Government Censorship on the Rise

Cities and counties across the U.S. are banning advertising about religion, politics, abortion, environmental causes — any topic that risks offending people. For example, Lackawanna County, Pa., is barring bus ads that promote atheism and claims it will reject ads that promote religion, too. New York, Philadelphia and Chicago are cracking down on political ads in mass transit.

Government bureaucrats don’t want the “distraction” of dealing with controversial ads. Too bad they don’t realize — or don’t care — that freedom requires hearing distasteful ideas. Half a century ago, as totalitarian governments gripped Eastern Europe and muzzled freedom fighters, George Orwell warned, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.”

On April 29, New York City’s transit authority voted to exclude political ads from buses, trains and platforms. Thomas F. Prendergast, transit chairman, defends it, saying controversial ads “have been a distraction” for the transit system. New York’s new rule was triggered by a federal court decision a week earlier ordering the transit authority to display a provocative ad smearing Islam as a religion that advocates killing Jews. No matter how offensive the ad is, the judge ruled, transit officials can’t pick and choose. To get around the ruling, transit officials banned all political ads.

Philadelphia is also stifling free speech. On March 30, Pamela Geller and her controversial anti-jihadist organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, won a federal court battle against transit officials there. The judge ordered transit officials to display Geller’s ad, which said, “Islamic Jew-hatred: It’s in the Quran.” To avoid complying, Philadelphia took the coward’s way out, just like New York, and banned all political ads.

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