The Reith Lectures cover image

1. Freedom of Speech

The Reith Lectures

CHAPTER

Freedom of Speech Matters

When I read something scientifically false such as that drinking urine cures cancer, I desperately long to banish such ideas from the world. American high school boards are today engaged in a frenzy of book banning and it seems arbitrary. What today is considered benign could very well become offensive tomorrow. The suppression of speech is not so much about the speech itself as it is the person who senses. My first instinct on learning that a book has been banned is to seek it out and read it. And so I would say, do not ban them, answer them. In this age of mounting disinformation all over the world, when it is easy to dress up a lie so nicely that it starts to take on the

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