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Harper's free speech letter has 'moved the needle', says organiser
Jul 13, 2020
The organiser of an open letter decrying “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism” has said companies such as Netflix and the New York Times will have to take into account the views of its signatories, after a counter letter accused the first letter’s backers of failing to recognise those “silenced for generations”.
A debate about free speech, privilege and the role of social media in public discourse continued over the weekend as the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who signed the first letter along with more than 150 prominent authors, thinkers and journalists including JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood, argued that it had “moved the needle”.
Speaking to NPR , Chatterton Williams said: “Someone has to look around and say: ‘Well, actually, a lot of these people on the list I do still want to work with. I do still want to make Netflix adaptations of some of their work. I do still want them to make podcasts or report at the New York Times or the New Yorker,’” he said. “‘And so I have to take into consideration their point of view too, not just these kind of whipped up mobs online that are faceless.’”
The letter, which was published in Harper’s Magazine on Tuesday and signed by cultural figures also including Noam Chomsky, Malcolm Gladwell and Gloria Steinem, said the spread of “censoriousness” was leading to “an intolerance of opposing views” and “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism”.
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