NBC’s Lester Holt and filmmaker Ken Burns will be given free speech awards, raising eyebrows given their past as alleged “censorship proponents.”
Fox News noted Holt will receive the Media Institute’s Freedom of Speech Award and Burns is expected to be given the American Horizon Award.
The awards will reportedly be given during a virtual “Free Speech America” gala.
Gabriel Nadales, Our America’s western region national director, told the outlet individuals who want to ban “hate speech” and “misinformation” are giving people power to restrict speech, which is “more dangerous to democracy than any lie or insult,” as Fox News reported.
He claimed Holt and Burns are “censorship proponents” and receiving awards they should not get.
“Lester Holt has actively sought the censorship of political ads on Facebook and believes that people who peddle ‘misinformation’ should be denied a platform,” Nadales explained.
He continued, “Ken Burns’s visionary leadership apparently includes the censorship of Americans on social media. To me, these do not seem like people who deserve awards at a gala that is supposedly celebrating free speech.”
According to Nadales, “True free-speech warriors aren’t popular because they are willing to defend unpopular speech.”
He added, “But unpopular speech is what makes the country grow, because unpopular opinions are either one day adopted as the norm or they help society by challenging its assumptions, so people can better defend their values.”
Nadales suggested free speech lawyer Greg Lukianoff would have made a better recipient as he “fights for the right of students to speak freely.”
Other choices he suggested are former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss and Daryl Davis.
“…No matter how inconceivably grotesque a person's rhetoric may be, I will always acknowledge and adhere to their right to speak it, because once they can be silenced this means we all can be silenced as well…"
— BDMII (@_BarringtonII) October 19, 2022
-Yours Truly
Check it out.https://t.co/HwukQoW2n4
NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham told Fox News giving Holt the award “implies that this award isn’t really for free speech, it’s for liberal bias.”