A deluge of misinformation and disinformation online has heightened this tension. Our era, especially, is not made for this social media is awash in speech of the point-scoring, picking-apart, piling-on, put-down variety.
We are under no illusion that this is easy. We believe it isn’t enough for Americans to just believe in the rights of others to speak freely they should also find ways to actively support and protect those rights. It demands conscientiousness about both the power of speech and its potential harms. Freedom of speech requires not just a commitment to openness and tolerance in the abstract. This editorial board plans to identify a wide range of threats to freedom of speech in the coming months and to offer possible solutions. Times Opinion commissioned the poll to provide more data and insight that can inform a debate mired in extremes.
#DOM OF PRESS AMENDMENT FOR FREE#
“Safeguards for free speech have been essential to almost all social progress in the country, from the civil rights movement to women’s suffrage to the current fights over racial justice and the police.” “There’s a crisis around the freedom of speech now because many people don’t understand it, they weren’t taught what it means and why it matters,” said Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of PEN America, a free speech organization. Choose your answers to see how your opinions compare to Americans’. We’ve excerpted a few of the poll’s other questions below. When speech is stifled or when dissenters are shut out of public discourse, a society also loses its ability to resolve conflict, and it faces the risk of political violence. Ideas that go unchallenged by opposing views risk becoming weak and brittle rather than being strengthened by tough scrutiny. If people feel free to express their views in their communities, the democratic process can respond to and resolve competing ideas. Most important, freedom of speech is the bedrock of democratic self-government. At the individual level, human beings cannot flourish without the confidence to take risks, pursue ideas and express thoughts that others might reject.
#DOM OF PRESS AMENDMENT FULL#
A society that values freedom of speech can benefit from the full diversity of its people and their ideas. Freedom of speech and expression is vital to human beings’ search for truth and knowledge about our world. This poll and other recent surveys from the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation reveal a crisis of confidence around one of America’s most basic values. The poll found that 84 percent of adults said it is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem that some Americans do not speak freely in everyday situations because of fear of retaliation or harsh criticism. In a new national poll commissioned by Times Opinion and Siena College, only 34 percent of Americans said they believed that all Americans enjoyed freedom of speech completely. However you define cancel culture, Americans know it exists and feel its burden. People should be able to put forward viewpoints, ask questions and make mistakes and take unpopular but good-faith positions on issues that society is still working through - all without fearing cancellation.
Many Americans are understandably confused, then, about what they can say and where they can say it. Many on the right, for all their braying about cancel culture, have embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in classrooms. Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture exists at all, believing that those who complain about it are offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech. How has this happened? In large part, it’s because the political left and the right are caught in a destructive loop of condemnation and recrimination around cancel culture. For a strong nation and open society, that is dangerous. This social silencing, this depluralizing of America, has been evident for years, but dealing with it stirs yet more fear. 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.
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