Jonathan Turley, a Fox News contributor and George Washington University law professor, issued some stark warnings on the future of free speech.
During the July 12 episode of MRC UnCensored, MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider spoke with Turley about his new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, and his observations about free speech and the media from a long and successful career.
Turley warned that journalism schools have abandoned long-held standards and young Americans have been indoctrinated against free speech. He made clear that a dangerous public-private partnership between powerful institutions threatened the future of the First Amendment.
“We are now in, what the book refers to as the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history and the reason is indeed this alliance that has never formed before, of the government, corporations, academia [and] the media, all aligned against free speech,” he said.
Turley followed with a description of this alliance’s twisted rationale. “You now have on college campuses and in many media outlets, the unrelenting mantra that free speech is dangerous, that it is threatening us, threatening jobs, even threatening lives,” Turley said. “And the idea here is very simple, it’s hard to get a free people to give up freedom, you have to make them afraid, you have to make them very afraid. And that’s why you hear this echo chamber that its free speech that’s endangering us and if you just give the government more power over your speech you’ll be happy and safer.”
When Turley warned that the “wave” of censorship arriving in America “began in Europe,” Schneider lamented that American free speech had once inspired advocates of freedom in Europe and the world, such as Lech Wałęsa and Václav Havel. “And something has changed again, in Europe, in here, where people now see free speech as a threat to democracy, as a pose to the most important central element of democracy.”
Turley dug deep from his experience and observations to explain this state of affairs. He mentioned that he had poured 30 years of work into his book and observed the media make a massive turn for the worse during that period.
The Fox News contributor also noted that journalism schools have officially abandoned objectivity and neutrality. Turley made the point that the media had abandoned its principles in part because new graduates had been taught to abandon them: “J-schools now teach that, that objectivity and neutrality get in the way of social and political agendas. That’s what we’re producing from J-schools and its having an impact.”
To demonstrate just how radical newsrooms have become, Turley mentioned a recent conflagration at The Washington Post. Turley said that employees tried to get Post Publisher and CEO William Lewis fired for demanding changes to their unpopular and radical approach.
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