On Tuesday, former Fox News chief political correspondent Carl Cameron declared in the aftermath of the white supremacist mass shooting in Buffalo, that some people need to go to jail for spreading misinformation. On Saturday’s CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta, Cameron was at it again, suggesting Tucker Carlson has lost his First Amendment rights and that Fox should be deplatormed.
Acosta began by tying Carlson to Buffalo and wondering, “Do you think the Murdoch family in charge of Fox will ever pull the plug on Tucker? What do you think?”
Cameron responded by declaring that if the police wanted to throw Carlson in jail, that would be legally permissibly because Carlson is not protected by free speech, “In this particular case Tucker has been screaming fire in a crowded movie house for years, and that cliche really comes to the matter of what is free speech, and the fact of the matter is, if you disturb the peace by starting a riot in a movie theater, cops are going to arrest you and you might end up in jail or you might end up in something worse.”
While some urge social media companies to increase content moderation for vaguely defined misinformation, Cameron took it one step further, “And that kind of stuff absolutely has to stop, whether it's the antitrust bill to take down and de-platform people who lie and put out falsehoods that cause damage and violent, violent hate, there ought to be something done about it and the administration is beginning to actually make a move on that and it's been way overdue.”
He then tied Fox to foreign disinformation campaigns, “It's not just Fox, it's social media in general, it's on the internet and we have to remember that a good portion of what people read is coming from folks who aren't Americans pretending to be Americans in order to gaslight them even worse.”
All this said on the show of the man who appointed himself as the living embodiment of the First Amendment in Donald Trump’s alleged war on journalists.
This segment was sponsored by Casper.
Here is a transcript for the May 21 show:
CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta
5/21/2022
5:18 PM ET
JIM ACOSTA: Do you think the Murdoch family in charge of Fox will ever pull the plug on Tucker? What do you think?
CARL CAMERON: There's a point when it becomes difficult for an executive to put up with the help. In this particular case Tucker has been screaming fire in a crowded movie house for years, and that cliche really comes to the matter of what is free speech, and the fact of the matter is, if you disturb the peace by starting a riot in a movie theater, cops are going to arrest you and you might end up in jail or you might end up in something worse.
And that kind of stuff absolutely has to stop, whether it's the antitrust bill to take down and de-platform people who lie and put out falsehoods that cause damage and violent, violent hate, there ought to be something done about it and the administration is beginning to actually make a move on that and it's been way overdue. It's not just Fox, it's social media in general, it's on the internet and we have to remember that a good portion of what people read is coming from folks who aren't Americans pretending to be Americans in order to gaslight them even worse.
