It certainly has not been a few good weeks for the BBC!
In addition to dishonestly conveying the thrust of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, we have witnessed the disturbing crucifixion of a newsreader for instinctively correcting a BBC news script.
When reading a news item on a finding that ‘pregnant people’ were more at risk of death during a heatwave than non-pregnant people, the newsreader corrected the phrase ‘pregnant people’ to ‘women’ and for a microsecond her expression suggested tedium at having to read the politically correct phrase.
The Executive Complaints Unit of the BBC received 20 complaints which argued that the facial expression betrayed an opinion because it was allegedly one of ‘disgust, ridicule, contempt, or exasperation’. The Unit ruled that this expression ‘indicated a particular viewpoint in the controversies currently surrounding trans identity’.
In my view, the BBC Unit, in condemning the use of the term ‘women’, was effectively guilty of ‘viewpoint discrimination’ because it demonised the perceived view of its newsreader that only women can get pregnant. Hence, it gave preference to the prevailing gender ideology and violated the neutrality which the BBC is statutorily expected to maintain, regardless of its own editorial guidelines.
The American Supreme Court popularised the term ‘viewpoint discrimination’ in many decisions. These decisions examined the constitutional validity of institutional practices that sought to ascertain whether the views of people are ‘religious’ in nature to deny them benefits otherwise generally available. One notable case in the US ruled that a university illegally denied financial assistance to a Christian student group on the ground of their religious beliefs, and elevated secularism at the expense of sectarianism.
The BBC’s viewpoint discrimination penalised the newsreader’s instinctive opinion that only women can get pregnant – a biological fact that has long infuriated the transgender lobby which advocates that men can be women.
It is widely held that women who do not want biological men to invade women-only spaces have since decried the destructive implications of this ideology. Nevertheless, the transgender ideology, like in the United Kingdom, holds sway in Australia.
However, the disgraceful treatment of newsreader also reveals a more recent, but equally sinister development that, at least potentially, has wider, and more ominous, implications than the ‘viewpoint discrimination’ involved in this sordid saga.
A subtle shift in facial expression might discreetly indicate disagreement with the progressive views endorsed by the illiberal elites. Not speech, but rather physical expression.
In an informative article titled The Definitive Guide to Reading Microexpressions (Facial Expressions), Vanessa Van Edwards, who specialises in science-based people skills, defines a ‘facial expression’ as a micro expression which, ‘…is a very brief, involuntary facial expression humans make when experiencing an emotion. They usually last 0.5-4.0 seconds and cannot be faked.’
Of course, we have long known this, at least since 1931 when the American Supreme Court decided that free speech includes nonverbal expression. But most of the American cases on nonverbal expression involve civil disobedience, commonly known as ‘symbolic speech’ such as people carrying a red (communist) flag in violation of a law, or wearing a black armband to protest against America’s involvement in the Vietnam war in violation of a school policy. By contrast, the BBC case deals with facial expression, a type of nonverbal communication that conveys a message of emotion to its recipients. Among these emotions are anger, disgust, exasperation, anxiety, happiness, and sadness, among others.
If facial expressions are subject to the censorial powers of the State and its institutions, even in countries that do not have a provision like the American First Amendment, then all facial emotions, expressing humour, despair, and exasperation, are potentially, if not actually, problematic.
Indeed, the policing of facial expressions would effectively coerce people into becoming zombies, automatons, and docile disciples of society’s progressive illiberal rulers and policy makers. In such an environment of fear, compliance with this coercive behaviour may be the only safe attitude for people who want to avoid scrutiny and institutional condemnation and retribution.
This societal development could lead to the adoption of a social credit system, where people with a high score receive special benefits denied to others. Such a system is already operational in China, which increasingly makes access to public services dependent upon a person’s social credit score. This is reminiscent of a panopticon-type surveillance system that destroys all privacy and obliterates any remnants of ‘free speech, so poignantly described in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
The scrutiny of facial expression to ascertain its compatibility with Woke-infested ideology is thus the new frontline in the battle for free speech. It behoves all well-meaning, freedom-loving people to oppose this development unless, of course, they crave the comforts of a decaying life as a zombie.
