POLITICO Europe’s note on Farhad Khosrokhavar’ op-ed article.
Past November 1st, Stephen Brown, POLITICO Europe’s Editor in Chief, withdrew an article titled The dangerous French religion of secularism, explaining that it did not meet their editorial standards.
Four days later, Donald Trump gave a speech in which he unfoundedly claimed the presidential election was being stolen. As it is widely known, major outlets cut him off midway.
These two episodes, involving different media and two different events, are a fresh demonstration of how the cancellation culture operates in media, and how it may be doing more harm than good.
Editorial Standards, Lack Of Transparency
Farhad Khosrokhavar is a Franco-Iranian sociologist considered an expert in Jihadism. POLITICO Europe invited him to write an op-ed article over the controversy caused by the poignant killing of Samuel Paty. He did so, hitting hard on laicité, France’s secularism.
POLITICO published Mr. Khosrokhavar’s article, let it rest online for a couple of days, took it down and offered no explanation to audience beyond the mere editorial standards. The questions arose: What is their editorial standard? Why Mr. Khosrokhavar’s piece did not meet them?
It’s clear that media outlets are just private companies, and they can operate their business as it pleases them. But, as big and powerful an outlet can grow up to be, it has an obligation to be transparent. A media outlet cannot elude their accountability to audience.
This is more arresting since the whole discussion revolves around secularism and freedom of speech. If the editors considered that the article somehow jeopardized the separation between religions and states and the right every individual has to express their opinion, isn’t it ironic they are not allowing this renowned individual to express his criticism?
POLITICO’s muting of the article did not cancel the discussion. More experts have jumped in and questioned the French’s version of freedom of speech. In fact, by limiting any questioning voice on this topic, Politico can just be throwing more tinder to the ardent fire surrounding the so-called Western values.
Op-ed articles, as dissenting, inaccurate or prejudiced they can be, are to be contested with another op-ed article or with an editorial message, signaling the media opinion about it. Cancelation of a voice comes to be perceived as censorship by those supporting that voice, and the word censorship is music to the ears of paranoids and conspiracy theorists.
Lies Are To Be Denounced, Not Muted
When MSNBC, CBS, ABC and NBC cancelled coverage on Trump’s baseless claims, one question popped up: why are they doing it now? Mr. Trump has been lying to the American public routinely, starting from the 2016 elections. The media that cut him off this month already knew he is a compulsive liar back in 2016. Why did not they make that editorial decision back then?
Brad Adgate may have had the answer 2 years ago: He was always a rating-maker. Now he’s done, isn’t he news-worthy anymore? The lack of clarity here is a serious threat to the ethical obligation media has with their audiences.
In any case, what a president of a country says or does should always be news-worthy, more importantly when those words or actions are immoral or untrue. This even helps media to exercise its most prominent duty in a society: questioning power. Those 4 outlets could have followed CNN’s smarter strategy of captioning the speech to let viewers know he was making baseless accusations.
CNN captioning Trump’s speech. The Telegraph
Cancelling the otherness profoundly wrecks our comprehension of their wrongness. The causes that led to Trump disaster are more alive than ever, and media has failed at identifying what make millions of US citizens vote for him. This just damages their trust in traditional media, making them seek for pamphletary outlets which meet their ideology needs.
Articles against secularism or any Trump’s infamous rants don’t die out when cancelled by media. Audiences can access any cancelled content online anyway. Traditional media don’t have the monopoly over information anymore, but it seems they think they still do.
Cancellation culture in media ends up feeding the deranged: nothing’s more suitable for a paranoid partisan than a seemingly Orwellian media that disguises reality.
Juan Merchan