Don Lemon's Deal With X Is A Win For Speech | Bobby Burack

The social media service X announced content partnerships on Tuesday with former CNN anchor Don Lemon, former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, and sports radio host Jim Rome.

Each personality will host a show on the service later this year.

The trio is diverse, not just racially but politically. No other media platform exists in which those three varied voices would all sign.

Lemon is an avowed leftist. He made that clear nightly on CNN.

Gabbard is a former Democrat politician but has since adopted moderate and conservative perspectives on American culture.

Rome is apolitical on-air, more troubled about whether Jim Harbaugh should have been eligible to coach in the National Championship Game on Monday. (Yes, he should have.)

The signing of Lemon is, particularly, telling.

Critics portray X, under Elon Musk, as a hellscape in which the right-wing loons can run freely. So far, mostly only conservatives have moved their content to X, such as the hosts at Daily Wire, Tucker Carlson, and Alex Jones.

Yet the addition of Lemon suggests Musk is truthful when he says he values free speech; not partisanship.

The other mainstream social media services -- Meta, Google, TikTok -- amplify left-wing orthodoxy. That's obvious. But they also run interference with the marketplace of ideas by willfully censoring, suppressing, and manipulating content in conflict with The One True Opinion, the preferred narrative.

Those are two separate issues. And Musk countering Big Tech with a free speech alternative is far more consequential than countering with a right-wing one-stop-shop. Hence why champions of censorship hate him so much.

Another partisan video platform isn't the answer. An open platform for voices of all political ideologies is.

Additions like Lemon are necessary for X to accomplish said mission. Any conservatives complaining about the partnership between him and X are either unwittingly hypocrites or frauds.

Free speech absolutists should, by definition, support Lemon's deal with X. As should they appreciate Musk reinstating Alex Jones late last year.

Does that mean Lemon and Jones always tell the truth? Of course, not. No one in media does.

But a system called Community Notes — which empowers people on X to collaboratively add helpful notes to posts that might be misleading -- is in place to fact-check content creators, both liberals and conservatives.

Normal users control Community Notes; not compromised stooges as is the case at PolitiFact.

So, unless someone uses X to encourage violence or publishes someone's personal information (address, phone number, etc.), they should be allowed to maximize and monetize the platform.

The internet is grossly tribal, a cesspool of like-minded actors. No site or service can escape that fact entirely.

However, X appears to be the only platform trying to incentivize both sides of the conversation to take place, void of censorship and/or self-censoring.

Undeniably, X is a better news source for the 2024 election than any other social media alternative. Anyone disputing that statement is likely arguing in favor of content manipulation.

Elon Musk vowed to mold the "everything app" via X. "Everything" includes "every" inquisitive political perspective, be it from the middle or either of the fringes.

Don Lemon's deal with X is a win for free speech and the marketplace of ideas.