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Airing Hate Speech And Turning It Off

CNN has been reporting that Focus On The Family is claiming anti-bullying efforts in the wake of recent suicides of tormented young gays are merely promoting “the homosexual agenda”. I’m sure that is being reported on other networks and via other media.

The problem is that for the sake of ratings and getting people worked up, CNN et al. will let such groups freely make their pronouncements, sometimes at length. The worst case of this is when they will stage debates across the screen and run them with a philosophy of “let’s let everyone air their viewpoints fairly”. That’s precisely what CNN is doing this weekend with this story and FOTF. They’ve done it countless times before on other issues. It’s as if the networks believe they’re performing a service by giving nutjobs equal footing with the more reasonable in our society. This applies to matters purely political, scientific and technical too.

To the networks I say STOP giving such hateful and ill-informed people a PR outlet. It’s incredibly irresponsible and definitely dangerous. Such groups as Focus on the Family and their ilk do not hold positions that merit the kind of TV debate I have described. Their views reaffirm the beliefs of those who would enact violence, ridicule and legislation against others, whether of minority or majority status. Fear and hate is promoted and these network appearances may be enough to bring about acts that cause suffering and death to others.

Replace the “homosexual agenda” with “the black agenda”, “the Asian agenda”, “the left-handed agenda” or “the midget agenda” and tell me, is that worthy material for air in any other context than an analysis of hate speech, bigotry and prejudice?

Since this is the Internet and Godwin’s Law applies, let’s bring Hitler into the discussion. By CNN’s example, it would seem likely that they and their brethren would in the 1930s, in some warped timescape, tease such stories like “The Jews. A race of vermin and the reason your family is suffering? One group thinks so and we’ll speak to them at length tonight!” Cue up a three box screen with our anchor, a member of the ADL and Adolf. Hopefully your reaction would be “WTF?” and that’s exactly what it should be today in 2010 to similar occurrences.

I’m a proponent of John Stuart Mill’s belief that the truth will eventually shine brighter than lies and falsehoods given time and that in the spirit of free speech we mustn’t censor people. But that accompanies a belief in responsibility in relation to one’s fellow man. The networks that give hate, prejudice and just pure insanity an equal spotlight as the truth are irresponsible and not serving anyone but themselves. Honestly, in support of the truth, I do occasionally enjoy some hater having their ass handed to them and their ignorance pointed out in a national forum but the technical context and weighting is important.

It needs to stop. Turn off any network that does you and the people you care about such a disservice.