JOHN LLOYD: How hate speech can harm your brain
'In the course of this complex balancing act, between security and liberty, profit and regulation, there is the danger of substantial damage to the freedoms of speech and the news media'
In a flurry of confident pronouncements within an hour of the massacre at a Las Vegas country music festival, conservative commentators and activists linked the perpetrator, Stephen Paddock, to liberal or Islamist influences. Rush Limbaugh, still the doyen of right-wing talk radio, credited Islamic State with being Paddock’s ideological home, arguing that it was disguised by the liberal media because “for the American left, there is no such thing as militant Islamic terrorism.” Pat Robertson, the socially conservative activist and televangelist, said the shooting stemmed from the news media’s and liberal protesters’ “profound disrespect for our president” and other institutions. On the other side of the American culture war, a CBS vice president and legal counsel, Hayley Geftman-Gold, posted a Facebook comment that she was “not even sympathetic” to the victims because “country music fans often are Republican gun toters.” Unlike her right wing opposites, she suffered for her opinion:...
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