Free speech panel at Washington's Roanoke 2025

“Bob Ferguson wants to censor this panel”

Last week’s Roanoke Conference at Ocean Shores WA gathered conservative and independent voters for a weekend of networking, panel discussions and keynote speakers. It was my honor to be on a general session panel on the media and free speech titled “Bob Ferguson wants to censor this panel.”

Brandi Kruse of the [un]Divided podcast was the moderator. Sitting between Ari Hoffman and Jonathan Choe for a free-wheeling panel discussion on free speech issues in the media was a bit intimidating. Both have had stories suppressed by social media gatekeepers. Both men are highly articulate speakers, used to presenting passionate bursts of opinion live to listeners and viewers. Brandi has years of experience in television and radio, always ready with a comment.

Writing is a more deliberative+ process. Have an idea, stare at the computer screen, attempt a couple of opening sentences, make a cup of tea, find a bit of chocolate, come back to the office, write a paragraph, think about it, let it ferment while tossing in a load of laundry, experience the thrill of a sudden inspiration . . . and then scribble a few notes on the back of whatever paper is handy, contemplate just the right words and polish for public consumption.

But nine years into my accidental second career in journalism, I also have a few opinions about free speech. The Associated Press is one of the print media gatekeepers and I ran afoul of the AP Stylebook, adopted by most legacy media outlets as their professional standard for punctuation and protocol. The AP has increasingly absorbed progressive political culture, and is now rated as left of center for its media bias.

My editor spiked a column on transgender issues, a phrase from the days when an editor would take a piece of freshly typed copy he (and it was always a he) wasn’t going to publish and stick it on an actual spike on his desk with the other rejected stories.

The AP had shut off access to the words I needed to tell the whole story. You can find the spiked story and commentary on Substack here.

It was an attempt to write about a swimmer named Will Thomas competing in the NCAA Men’s Division for three years before deciding to change his persona to Lia Thomas and compet in the Women’s Division. It’s called “deadnaming” to report the fact of Will Thomas’s existence prior to 2019. History must be rewritten.

But that’s not a violation of the First Amendment, which prevents the government from censoring speech. Private platforms are free to print or not print by their own standards. The question for the savvy media consumer is to know what the news sources you rely on are spiking.

Hoffman and Choe have both experienced censorship of the private kind by outlets worried that a topic was too toxic or their commentary too controversial. Being banned from a social media site and having traffic to your material slowed is infuriating, but its not a free speech violation. Forcing a private platform to host speech it doesn’t want to for whatever reason would be a violation of private property rights to control the platform.

And that’s fine, I certainly wouldn’t want to be forced to use my Substack publication to host speech I thought was hateful, wrong, or merely ridiculous (unless I could make fun of it). Find another platform, start your own news channel, get out there with more speech.

As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said in 1927 when he esdtablished the counterspeech doctrine, “the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

The title of the session was a not-so-tongue-in-cheek reference to one of former Attorney General Ferguson’s pet projects, the “hate crimes and bias incidents hotline,” also known as the” snitch line.” Created by the passage of SSB 5427 in 2024, the snitch line went live on January 1, 2025 in three pilot counties in an attempt to enforce silence.

If you live in one of the first three test counties - King, Clark or Spokane - you can now call the state and turn in your neighbor for any “hostile expression of animus” referencing your “race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, or mental, physical, or sensory disability.”

No Polish jokes, no blond jokes, no jokes about why blind people don’t go skydiving, and if you see a rabbi, a priest and a Scientologist walk into a bar you better leave them alone.

For those of us taught the response to hateful speech was to recite “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me,” the snitch line sounds like a bad joke. And in reality being called names and hearing biased speech can hurt, it can hurt a lot and that’s no joke.

But living in a free society means people are free to say ignorant and hateful things without fear of government censorship. When faced with stupidity, you remember their words are their problem, reflect badly on them, and move on.

The second question to the panel asked if we thought free speech has been under attack, and by whom. My answer:

We live in a state moving towards government sponsored censorship, not by explicitly banning free speech but by creating a new state apparatus to intimidate Washingtonians into silencing themselves. Don’t let the existence of a biased government hotline silence your freedom to speak.

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REFERENCES (and keep scrolling to the end to find out why the blind man didn’t want to go skydiving):

On how torturing language and denying reality makes civil debate impossible: https://suelanimadsen.substack.com/p/editor-feedback-lia-thomas-and-the

[un]Divided with Brandi Kruse:

https://www.undividedpod.com/

Ari Hoffman: https://thepostmillennial.com/author/ari-hoffman

Jonathan Choe (@Choeshow):

https://www.discovery.org/p/choe/

Counterspeech Doctrine – Justice Brandeis: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/counterspeech-doctrine/

Hate crimes and bias incidents hotline (aka the “snitch” line): https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=43.10.305

Substitute Senate Bill 5427 creating the hate crimes and bias incidents hotline: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5427&Year=2023&Initiative=false

HB 1333 Establishing the domestic violent extremism commission (coming soon as a companion to the snitch line): https://app.leg.wa.gov/BillSummary/?BillNumber=1333&Year=2023&Initiative=false

Bias incident – legal definition: https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/bias-incident

Bonus round:

Why don't blind people skydive? Because it scares the s#@t out of the seeing eye dog.