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

[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.