Over at the Carolina Journal, opinion editor Ray Nothstine defends a Lee County school board member’s right to protest. The school board voted to open an investigation into Sherry-Lynn Womack’s participation in the rally at The Ellipse prior to the attack on the Capitol. Other people have called on Womack to resign, even though she did not participate in the attack.
Nothstine is correct. The First Amendment protects Womack’s right to protest and she should not be penalized for exercising her rights. As Nothstine says, “We are a nation in need of dissenting voices and as former first lady Hillary Clinton reminds us: ‘We have a right to dissent, and that dissent is the essence of what it means to be American.’”
That said, the First Amendment also comes with responsibility. Organizations that have platforms need to use their voices to push back against hateful and harmful speech, even if it is protected. The rally that Womack attended was a “Stop the Steal” protest that focused on the lie perpetrated by Donald Trump, Members of Congress, and right-wing organizations that Joe Biden’s election was invalid because of rampant voter fraud. I can find no evidence of Nothstine or many other conservative journalists or organizations in the state pushing back against the president’s lies even though seven of North Carolina’s Republican Members of Congress supported a bogus lawsuit and announced their intentions to block the certification of the vote.
The violence that occurred at the Capitol was like watching a car crash in slow motion. The rhetoric of the president and the right became increasingly heated as lawsuit after lawsuit failed in state after state, building tension as the president demanded increasingly drastic action. The country was watching Washington that morning because Trump insisted that Vice-President Mike Pence usurp his constitutional powers to block certification of the vote and he summoned his most loyal and militant supporters to Washington. A confrontation felt inevitable, but the violence and vitriol of the people attacking the Capitol was shocking.
Despite the escalating situation based on blatant and easily refutable lies, the conservative media in North Carolina was silent. Mainstream news outlets, Never-Trumpers, and those on the left tried to debunk the disinformation spread by Republican politicians, but the audience that needed to be reached listened only to the Tucker Carlsons and Sean Hannitys of the world. Conservatives with a platform that knew the information coming from the White House was false had an obligation to speak the truth but most chose not to do so. In this context, speaking truth to power, protesting as it were, would have been the patriotic gesture. Staying silent was the cowardly one.
We need to protect free speech, even when we disagree with what is being said. And we should not punish people who lawfully exercise their right to peaceably assemble and have their voices heard. However, those with more powerful voices also have an obligation to stand up for the truth, especially in an age when other powerful voices are promoting disinformation.
In North Carolina, seven of the eight Republicans in Congress either lied to their constituents or were duped by ridiculous conspiracy theories. There’s no evidence of the conservative media holding them accountable or trying to provide their audience better information than they were getting from national outlets that parroted Trump’s claims. The goal of the media should be to inform the public, especially the audience with whom they have influence. Staying silent while the most powerful politicians in the state blatantly lied or misinformed their constituents was a failure. The First Amendment offers protections that should not be abridged and provides obligations that should not be ignored.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Mills spent 20 years as a political and public affairs consultant.
