Suzanne Nossel

Photo by Beowulf Sheehan

Every Friday, we discuss tricky questions about free speech and expression as they pertain to the ongoing pandemic with our CEO Suzanne Nossel, author of the newly released Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All, in our weekly PEN Pod segment “Tough Questions.” In this week’s episode, we discuss the growing threat of Chinese government censorship in the U.S., as well as the threats of news deserts and government-propelled COVID-19 disinformation. Listen below for our full conversation (our interview with Suzanne is up until the 12:30 mark).

Let’s start with a report that we put out this week that really takes issue with how Hollywood has increasingly capitulated to Chinese government censorship, both directly and indirectly. We’re at this really intense moment of tension with China right now as a country. Why do you think this report is important right now?
This has actually been a project we’ve wanted to do for some time. It took a bit of time to get it started and then to carry out the interviews. A lot of people were reluctant to talk to us about this issue because it’s a real kind of third rail in Hollywood. As Chinese investors have played a bigger role, there are joint ventures, there’s increasing pressure to access the large and growing Chinese film market, and they pick and choose which foreign films are allowed in each year. So nobody wants to get crosswise with the Chinese.

We all are well aware of the aggressive policing of free speech on the Chinese mainland. There’s no independent journalism; authors are under severe pressure; essayists who dare criticize Xi Jinping can find themselves detained, jailed, charged, fired from their university positions, as this happened in recent weeks and months. So we all know about that. We’re all watching what’s happening in Hong Kong as the new national security law comes into place—what was a relatively free, democratic space, is really being transformed. We see activists and authors shutting down their Twitter accounts; in academia, individuals are being fired from positions; if they took part in protests, candidates are being disqualified from standing for office. There’s a real intense chilling of speech that’s descending in Hong Kong.


“We think it’s extremely important that democratic countries around the world, creative industries, and principled leaders in every sphere of society be cognizant of the reach and influence that China is attempting to exercise. Part of it is their efforts to burnish their own image, to quell criticism, to extend their influence into more parts of the world through trade relationships and other diplomatic overtures.”


But China’s reach goes beyond that. We see this not just in Hollywood, but in U.S. universities and corporations that are doing business with the Chinese. We had that whole incident last year, with the National Basketball Association and a comment that was made about protests in Hong Kong which triggered a huge backlash against the league. We think it’s extremely important that democratic countries around the world, creative industries, and principled leaders in every sphere of society be cognizant of the reach and influence that China is attempting to exercise. Part of it is their efforts to burnish their own image, to quell criticism, to extend their influence into more parts of the world through trade relationships and other diplomatic overtures. It’s very systematic, to gain access to consumer data through apps and technologies that may impinge upon privacy. They operate there by a very different set of rules, and increasingly we’re seeing those alternative rules being implemented globally as China’s reach increases. It’s almost as if the rest of the world has been a bit asleep at the switch, because the dollar amounts involved and the economic and commercial imperatives to engage with China are so powerful that it’s very tempting to want to overlook the compromises that are entailed.

And yet, as we see in our report, fundamental principles really are at stake. If Hollywood is committed to being an industry that tells stories like the authors see them, that is willing to take on controversial topics, and that doesn’t fall under the thumb of any government—not just Beijing, but also Washington and other governments around the world—this is a moment where we need to stand up and protect that independence and spotlight the threats to it. To me, it’s a matter of being able to hold in your head that truth, alongside the reality of some of the ways in which I think the administration is needlessly and harmfully politicizing the U.S.-China relationship, finger-pointing, and taking a counterproductive approach to relations with Beijing. This doesn’t mean we’re in agreement with the U.S. government’s approach toward China right now, but it does spotlight a set of concerns that are elemental to our mission.


“To me, it’s a matter of being able to hold in your head that truth, alongside the reality of some of the ways in which I think the administration is needlessly and harmfully politicizing the U.S.-China relationship, finger-pointing, and taking a counterproductive approach to relations with Beijing. This doesn’t mean we’re in agreement with the U.S. government’s approach toward China right now, but it does spotlight a set of concerns that are elemental to our mission.”


Facebook and Twitter this week took action against a post from the president this week, pulling a video in which the president said, “Children are almost immune to the coronavirus,” which is of course, blatantly untrue. The video is actually a clip from a Trump appearance on Fox News earlier in the week. Are we reaching a point where Facebook and Twitter are having higher standards than Fox News?
I’m not sure to what extent Fox News exercises a sort of accuracy standard on air. I think there are some journalists and talk show hosts that will call out a false statement, and there are others who all simply let it stand if they agree with it politically, or they support the individual who made the statement. I don’t think we can count on Fox News to arbitrate between truth and falsehood, particularly on their talk shows.

I think in this instance, you can see why Twitter and Facebook have both, in the context of the pandemic, adopted the standard of removing content that can cause imminent harm. The statement that children are immune to COVID, which we know is not true—what he might have said is that a large percentage of children who contract the illness are asymptomatic. That is true, and that is a good thing, but it is also a complicating factor when you’re trying to trace the spread of the pandemic. But he didn’t say that—he said children are immune, and that’s false. He’s now pushing to reopen schools, oftentimes without adequate resources or precautions, and if he convinces his audience that children are immune, they’ll get behind that and it could be dangerous. So I think that the standard of imminent harm, particularly when a comment like that is made by the president of the United States, and people sort of think it’s something they can believe, you could see why that could be dangerous.


“It’s complicated because I think there’s some validity to the idea that people should be able to share information about their own experiences, or a doctor should share what he or she is seeing in their practice without that being inhibited or suppressed on a platform. And yet, if that information is unverified, you know, should it really be spread around? And so, the standard of imminent harm essentially leaves leeway for all kinds of discussion and information sharing, but if there is a piece of advice that could cause direct harm, the platforms are taking that down.”


And this idea of imminent harm—this is something that goes outside of the bounds of our free speech protections?
It’s not outside the bounds of the First Amendment, necessarily. I’m not saying that. It might well be that a government couldn’t suppress this speech, but the platforms of course operate by their own standards and are not bound by the First Amendment, which constrains the authority of government to curtail speech but doesn’t do the same when it comes to private parties. Social media platforms police, superintend all sorts of content—whether it’s nudity, terrorist recruitment, or cyberbullying. So the question is what are the bounds of what they police, and they’ve extended it over the last few months in relation to COVID-related quackery, misinformation, and false cures.

It’s complicated because I think there’s some validity to the idea that people should be able to share information about their own experiences, or a doctor should share what he or she is seeing in their practice without that being inhibited or suppressed on a platform. And yet, if that information is unverified, you know, should it really be spread around? And so, the standard of imminent harm essentially leaves leeway for all kinds of discussion and information sharing, but if there is a piece of advice that could cause direct harm, the platforms are taking that down. I don’t think it’s a perfectly bright line standard. I’m sure there are instances where, under that standard, they have taken down information or content that we might think is legitimate and should have been sharable.


“We don’t have journalists who can probe into—whether it’s an environmental issue, a pollution issue, an issue in the schools—questions of how community health and safety are being maintained. All of that scrutiny and spotlight and sunshine has been dimmed in communities where we’ve seen more than 20 percent of local news outlets go out of business and about 50 percent cuts, roughly, in the size of newsrooms and reporting staffs.”


Lastly, I wanted to discuss a story that our colleague Viktorya Vilk shared earlier this week. It was about the experience of living through a pandemic in a news desert, basically walking through how the collapse of the local news industry has created these blind spots. Can you say more about the risk that the collapse of the local news industry poses for our understanding of the pandemic, and maybe even the risks it poses for our democracy as we approach an election?
We, through our own work and our Losing the News report, have subsequently documented the ways in which the demise of local news has undercut democracy. We’re missing the investigative reporters who hold officials accountable, whether it be the government or corporations. We don’t have journalists who can probe into—whether it’s an environmental issue, a pollution issue, an issue in the schools—questions of how community health and safety are being maintained. All of that scrutiny and spotlight and sunshine has been dimmed in communities where we’ve seen more than 20 percent of local news outlets go out of business and about 50 percent cuts, roughly, in the size of newsrooms and reporting staffs.

I think particularly in the context of the pandemic, this is a very local story. We see that the dynamics in terms of spread in each community are different, where and how you get tested is different, what the local laws’ regulations are is different. Now, with school opening, it’s community by community. These are issues in which people have a powerful stake. If they are missing any local news outlets to provide them with information, to hold officials’ feet to the fire in terms of the response to the pandemic, we’re in trouble. We also see that, relative to national news, individuals tend to trust local news far more. So it’s really the most trusted source of news that right now is on the ropes, having been on top of a longstanding existential crisis driven by the drying up of ad revenue, now hit very hard by the economic crisis, which has clamped down on the much reduced sources of ad revenue—things like retail and restaurants—that these news outlets were still relying upon.


The PEN Pod will be going on a brief hiatus this August. We’ll be airing encores of our old episodes, but we’ll be back in September with all-new conversations featuring writers, journalists, activists, and more.