With the permeation of media and technology into nearly every aspect of young people’s lives, Spiegel & Grau recently asked three authors—Adam Mansbach, a novelist and educator; Lee Siegel, a writer and cultural critic; and Matt Taibbi, a journalist and political writer—to grapple with some of the timeless questions, such as what are some of the emerging challenges—and promise—of new technologies.

How would you define censorship?

Taibbi: In my mind there are two forms of censorship—direct and indirect. Direct censorship would be a state organ actually stepping in and forbidding some kind of public speech on either political or ideological grounds (as opposed to forbidding someone to scream “Fire!” in a crowded theater, for instance). We have very little experience with direct censorship in this country —although there are occasional instances, like the Pentagon Papers incident.

Indirect censorship I’d define as a private entity placing speech limitations on an employee or a client —restricting speech on its private property. And we have tons of that in the United States. We have companies that prohibit employees from speaking publicly about its indiscretions, forcing them to sign non-disclosure agreements and the like. More commonly, we have journalists and performers who are told they can’t say or report something because it conflicts with the interests of his or her publication’s owner or an advertiser.

Siegel: I define it as the obstruction of free expression. Not free abuse, free hate speech, free slander, or free libel. Free expression: for example, rational discourse—even if couched in the most outrageous idiom. Lenny Bruce represents free expression. Don Imus, in his notorious remarks a year or so ago, does not.

Mansbach: I think there are several levels of censorship. Most clear-cut is the suppression of information—news, art, opinion—on a governmental level; it is something that contradicts official policy or the alleged interests of the people, and so it’s not permitted to be heard.

More ambiguous—and perhaps more pressing in this country right now—are cultural censorship and self-censorship. It doesn’t have to be some shadowy agency deciding that a piece of art is dangerous or pornographic; those who report the news and create the art can also give in to societal pressures and choose not to speak, not to push boundaries, or refuse to express themselves in ways that might prove controversial. In this way, censorship moves from enforced to internalized, which is in some ways worse.

Taibbi: I agree. Really, the most common form of censorship in this country is censorship by omission. Our news agencies and other media outlets are assigned to cover topics and issues that fall within the range of acceptable debate, and are not assigned more dangerous or controversial topics. Reporters, therefore, are given full license to express their feelings about much of what they report on. What they’re not allowed to do is choose what they write about. That is why we so rarely see scenes of poverty on national television, even though a substantial percentage of the population is poor. Images of poverty are a drag upon consumer spending and render advertising less effective; hence we see little poverty. Book publishers buy trashy celebrity bios for millions and give the guy who writes about corporate malfeasance $600 bucks and a 1000-copy initial print run. This is a very effective form of censorship because few people even recognize it as such—not even reporters and authors themselves.

What do you see as both the emerging opportunities and the growing pitfalls for freedom of speech in a rapidly changing media-world?

Taibbi: Obviously the internet will make free speech of the absolute variety almost impossible to restrict. But here’s the problem: because we now live in vast media landscapes, mass societies whose citizens can only be moved to change public opinion via prolonged, coordinated campaigns of major media outlets, it will become increasingly important to think about free speech in terms of volume and reach. In other words, free speech is somewhat meaningless if you’re only allowed to say what you want in obscure websites that only a few people read.

Mansbach: Absolutely. The paradox of media proliferation and diversification is that speech becomes freer, but also potentially less meaningful. There are more outlets, more opportunities, and more self-reliance; but in the absence of hierarchy it becomes hard to know what to trust, how to distinguish reliable reportage from phony, or how to wade through the cacophony of voices. I think people are savvy enough to figure some of this out—which internet news sources are legitimate, whose blog is worth reading, what news station is a mouthpiece for what agenda—but it takes time, and the proliferation may be faster than the ability to sift.

Siegel: Agreed. In a world where popularity, the bottom line, and the “wisdom of the crowd” now shape the media—all these trends hastened by the internet—I fear for the lone, dissenting, individual voice. On the other hand, the internet can certainly be used to combat these oppressive trends. But internet users have to learn to ignore popularity, the bottom line and the “wisdom of the crowd.” They have to learn to think for themselves.

Taibbi: The real trick is in seeing how restricted the speech is on major cable networks and major newspapers. Increasingly, those who have political power understand that they can safely permit almost any kind of speech, so long as it’s in obscure publications (or even in one-time articles in well-known publications). But if they can prevent dangerous speech from reappearing on major TV networks several days in a row, they can prevent a national conversation on the subject from taking place. That is why the issue of corporate ownership of media outlets is so important; if only a few people control all the major media, they will control the national debate no matter how free the speech is on yourownwebsite.com.

Mansbach: Something I think about a lot is the enormous tailoring of content that this cultural moment engenders. There used to be three networks that people watched for news, and they all took seriously the imperative to be fair and ethical—didn’t always succeed, but understood themselves in that context. Now, your personal ideology determines your news source; if you’re a conservative you’ve got a network and a website and a radio station and a newspaper you turn to. If you’re progressive, or moderate, or religious, or whatever: same thing. And it goes beyond media; you’ll shop at different supermarkets and see totally different products depending on your politics, your economic class, and so on. It’s a kind of de jour cultural segregation, and the enormous decrease in public space—much of it replaced by virtual public space, which is not the same—exacerbates the balkanization.

What are the rights and responsibilities, if any, of writers in a democracy?

Siegel: To tell the truth.

Taibbi: I believe free speech should be absolute, and that the increasing encroachment of private property rights upon speech are a serious threat to democracy. There is a new legal concept called “dilution” which I perceive to be the most serious: it argues that writers may not “dilute” the value of a product by writing negatively about it or satirizing it. This idea is catching on in some lower court rulings and may soon become widely applied. (Come to think of it, I have had items taken out of one of my books by an American publisher for this reason.)

Mansbach: Writers need to keep the public discourse vital, fresh, and as diverse as possible in terms of the views and topics discussed. To call attention to injustice and inequality wherever we find it, and to investigate the complexity of the human condition in a sustained and compassionate manner. To this end, I think literature can be a powerfully transformative thing – in some ways, the efforts to censor it underscore that.

In my new novel, The End of the Jews, my character, Tristan Brodsky, is a novelist who finds himself ostracized by the Jewish community in the early ’50s after he writes a novel about the voyage of a Jewish-owned slave ship to America with a hold full of captured Africans. The critics are irate; they ask how he can write a novel so out of step with what the morality of the times demands. His response is that to understand evil in the world, we must first recognize it in ourselves. He’s trying to create a conversation folks aren’t willing to have, and it effectively ruins his career.

So to me, on the most basic level, the responsibility of the writer is to investigate the world, to interrogate beauty and ugliness on equal terms, to leech the brutality out of tenderness, and vice versa.

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