Is anyone else worried about the impact of instantaneous information and blogging on free speech?
This week, there’s been some hullabaloo in the media about remarks by Randy Bott, a religion professor at BYU, regarding race. Now, I’m not really writing about this story…it’s just what made me really try to pin down what’s been bothering me for a while.
In a nutshell: I am worried that the explosion of 24-hour news, blogging, social media, and instant access to all-of-the-above is a threat to free speech. Seems oxymoronic, eh? Read on (or don’t… not like anyone reads my blog anyway):
I think there’s an information vacuum. Everyone wants to have his* say and there’s just only so much to talk about. We NEED something to talk about. This leads to a world in which a person's comments can be taken out of context and blown out of proportion to the point that an off-hand or out-of-context comment can get a person fired or eviscerated the public mind (not sure which I think is worse). **Edit: I guess that world already existed... the modern digital age just accelerates it exponentially.
Some say: “They’ve brought this on themselves by what they said.” My point exactly… in most cases, we don’t actually know what they said. Or, what was said was said off-hand, or part of a larger context. Perhaps, a person was playing devil’s advocate. Whatever the case, someone hears it, records it, reports it, and suddenly the comments are fodder for a national (sometimes international) rant on __________ (insert issue-du-jour here).
Another issue at hand: How have we become so unforgiving? Are we, as individuals so perfect that we can publicly flog a person that makes a perceived verbal misstep? The US legal system is based on the philosophy “innocent until proven guilty.” Yet, we instantly condemn people we’ve never met based on a few words.
The end result is that we can’t talk freely. We can’t have discussions about uncomfortable issues because our comments might be misconstrued. We can’t have opinions that are outside of the mainstream because we will be vilified. And thus, free speech is muzzled.
Back to Brother Bott for a moment: I don’t know if he’s a racist. What I do know is that I took two classes from him, enjoyed them immensely, and never got any kind of negative vibe from him. I don’t even remember if the topic of race ever came up, although it probably did in D&C. It was discussed in other forums from time to time and I’ve certainly heard the opinion being credited to him from other people, though I’ve always disregarded it. I hope this issue does not taint the career of one of the most popular (and deservedly so) professors at BYU.
And, that’s my two cents for today.
* Yeah, I used “his”… Frankly, I’m sick of political correctness. Really. Grammatically, “he” works. “He or she” is bulky, and “their” is incorrect. So, until we come up with a gender neutral pronoun, I’m using “he” as the gender neutral. I’m a woman, and a somewhat liberal-ish one at that, and I’m not threatened by it. So, deal.
