On this week’s BBC Moral Maze, my colleagues and I discussed the limits of free speech. Faced with a boycott by singers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell over scepticism about Covid vaccines expressed on Joe Rogan’s podcasts, Spotify agreed to put a content advisory label on items that include such contentious material, while Rogan himself said he'd aim for more impartiality in future.
In a parallel case, Pan Macmillan, whose imprint Picador published the memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me by the poet and teacher Kate Clanchy, withdrew all eight of her books from distribution after a Twitter storm over descriptions of minority pupils in her memoir. Critics said these were racist and offensive, although her students themselves denied this and vigorously supported her.
What are the responsibilities of social media platforms for the material they broadcast? At what point do their safeguards become censorship? Are publishers morally responsible for what their authors write? Is it enough to issue an apology or label the offending material as contentious? And do these controversies reflect a proper concern for greater social responsibility or are they vicious and dangerous witch-hunts?
My co-panellists were Giles Fraser, Mona Siddiqui and Matthew Taylor. Our witnesses were Brendan O'Neill, chief political writer for Spiked; Dr Julie Posetti, Global Director, Research at the International Centre for Journalists; Inaya Folarin Iman, a director of the Free Speech Union; and Anthony Anaxagorou, a poet and teacher.
If you can access BBC iPlayer, you can listen to the programme here.
Recent posts
My most recent exclusive post for my premium subscribers charts the progressive dissolution of free society and argues that those enabling it should be called out for their cowardice, third-ratery or ideological malice. This is how the piece begins:
And you can read my most recent post that’s available to everyone, about the ludicrous hatchet-job on Israel by the Amnesty International hate group, by clicking here.
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