. However odious and dishonest its "news" coverage and opinion may be, Fox News has the same right to be heard that you and I and your group do.

Unless we are ALL free to speak, none of us truly are.

Sincerely,
Matt G. Leger

Comments

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Matt, I'm sorry, but this is foolish.

Urging viewers to not watch Fox is a useful tool to express ire with its political views. There is no virtue in watching Fox anymore than there is virtue in watching MSNBC if you disagree with their views.

I urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to consider the necessity to reestablish the link between "freedom of speech" and "freedom from consequences." Further, I advise you to consider the foolishness of a notion that someone is "owed" an audience, or that only those with opposing points of view have the freedom to express themselves in the manner they see fit.

I urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to consider the proud history of the boycott in the struggle for fundamental freedoms and as a matter of civic protest. It has its roots in an Irish tax protest. It is particularly useful where the speaker to which one wishes to show opprobrium is a commercial network dependent upon viewers for revenue. It is even more appropriate given that this speaker owes its considerably advantaged position in the public square in part to the use of a public asset (broadcasting licenses), a government controlled monopoly which it is privileged to use on a promise of serving the public interest. While the cable network has no such obligation, it is perhaps relevant that the cable network was made possible primarily through the success achieved on the broadcast network.

Unless we are all free to speak, including to organize in protest, none of us truly are. But the worst is when fundamental misunderstanding of the fundamental principles of civic discourse combines with moral arrogance to advantage those with privileged places in the mass media and shackle the independent citizen seeking only to rally his fellow in a tradition of civic engagement that extends to Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Should have known I'd hear from you on this one, Hal; it's in your professional wheelhouse. But this is the first time I can ever recall you accusing me of foolishness.

>>. There is no virtue in watching Fox anymore than there is virtue in watching MSNBC if you disagree with their views. <<

No? What about counter-intelligence (in more senses than one!), keeping track of what your enemy is up to? How can we know what lies they're spewing and hope to counter them with truth if the set is turned off? And lately, some of the stuff they air is actually loony enough to hopefully hoist them on their own petard.

You don't have to tell me about "the proud history of the boycott"; I fully support it in certain instances. But there is a huge difference between choosing not to patronize businesses that aid in the spread of the FNC fertilizer and censoring their right to air it within the confines of their own premises.

I never said that ONLY those with opposing points of view should have the freedom to express themselves; what I said was that BOTH sides should be free to express themselves. Trying to make businesses shut off FNC is no different to my mind than rowdy protesters shouting down someone like David Horowitz when he makes a speech or ripping signs out of a rally attendee's hands. It's boorish, it's unfair and it makes our side look afraid to have its ideas competing fairly with conservative ones in the ideological marketplace. Can't you just hear a Limbaugh or Hannity saying, "See? They don't want our guys to be heard because they know the American people will be on our side! They're anti-Constitution and anti-American!"

I have nothing but the greatest respect for your intellect and expertise in this field, but Color of Change's campaign still deeply troubles me. What if some other group—or government agency—decides to mount a similar campaign against, say, MSNBC? If each side is busy pulling the plug on the other's mikes, nobody gets heard.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

1) I know James Rucker, and the history of his efforts in social change. I consider him an important and impressive person in the rise of a new generation that is redefining the civil rights amd social justice movement.

2) I think that your analysis is fundamentally flawed. Nor did I care for the tone of your letter to James.

3) I believe that whatever your intent, the practical result of the position you argue is that Fox gets to speak and those who wish to protest don't. I further believe that "Fox News" is not a person, but a business. Strategies to effect social change therefore need to account for how to change its behavior. That means hitting advertising revenue.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

If my tone in the e-mail came off to you as disrespectful or inappropriate, I apologize to both you and Mr. Rucker. I had not meant to be rude, but merely to express how strongly I felt about the whole principle. I would never dream of disputing your assessment of him as an activist or a person.

[poltr1]

LJ doesn't have a "like" feature, so I'll say I like this and I agree.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Mm. I agree with you, and I agree with osewalrus. (And you know how that makes me crazy.)

Part of the problem here is that Fox News shouldn't have First Amendment rights. Rupert Murdoch should (if he's an American citizen, but I don't think he is) and so should every individual employee of Fox News down to the humblest cleaning person, but Fox News as such is not a person and should not have those rights, or any of the rights that the Constitution grants to ordinary citizens. Nor should any other corporation or other abstract entity. It's absurd to think about something like Time Warner or Microsoft needing to be guaranteed freedom of expression, or any other freedom; what or who could ever deny them? One could argue rather that the rights of hugely wealthy and powerful "beings" who possess no individual conscience or moral compass *must* be abridged, and that right speedily, to avoid them oppressing us.

If the people who originate the lies and the bigotry which issue from Fox News were no longer able to hide behind the corporate identity and the alleged "public service" which Fox purports to embody, they might be a little less vocal.

And the problem with simply exposing the lies and half-truths is, one, that it's purely reactive and gives Fox News control of the game, and two, that it won't work. A lie can get halfway round the world while the truth is still groping for the Alka-Seltzer and wondering what on earth it had to drink last night. The only way to deal with an entity which habitually and repeatedly lies is either to stop it talking, or stop people listening. That's not abridgment of a right, that's just common sense. The boy who cried "wolf" might not have deserved to be eaten by wolves, but then again he wouldn't have been if he had been removed from his position of trust as soon as it became known he was abusing it.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that Murdoch was, in fact, required to renounce his birth citizenship in Australia and become an American citizen in order for News Corp. to be allowed to set up the Fox broadcast network originally. But I do agree with you about the ill-conceived notion of "corporate personhood" and think it should be abolished in law.

However, while Fox News itself as a corporate entity deserves no rights of personhood, the people it hires to speak on its air do. You want to tell Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin to get off the air and STFU? Fine, but you'd better be prepared to expect another group to demand the same of Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and Tom Joyner.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

As osewalrus pointed out first, you've confused the intention of the campaign. They're not trying to shut down Faux Noise, as repellent as it is. They are trying to ensure that it is not turned on, particularly on institutional sets, so that their ratings are no longer artificially inflated. In short, Fox is free to speak -- and the campaign urges people and institutions to choose not to watch.

I'm proud to support Turn Off Fox; they have it exactly right.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Sorry, Bruce, but I don't see the distinction in your words any more than in Hal's. How exactly is "trying to ensure that [FNC] is not turned on" not shutting it down, from the standpoint of the viewers in a given establishment—or the owners thereof? And if business viewing "artificially inflates their ratings," it does the same for MSNBC and ESPN or whatever other network happens to be on.

Choosing not to watch is not the same as being denied the ability to watch without leaving the establishment. I don't believe I've misunderstood the aim of Turn Off Fox at all; they want people not to be able to see or hear FNC in a business they habitually patronize. To my mind, that's a step onto a very slippery slope to censorship.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

You're still missing the point, I think.

Many businesses set and leave their TVs to one channel. For example, at my bank branch (the one I patronize, not where I work), they've never, to my knowledge, shown anything other than CNBC. Many businesses have their sets on Faux Noise. What Turn Off is asking is that those sets be set to something -- anything -- else.

That's not trying to shut the channel down. They're not trying to drive them off the air, or off cable systems. They're not trying to tell people that they can't watch the channel themselves, in their own homes.

They are trying to reduce the "zombie" sets tuned to the channel, in an effort both to get better programming available to the people who watch those sets (and you and I know that almost anything is better) and to reduce the channel's ratings, to make it less attractive to advertisers.

A quick note: "censorship" is a technical term, referring to suppression of information by a central authority. There are other mechanisms that have similar effects arising from the populace, or from actors other than the government -- but the word is not applicable to them.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

fox news is free to broadcast their stuff. the more people who can be persuaded not to watch it, and not to have tv sets in their control showing it, the better. freedom of speech does not mean that all speech has value, simply that the government should make no move to interfere with your right to express yourself, however worthlessly.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

Fox is entitled to speak.

We are entitled not to listen.

Not Listening to Fox News

[(Anonymous)]

I applaud and appreciate Mark's comments regarding your campaign. I listen to Fox News and MSNBC and get upset with the name calling and one-sided commentary. But, isn't there a distinction between commentary and reporting news?

News should be fairly reported and reported without bias or agenda. Sadly, most news outlets, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and MSNBC fail to understand the difference.