Freedom of speech is what underpins and great democratic society; it gives us the right to voice our opinions on all sorts of things without the fear of the state stopping us. As long as we don’t break any laws in what we say.
However we have seen in recent year’s groups like the BNP and the EDL pushing the limits of Freedom of Speech, coming very close to inciting racial hatred with their campaigns against Muslims. But equally we have seen Muslim extremists doing the same.
Now this leaves us in a difficult position, the obvious solution would be to pass a law prohibiting groups like those from being able to spout their hatred. However that goes against all we believe in; in a free and fair democracy. As if we start to limit one group who say things we don’t like then that only leads us to banning more and more groups from saying things we don’t agree with.
However I think there is one very simple solution to this whole issue, and that is to convince the media that giving these hate filled groups air time or column inches is a bad thing. If we let them have their “demonstrations” and don’t report it in the media they will soon get bored doing it and go away. As they know even if 20 of them turn up to spout their hate filled nonsense there will be as many journalists there to report it. We should as people encourage the press that this is really not a worthy news story.
However we have seen in recent year’s groups like the BNP and the EDL pushing the limits of Freedom of Speech, coming very close to inciting racial hatred with their campaigns against Muslims. But equally we have seen Muslim extremists doing the same.
Now this leaves us in a difficult position, the obvious solution would be to pass a law prohibiting groups like those from being able to spout their hatred. However that goes against all we believe in; in a free and fair democracy. As if we start to limit one group who say things we don’t like then that only leads us to banning more and more groups from saying things we don’t agree with.
However I think there is one very simple solution to this whole issue, and that is to convince the media that giving these hate filled groups air time or column inches is a bad thing. If we let them have their “demonstrations” and don’t report it in the media they will soon get bored doing it and go away. As they know even if 20 of them turn up to spout their hate filled nonsense there will be as many journalists there to report it. We should as people encourage the press that this is really not a worthy news story.
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