I did not know that.
It wasn’t quite as polarized as today of course. There were a lot of people who said he’s a liberal, but neutral in his reporting. IIRC there was an article saying that Cronkite’s critics were the start of the era of the claimed liberal bias in media. I’ll see if I can find it.
LOL well that was easy, first link in Google. 
Interestingly, this is the second time in the past few days that I’ve read that Reagan’s deregulation of the communications industry led to the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine which in turn lead to the deep polarization of news media and politics today. It wasn’t that people didn’t have serious differences of opinion back then. It’s just that they were more likely to be exposed to both sides of an argument in the news. Which probably served to temper both sides of the argument to some degree. You couldn’t just say any damn fool thing in the news cast without immediately having to present the other side. Not much left to discourage that kind of thing anymore when you can curate your preferred version of reality.
I’m not sure there’s a clearer word than “content”. If you read this article and offer it for debate and, despite all your previous concern about “cancel culture”, you’re not proffering this article to complain about people trying to get an ACLU dude fired for what he said on his personal Twitter account, then your concern is not about cancel culture per se; it’s about people getting canceled for things you find trivial.
I don’t see where Greenwald linked to the New Yorker article that you cited, and there are dozens of links in his article (assuming that what you meant by the phrase “that GG linked to” was “that Greenwald linked to in the article that I wrote my OP about”). Could you please be a little more specific about the precise context (i.e., cut and paste here the text of Greenwald’s link so I can search on it in his article) in which Greenwald, and consequently you, think that this New Yorker article is relevant?
Because AFAICT, the article does not directly address the issue of free-speech absolutism that your thread is about.
Well, I can’t say I’d shed any tears if paedophiles and neo-Nazis get cancelled. But people are losing their jobs for mainstream opinions, tweets taken out of context and stuff they wrote 20 years ago. It probably is connected to people living in media bubbles and never having to listen to any contrary views. It normalises extremist ideas.
Among the people I interviewed was the organization’s long-time Executive Director, Anthony Romero, who was forced to navigate the post-Charlottesville controversy with a series of increasingly confusing statements designed to appease not only public and donor anger over the defense by ACLU lawyers of the right of white supremacists to march (after one killed a protester with his car) but also internal rage that ACLU lawyers took that free speech case. Romero insisted to me that the ACLU had not retreated from its historic commitment to free speech nor its resolve to avoid partisan politics despite a series of post-Charottesville memos and a highly-funded election campaign that certainly gave the opposite appearance.
It’s the ‘highly funded election campaign’ link.
Not living in a “media bubble” didn’t seem to make the 1978 anti-Nazi “cancel advocates” significantly more tolerant of the Nazis’ constitutional right to express their “contrary views”.
Ah thanks, right there in the second paragraph of Greenwald’s linked article from your OP (if it was a snake it woulda bit me):
So Greenwald appears to be deliberately conflating the issue of the ACLU’s free-speech absolutism with the issue of the ACLU’s electoral partisanship, which are actually two different matters. I don’t have any quarrel with Wallace-Wells’ coverage of the ACLU’s electoral involvement in that New Yorker article, but it has no particular bearing on the specific topic of free-speech absolutism in the ACLU.
The fact that Greenwald is apparently trying to spin all discussion of changes of any kind in the ACLU as evidence for his alarmist narrative of “look how the ACLU is helping kill free speech!” IMHO reflects more poorly on him than on the ACLU itself.
I don’t think you understood my point. Canceling Nazis was always common and regarded as okay. It’s the creeping change to more and more ordinary views being seen as unacceptable that may be due to media bubbles.
The two changes are motivated by the same philosophy, though? I wanted to see the memos, but that link was paywalled.
Are you now taking Greenwald’s word for it that the ACLU is in fact “changing” its commitment to defending free speech? I think the statements in the internal memo that I quoted and linked to above rebut that claim:
Greenwald is trying to spin his reporting as an expose of an “engulfing war” and a “raging conflict” that is jeopardizing the ACLU’s fundamental principles and even existence, because that’s what gets Greenwald attention and readers.
A more realistic article title along the lines of “Today’s ACLU Re-Examines How To Balance Its Simultaneous Commitments to Fairness and Free Speech” would doubtless have been a lot less effective in stirring up publicity.
I don’t think that “more and more ordinary views [are] being seen as unacceptable” nowadays. Some people speak out against racism and other forms of bigotry, just as some people always have. Similarly, some people speak out in favor of racism and other forms of bigotry, just as some people always have.
What is really changing in the present day, due to technological shifts, is simply the speed and reach with which people can bring their opinions to the attention of others. But the actual content of those opinions is not AFAICT getting more “extremist”, except among the people who are actually abandoning engagement with reality and embracing fictitious conspiracy theories.
It’s not “extremist” to express an opinion that, say, a TV advertisement shouldn’t depict an interracial or same-sex couple. And it’s not “extremist” to express an opinion that a book the opiner considers bad and harmful shouldn’t be published or circulated. All those views are solidly within the mainstream of American popular opinion.
What’s new nowadays, as I said, is just the extent to which such opinions can be rapidly spread and amplified by modern social media and other online entities.
I would have said both those views are extreme. And both are regarded as cancel-worthy depending on circumstances.
People should be able to legally debate age of consent and sexuality. As far as I am aware there is no prohibition on that. Now, how deep one wants to get into such a debate or a debate on infanticide or something like that ought to be carefully considered.
If the “ordinary views” you are concerned are becoming victim to “cancel culture” are actually just bog-standard transphobia and racism, I can only say one thing: Good!
OK, I have one more thing to say : About damn time!
It’s clear you have no idea how many Americans are against race mixing… not say they’re against it, but actually are against it.
It would not surprise me to see similar findings for opposition to same-sex pairings.
Neither of those are extreme views. And it shouldn’t need saying, but "not the majority =/= “extreme”
When anything can be labeled the boogeyman racist or w/e the triggering word of the century is and then silenced or set upon by an angry mob that is not a good thing.
They’re not. Redefining non-racist views to be racist, and trying to prevent research investigating whether children are being harmed, on the other hand…
9% isn’t so bad. And it’s hard to interpret the data on implicit bias; how do the numbers relate to real-world actions? Having an implicit bias isn’t the same as secretly being opposed to something. I’m not saying it’s meaningless, but it’s not like open prejudice; it’s a subconscious thing that is best fixed through experience, and in the meantime use as many objective measures as possible in decision making to reduce the effect.
Here you go, 100% legal and socially acceptable discussion of infanticide:
People can debate that legally. Private media platforms aren’t and shouldn’t be required to allow such debates on their platforms.