We have long discussed the collapse of free speech values in France as the left criminalizes an ever-widening scope of opposing viewpoints. Conservative groups are denouncing a new such case targeting conservative media. CNEWS was fined and forced to apologize on air after a journalist referred to abortion as the world’s leading cause of death.
CNEWS is owned by Catholic businessman Vincent Bolloré. Presenter Aymeric Pourbaix made the statement during a Catholic program called “En quête d’esprit” (or “In Search of Spirit.”) Whatever that search may have found in terms of spirit, it certainly found censorship.
The program showed a graph on the causes of death that put abortion on top, with 73 million deaths each year worldwide. That constitutes 52% of annual deaths, far ahead of cancer (10 million) and smoking (6.2 million).
The French media regulatory authority Arcom imposed a fine of 100,000 euros and compelled CNEWS to apologize on the air. It was the full monty of censorship, combining a penalty with compelled speech. Arcom found that the network had failed its “obligation of honesty and rigor in the presentation and processing of information.” It declared that “Abortion cannot be presented as a cause of death.”
Obviously, many people around the world view abortion as the death of a human being. However, the press and pundits on the left went ballistic at the statement and called for a crackdown by the government. It is now a violation of law to call abortion a cause of death.
Journalists joined the call for censorship and accused the network of publishing biased and dangerous ideas.
The network was beaten into submission and apologized “for the people who may have been hurt by this infographic.”
Barring people from calling abortion a cause of death is only the latest speech crackdown in a nation that prides itself as a cradle of liberty.
France has been a leader in the rollback on free speech in the West with ever widening laws curtailing free speech. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar. At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism.
In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.”
This is a nation that still echoes the cry of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (“liberté, égalité, fraternité”). However, in today’s France, “liberté” is no longer valued. Individual rights of religion and speech are routinely sacrificed in the name of “equity” and “fraternity.”
In my book The Indispensable Right, I discuss how free speech is in a virtual free fall in Europe. As we face our own growing anti-free speech movement, citizens need to take a long look at countries like France to see what awaits us down this path. Europe went down this slippery slope of censorship decades ago, and the desire to silence others has now become an insatiable appetite.
If we are to protect a right that, more than any other, defines us, we must hold the line against this global movement.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
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