Roger-Luc Chayer
Now, the most popular show of all American TV channels, Roseanne (second draft), has just been removed by ABC following the publication by its main star, Roseanne Barr, of a rather racist tweet about on a person she did not even know.
Personally, I loved Roseanne (2) as much as the original series because Roseanne has the gift to make us live « the extra-ordinary », the most ordinary, without all the special effects or sound of the current TV. It was simple, made with simple people and I liked it. For the return of the series, the directors had managed the tour de force to find all the original actors and give them a role. It was a feat!
Unfortunately, Roseanne decided to mix her talent and her personal opinions on everything and nothing to her celebrity, and it has just put more than 200 people, actors, filming and production staff out of work. A price to pay, but it was not the first public gaffe of the actress.
To explain her tweet, she first mentioned the taking of a drug and its side effects, and then said that she had been removed because she had exercised her freedom of expression. Let’s talk about this famous freedom of expression often invoked but little understood!
In most democratic societies, people believe that freedom of expression and opinion gives them the right to say whatever they want and that the laws protect them. FALSE! As a journalist, I have often been confronted with this concept, and at the first level. Freedom of expression means that everyone has the right to their ideas and opinions, not necessarily the right to broadcast them. In the age of the Internet and social networks, the damage is multiplied when a person decides to deliver an opinion, whether in good faith and in the matter of defamation, we can just be sentenced to serious fines if the are true. When they cause harm, freedom of expression takes the edge. When Roseanne claims that her right is being abused, she would have done better to consult a lawyer before publishing her tweet!