RECENTLY, City, University of London hosted a panel discussion to debate a motion passed by its students union to ban the Daily Mail, Daily Express and The Sun from campus.
This was problematic for the university as City is considered to have the UK’s leading journalism department, with a large number of journalism students in the throes of applying for jobs and placements and countless alumni having worked at the publications in question.
The ban was condemned by all members of the four-person panel including a former News of the World editor and a member of the British Muslim Council.
Terms such as “self-infantilising” and “farcical” were used to describe the ban during debate. Combined with the University of Strathclyde Students’ Associations’ decision to ban a pro-Life group from its campus throws into question the value today’s students, our next generation of decision makers and opinion formers, place on freedom of expression and their method of handling views and opinions they don’t agree with.
There are problems with public discussion of political and sensitive issues. You just have to look at the inaccuracies the EU referendum to see that. Audiences are increasingly gravitating to anyone who’s willing to drag a broken-record politician through the mud, regardless of whether what they’re saying is true, false, innocuous or offensive. This anger is being misdirected by inflammatory headlines and fake news. Donald Trump, anyone?
Such issues won’t be solved by making conversations we have or the information we consume any less free or stopping people from making their own decisions. A key point from the debate at City was that, if you want a free press, you have to expect a rowdy press.
Students who proposed both bans seemed to miss the point that we need to trust the public with information from all quarters rather than restrict a right to choose. Bodies and publications that pen offensive headlines need to be held to account and challenged, not banned.
Non-mainstream views that seem more extreme and those we don’t agree with need to be represented for the sake of our democracy.
Banning opinions, publications and groups we don’t agree with or find offensive restricts freedom of expression and is dangerous. It forces views and groups we consider extreme to use more radical measures and characters to be heard.
The election of Mr Trump is a glaring example of the how far people will go if they feel their views aren’t being represented by an evasive or detached political class.
Issues need to be debated transparently so that views can, if need be, suffer death by a thousand cuts under interrogation rather than be banned, forcing them underground to fester and re-emerge.
It’s a grave concern that the present generation of students, arguably the most educated in British history with nearly 2.3 million young people in the sector during the 2015-16 academic year, chooses to take these issues to a voting panel of their peers rather than engage in open debate beyond the confines of undergraduate politics.
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