CBS "Free Speech" Segment Blames Everything on Secularism

Steve at The Carpet Bagger Report - one of this state's finest, if not the best, blogs - sums up the situation with the ill-intended CBS "Free Speech" segment's most recent offering:

When CBS News added Katie Couric as the anchor of the CBS Evening News, the network also revamped the entire program, adding a "Free Speech" segment at the end of every broadcast. I've never been entirely clear on the point of the shtick, other than to give random people a minute-long monologue after the news.
For the first two weeks, viewers were treated to the kind of ideological balance we've come to expect from the major networks: Rush Limbaugh, Rudy Giuliani, and former Bush aide Michael Gerson were featured, but not a single liberal or Democratic voice was included in the mix.

Yesterday, however, was over the top.

In introducing the "Free Speech" segment of the October 2 broadcast of the CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric noted that because of the school shooting that day in Paradise, Pennsylvania, "we've decided to hold the 'Free Speech' we had planned to bring you. Instead, we've called on someone who knows all too well the pain the families in Lancaster County are feeling tonight." But, as the weblog Think Progress noted, the segment featured Brian Rohrbough, father of one of the students killed in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, who — rather than talking about "the pain of the families," as Couric indicated — proceeded to blame school shootings on evolutionary theory being taught in public schools and on abortion.

Now, Rohrbough has my deepest sympathies, and I can't even imagine the tragedy that his family suffered. If he wants to blame modern science and the First Amendment for what he perceives as society's ills, that's his business.

And I wouldn't even mind if CBS aired Falwell-like rhetoric on occasion, just so long as the network was even-handed about it. But it's not. As Kevin Drum noted, Bill Maher was (irony alert) recently censored before his "Free Speech" segment because the network didn't want him to say something critical of religion.

In other words, as far as CBS is concerned, "free speech" is fine, so long as you parrot religious-right talking points on one night and don't say anything that might offend a religious-right audience the next. What an impressive celebration of the right to free expression.