How Free Should Speech Be?

Moral Maze

BBC

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.4 • 623 Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Yielding to the big star pressure of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, this week Spotify agreed to put a content advisory label on any podcast that includes material about Covid. Mitchell and Young removed their music in protest at Joe Rogan’s podcasts. These shows are extremely popular globally but they aired views sceptical of Covid vaccines. In an Instagram post Rogan himself said he'd aim for more impartiality in future, but Spotify’s shares are down and more artists are joining the boycott. Who is responsible for the content of Spotify or any other digital platform? Is Covid a special case or must they remove or add a warning about anything any listeners might object to? Is it enough to say sorry or offer to slap on a "contentious material" label? At what point do such safeguards become censorship?

And what about other, more traditional, intermediaries? This week the poet and teacher Kate Clanchy said she considered suicide after parting company with her publisher. She’d been accused of racism in the words she used about pupils in her memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. The students have defended her in print and Clanchy has apologised. And yet the debate goes on. Are publishers morally responsible for their authors ideas and beliefs? If the publisher or internet platform truly disagrees with the material, is it enough to issue an apology or label the offending material as contentious? And does intent count at all? With Journalist Brendan O'Neill, Academic Julie Posetti, Broadcaster Inaya Folarin Iman and Poet Anthony Anaxagorou.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.6	Good evening. Joe Rogan and Kate Clanshy couldn't be more different.
0:10.6	He's a former kickboxer and comic who's become a 21st century kind of broadcasting star,
0:16.4	with an internet podcast that has 11 million subscribers and has earned him a hundred million dollars.
0:23.0	She's an Oxford educated teacher and award-winning author and poet.
0:27.7	Yet they're both at the centre of the increasingly passionate argument over the limits of free speech.
0:33.4	Joe Rogan has given airtime to people sceptical of COVID vaccinations,
0:37.6	stars like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell who have withdrawn their music
0:40.8	from the Spotify platform they share in protest to what they regard as dangerous misinformation.
0:46.8	Prince Harry and Meghan have also voiced concern,
0:49.5	but not threatened to withdraw from there reportedly 18 million pound podcast contract with the platform.
0:55.8	Under pressure, Spotify has offered to warn subscribers of controversial content.
1:00.6	To some, a welcome first step in controlling the internet and bringing it into line with
1:04.9	traditional media to others' censorship.
1:08.3	Kate Clancy won the Orwell Prize with her memoir, Some Kids I Taught and
1:12.5	what they taught me. But she was targeted by a campaign that accused her of racism for using
1:17.7	phrases like chocolate-coloured skin and almond eyes, and ableism for saying autistic children
1:24.6	could be jarring company. She and her publisher parted ways messily, and she says she contemplated suicide.
1:32.4	These are some of the key moral questions and generational dividing lines of the age.
1:37.6	Who, if anybody, should police the public sphere and how?
1:41.0	Where to draw the line between debate and disinformation,
1:46.0	between science and quackery,
	...

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