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We Have a Free-Speech Problem in America Too

5 minute read
Ideas
Charlotte Alter is a senior correspondent at TIME. She covers politics, social movements, and generational change, and hosts TIME's Person of the Week podcast. She is also the author of The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America. Her work for TIME has won a Front Page Award from the Newswoman's Club of New York and has been nominated for a GLAAD Media award.

The massacre of Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists in Paris is an assault on free speech everywhere. But the same media that so fervently defends free speech in the aftermath of this tragedy makes a habit of policing language, seizing upon offensive remarks of the famous, or not so famous, and using them to manufacture outrage in pursuit of an audience.

Clearly a slaughter of 12 innocent people is countless orders of magnitude more devastating than Internet umbrage. But the motive comes from the same place: the notion that people should be “punished” for making insensitive comments or jokes, that they should pay for their words with their reputations or their jobs. In other words: You said something that offends me, so I will destroy you.

That destruction can take many forms. It could be leaking your emails and destroying your computer systems, as happened to Sony. It could be getting someone fired. It could be destroying someone’s reputation through relentless public Twitter flogging. But we forget that Internet outrage can have real-life victims (and I admit, as a writer, I’ve occasionally forgotten that). We give ourselves license to indulge in these perverse impulses out of a sense of righteousness — Down with sexism! Conquer racism! But destroying lives over objectionable language is just a different form of extremism.

Take, for example, Slate’s excellent report on the collected indignation of 2014, called The Year in Outrage. In an essay titled “How Outrage Changed My Life,” former New York Times Magazine columnist Andrew Goldman describes a series of events that led him to craft a sexist tweet about author Jennifer Weiner that ultimately cost him his job and livelihood. Afterward, he wrote, “I was surprised when she expressed that she felt that she and I had been equivalently wounded by what happened, that having had my reputation and career permanently marred was comparable to being insulted on Twitter.”

See Photos of France’s National Day of Mourning:

France Stands in Silence for Terror Attack Victims

French President Francois Hollande, center, with at his side interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, left, and Paris police prefect Bernard Boucault, right, stands for a minute of silence, at Paris Prefecture in Paris, Jan. 8, 2015.
French President Francois Hollande, center, with interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, left, and Paris police prefect Bernard Boucault, right, stands for a minute of silence, at Paris Prefecture in Paris, Jan. 8, 2015. Remy de la Mauviniere—AP
The French national flag waves at a half mast on a building in Paris, Jan. 8,2015.
The French national flag waves at a half mast on a building in Paris, Jan. 8,2015. Fredrik Von Erichsen—dpa/Corbis
A young woman holds aloft a symbolic people as she joins others gathered for a minute of silence in front of Notre Dame cathedral, in Paris, Jan. 8, 2014.
A young woman holds aloft a symbolic pen as she joins others gathered for a minute of silence in front of Notre Dame cathedral, in Paris, Jan. 8, 2014.Ian Langsdon—EPA
Journalists of international press agency Agence France-Presse hold signs reading "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) at their headquarters in Paris as they observe a minute of silence on Jan. 8, 2015.
Journalists of international press agency Agence France-Presse hold signs reading "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) at their headquarters in Paris as they observe a minute of silence on Jan. 8, 2015.Francoir Xavier Marit—AFP/Getty Images
People observe a minute of silence in front of the city hall in Toulouse, on Jan. 8, 2015.
People observe a minute of silence in front of the city hall in Toulouse, on Jan. 8, 2015.Remy Gabaldi—AFP/Getty Images
People observe a minute of silence in Strasbourg, eastern France on Jan. 8, 2015.
People observe a minute of silence in Strasbourg, eastern France on Jan. 8, 2015.Frederick Florin—AFP/Getty Images
Young Parisians gather for a minute of silence in front of Notre Dame cathedral, Jan 8, 2014.
Young Parisians gather for a minute of silence in front of Notre Dame cathedral, Jan 8, 2014.Ian Langsdon—EPA
An older citizen removes his hat in a rain shower as he joins others gathered for a minute of silence in front of Notre Dame cathedral, Jan. 8, 2014.
An older citizen removes his hat in a rain shower as he joins others gathered for a minute of silence in front of Notre Dame cathedral, Jan. 8, 2014.Ian Langsdon—EPA
Floral tributes are laid on the ground during a minutes silence in Paris on Jan. 8, 2015.
Floral tributes are laid on the ground during a minutes silence in Paris on Jan. 8, 2015.Martin Bureau—AFP/Getty Images
A poster reads 'Je suis Charlie' (I am Charlie) amid symbolic pens and pencils on Place de la Republique as people gather for a minute of silence commemorating those killed in a shooting at French satirical magazine 'Charlie Hebdo', in Paris, Jan. 8, 2015.
A poster reads 'Je suis Charlie' (I am Charlie) amid symbolic pens and pencils on Place de la Republique as people gather for a minute of silence commemorating those killed in a shooting at French satirical magazine 'Charlie Hebdo', in Paris, Jan. 8, 2015. Etienne Laurent—EPA

Or look at Justine Sacco, the PR executive whose tone-deaf tweet about AIDS in Africa cost her her name and her career. After Sacco tweeted a racist joke and got on an airplane, the world (and the media) waited for her to land, at which point she “emerged into an unfathomable modern multimedia hell-nightmare and was quickly and summarily fired,” wrote Sam Biddle at Gawker, who was early to the Sacco pile-on and has since come to regret it:

“Twitter disasters are the quickest source of outrage, and outrage is traffic. I didn’t think about whether or not I might be ruining Sacco’s life…Each time, each slap, was the same: If we could only put one more wrongheaded head on a pike, humiliate one more bigoted sorority girl or ignorant Floridian, we could heal this world. Each, next outrage post was the one that would make a difference.”

The notion that somebody deserves to have their life and career ruined for tweeting an offensive comment or bad joke is an out-of-proportion response, driven by righteous indignation. The answer to a tasteless comment or cartoon is discourse, not destruction, but too often, we sanction professional immolation as a fitting consequence of objectionable speech. It’s a snowball effect, because nobody wants to defend someone who is being accused of bigotry, lest they be labeled a bigot themselves. There’s even a whole Tumblr devoted to policing social media and reporting racist comments to employers, called “Racists Getting Fired.” And as anyone who’s ever been the object of online vitriol knows, public finger-pointing is usually enough to make you rethink your assumptions and prejudices. You don’t have to lose your job over it.

Goldman was mocking women, Sacco was mocking AIDS (or so we thought at the time), Sony’s film was mocking Kim Jung Un, Charlie Hebdo was mocking Muhammad — which of these you find most offensive depends on who you are. If we defend one of them as free speech, we must defend them all.

If all of us standing up for Charlie Hebdo are truly committed to the freedom of speech — and we all should be — we need to stop demanding professional punishment whenever somebody says something idiotically sexist, racist or classist. Embarrassing comments, in most cases, should not cost people their jobs or livelihoods. We should disagree with people, but not aim to destroy their lives.

“We can’t live in a country without freedom of speech,” Charlie Hebdo’s top editor Stéphane Charbonnier once said in an interview. “I prefer to die than to live like a rat.” But in a media climate that is largely fueled by outrage and retribution, we are all living like mice.

Read next: Blasphemy Is at the Front Lines of Free Speech Today

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Write to Charlotte Alter at charlotte.alter@time.com

TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.