Margaret Sullivan discusses the rights and responsibilities of the free press in WaPo:
Late last week, progressive groups published an open letter asking news organizations to stop amplifying politicians who won’t publicly concede that the 2020 presidential election was legitimate.
“Every American is entitled to freedom of speech, but they are not entitled to appear on prestigious television programs or news outlets to spread demonstrable falsehoods that have already incited a murderous insurrection, and remain at the heart of an ongoing national security threat,” the letter said.
Do these politicians run the risk of being “canceled”? I doubt it. They’ll find a way to get their messages out, just as Hawley is doing with such success.
And those who are not being covered – or at least advocated not to be covered – join a long list of people of extreme views who were also not covered over the decades. This is not a new phenomenon, even if it’s gone out of fashion because the Internet has dramatically dropped the cost of publishing and reaching audiences.
The media has always had a responsibility to ignore extremists, a responsibility that Fox News has demonstrably failed to fulfill.
So don’t be shocked and horrified if Senators Hawley (R-MO) or Cruz (R-TX) howl that they aren’t allowed on Face The Nation or Meet The Press to present their theocratic views. Those views led to violence, they led to death, to the surprise of no one who has read history and thought deeply about the mindset of the fanatic religious. That makes them extremists. And if they hide them behind theories concerning the religion that are based on something other than evidence, they are still extremist.
