When what you wish for backfires: The silencing of opinions
When what you wish for backfires: The silencing of opinions
I received a phone call from a reader not long after I assumed the role of editor at the Dothan Eagle newspaper in 2017.
He had just finished reading a left-leaning column in our paper. I believe the author was Cynthia Tucker.
“You know our community,” he said with a frustrated, raised tenor. “You know this doesn’t reflect the big majority of us. Why do you allow this in our paper?! Why haven’t you gotten rid of her?!”
Part of being an editor is dutifully listening to complaints. I even sympathized with the frustration.
I told him I understood why he felt the way he did.
I responded with the following:
(1) Although the viewpoints expressed in the column may not reflect the majority of readers, they do reflect the viewpoint of some readers.
(2) There were more conservative columnist voices than liberal ones, leaving plenty of agreeable content to be found.
(3) The reader’s viewpoint may be the majority now — but it may not always be — and the reader would certainly want the right to have his viewpoint shared in the community even if it was not an opinion held by most people.
That was 2017. Already, students on college campuses were refusing to allow speakers to share differing opinions.
We didn’t have the receipts at the time, but the decision makers for Twitter and Facebook were tweaking the algorithm to surface certain types of opinions and bury others. They were also under government influence to limit the reach of some accounts.
Twitter is now X, and new owner Elon Musk certainly talks a lot about unfettered free speech, but who really knows if he does or doesn’t have his thumb on the scale?
I began listening to conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh in 1990 and listened for the better part of 30 years. Of course Rush’s show was not a free exchange of all viewpoints, nor was he past lobbing an insult when he thought it would draw a laugh from fans, but he did push what he called “the arena of ideas.”
He firmly believed that conservative ideals would win the day out in the marketplace. And, although his side lost as many elections as it won, polls indicated the nation was a bit right of center.
Good luck in finding healthy discourse today. Most of political talk radio is the equivalent of a teen girl’s attempt to discredit her crush’s rival. Cable news is the equivalent of sugar laced with meth. You think it tastes good but it’s rotting your brain. And, as I’ve already noted, broadcast news is irrelevant.
And the public is now so conditioned to this type of delivery that the actual exchange of ideas among reasonable people is a huge turn-off, a ratings killer.
As I wrote in an earlier Substack, news is boring most of the time when it is accurately reported.
So now, it is the conservative voices being silenced in places. It is conservative opinions being buried in some areas of social media and it’s conservatives who can’t find a seat at the table of the nation’s newspaper.
And maybe the nation is still a tad right of center, but that could change quickly and you’ll definitely want the right to share your minority viewpoint.
A few recent posts:
I really miss Rush. I used to listen to him on my lunch breaks and he had an uncanny ability to predict the outcome of current events. I think he had a Christian view if most every topic. I remember when the Supreme Court was listening to the gay marriage issue and Rush said the Lbgtq movement would not be satisfied until the Christian church was silenced. Nailed it. I think as far as the main stream media the Christian view is already silenced.
This is why, if I were a hardcore Republican, I'd be hesitant to fully embrace a certain Republican leader's bloviation — in case it isn't bloviation. If elected, any precedence he might set is one that could fall into the other side's hands within one election cycle.
Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get it back in. Then we're left with a terrible, sticky mess that's hard to clean.