Editor: Re: “Attack the issues” editorial in the Feb. 20 Chatham Voice.
How does one counter speech? With more speech, not censorship, unless it is libelous or defaming someone.
I see you mentioned that Facebook will no longer use independent fact checkers. This is incorrect.
In a lawsuit brought by former U.S. broadcast journalist John Stossel, the so-called fact checkers, were found not to be fact checkers. The judge ruled that they were not fact checkers, in fact, they were found to be subjective interpreters and, therefore, John Stossel lost his defamation suit.
(Editor’s note: Facebook was protected by anti-SLAPP [anti-Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation] laws in California, which resulted in the suit being dismissed.)
I noticed that your editorial conveniently omitted this fact in order to push your censorial views onto people.
So, do I go to the National NewsMedia Council stating that you printed inaccurate information by omitting important facts which skews your left-wing point of view? No, I counter it with more speech, otherwise I’d be writing to the council almost every week countering your omissions and/or inaccurate information.
You also wrote about Facebook banning Canadian news but you didn’t inform the reader as to why and the results of the government’s overreaching law C-18 which tried to force them to pay millions of dollars to legacy news media.
A news study six months after the ban has showed that there was very little effect for Canadians getting their news.
(Editor’s note: According to a report in the CBC last August, a study by the Media Ecosystem Observatory (MEO), a collaboration between McGill University and University of Toronto looked at the Facebook pages of Canadian news outlets, political commentators and advocacy groups, and political and local community groups. It found that Canadians are consuming less news — estimating that Canadian news online saw a reduction of 11 million views per day.)
You state that this gives more freedom to the proliferation of online disinformation. Let’s look at polls about the legacy media which you are defending. In a poll on Stats Canada website, trust in news media from 0-5 was over 54 per cent and confidence of the media institution was at 31 per cent. So you’re on shaky ground by trying to promote legacy media over Canadians’ online posts.
(Editor’s note: According to News Media Canada research released in November, 62 per cent of Canadians trust printed newspaper content. For Facebook and Instagram, that trust dips to 27 per cent.)
You also mentioned a desire to censor hate speech. This is very dangerous. Who is the arbiter of this hate speech? The government? That’s a laugh and a half.
They call any speech which opposes their policies as hate speech, one look at Trudeau’s speeches about the Trucker Convoy easily proves that. Unfortunately, we have hate speech laws which are a real joke. In Alberta in 2003, the Alberta Human Rights Commission ruled that a song which contained “kill the Christian” in its lyrics, was not a hate crime because, get this, Christians aren’t vulnerable enough.
(Editor’s note: The song was by the band Deicide, and was named “Kill the Christian.”)
That’s just one example out of many of how hypocritical these human rights commissions are monitoring so-called hate speech. Now, advocating for murdering people isn’t hate speech, it’s an advocation to commit murder, which is a crime.
Big deal that people insult other people, because you don’t have to respond or you can block them on social media.
Try being a pro-life politician who is Christian and you’ll see insults after insults and that’s just from the other politicians.
Politicians in the House of Commons can insult, defame and libel people because they’re protected; ordinary Canadians can’t libel or defame people because it’s against the law. But insulting? That’s not a crime.
So you deal with it the best way you know how. Either ignore them or with more speech, not censorship, because that’s when you admit that you can’t counter their speech. That also goes with so-called disinformation which politicians lie/misinform Canadians every single day.
Patrick Hogan
Chatham
