Free Speech Advocates, Publishers Wrestle With Questions Of Censorship

Free speech advocates see President-elect Trumps's testy relationship with the media and his middle-of-the-night tweets reacting to critics as evidence that he is — at best — insensitive to the First Amendment. And they say one recent controversy, the decision by Simon & Schuster to publish a book by social media provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, has grown out of an atmosphere that encourages hate speech.

Now, PEN America — an organization dedicated to defending the right to free speech all over the world — is starting to pay more attention to what's happening on the home front. PEN is co-sponsoring a protest which will bring a host of well-known writers to the steps of the New York Public Library to protest threats to free expression.

"We need to be, as citizens, ready to come out," says PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel, "stand together for basic rights that six months ago we might have been able to take for granted, but that we no longer can."

Nossel sees these threats coming from several directions: The President-elect's attacks on the press and his critics, the proliferation of fake news and the pattern of trolling on social media.

"People feel more free to speak their mind," she says, "even if it crosses what would have been considered boundaries of hatred or racism or misogyny, and so I think it then becomes incumbent on others to speak more loudly."

More