Word: frees
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Although we agree that Comedy Central made the right choice in censoring itself, we hope that the media continues to fight for free speech. News channels in particular should be held to a higher standard of not acquiescing to threats, for their power to disperse information is particularly necessary...
Indeed, the bigger issue here is not Comedy Central’s decision but instead is the use of threats—grounded in religion or any other belief—to subdue another’s free speech. In a statement to the New York Times, South Park’s creators commented, “In the 14 years we’ve been doing ‘South Park’ we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind.” The repression of free speech due to threats...
...equal parts offensive and sacrilegious. Its content repulses some and elicits uncomfortable laughter from others who don’t know whether to publicly condemn the racial rhetoric its creators so frequently employ or privately snicker at its irreligious themes. But in its smutty humor is the principle of free speech incarnate, the belief that all speech that does not actively encourage violence, no matter how profane or offensive, should be protected...
Comedy Central’s decision to censor South Park is antithetical to that very idea, and the argument that its decision was in the interest of safety despoils the spirit of free speech that protects all types of comedy, no matter how sophomoric, gross, or unfunny we deem it. South Park’s creators are no strangers to death threats and have offended every major world religion, ethnic identity, and sexual identity conceivable. They have surely been menaced by some radical fringe representing these groups...
...idea that free speech is only a right worth protecting when it is safe or convenient to do so is as dangerous as the threats of terrorism that the South Park creators face. To ignore that by substituting defense of that right with just a condemnation of violence is not only laughably impotent as a counter to terrorism, but also a legitimation of the threat itself. Indeed, the South Park controversy cast into stark light the conflict between terrorism and the freedoms that we in America hold dear, and in this case, terrorism prevailed...