No ideal world for Charlie

By Marcelo García
Politics & The Press

In mid-December, the US Federal Reserve met in Washington to discuss the economic outlook and define monetary policy, as it does eight times a year. The minutes of the meeting, published last week, reveal that the members of the board spent quite some time discussing how to communicate their decision, aware that the talking points coming out of their financial powwow have a ripple effect across the world’s economy.

“Most participants agreed that it would be useful to state that the Committee judges that it can be patient in beginning to normalize the stance of monetary policy,” read the minutes (available here http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcminutes20141217.htm). “They noted that such language would provide more flexibility to adjust policy in response to incoming information than the previous language, which had tied the beginning of normalization to the end of the asset purchase programme.”

What did the Fed want to communicate? That the timing for a hike in interest rates, expected sometime this year, was not predetermined and would depend on the influx of economic data. After some discussion, they agreed that the word “patience” conveyed the idea OK. And so the official statement released after the meeting goes, “Based on its current assessment, the Committee judges that it can be patient in beginning to normalize the stance of monetary policy.”

A responsible use of language is one condition for institutions and organizations with clout to last through time. As the guardian of the value of arguably the most cherished good on Earth (the US dollar) the Federal Reserve’s public word has enormous influence so its members act accordingly (i.e. with great caution).

The debate on freedom of expression triggered by the brutal attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo circles around the responsible use of language. The world was quick to unanimously condemn the attacks and mourn the victims but continues to deliberate whether the language used by publications like Charlie Hebdo is acceptable in a world plagued with unjustified violence justified by religious beliefs.

After the initial shock and the staunch defense of freedom of speech by the millions who took to the streets in France and then purchased the special Charlie Hebdo issue (which again insisted on featuring Prophet Mohammed on its cover), a reality that looks more gray than black and white started to sprout.

One of those gray voices was that of Pope Francis.

“In freedom of expression there are limits,” the pope told journalist on a plane from Sri Lanka to the Philippines. And then he gave a fairly graphic example. Gesturing to his aide Alberto Gasparri, he went: “If my good friend Dr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”

Another was one co-founder of the magazine. The 80-year-old Henri Roussel said in an opinion piece published by the weekly Nouvel Observateur on the same day the new Charlie Hebdo issue came out that he was upset at slain editor Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier for “dragging” his team. “For years, decades even, we have been provoking and one day the provocation has turned against us,” he wrote.

The Charlie Hebdo cover featuring a weeping Prophet Mohammed holding a “Je Suis Charlie” sign was not proper language to a number of non-terrorist Islamic people and institutions. The editors said that they did not draw “the front page that the world wanted but it’s the one we wanted,” as if they were not part of the world, as the violence brutally reminded them last week.

It is not true that responsible use of language means giving up freedom of expression. On the contrary, it implies making freedom sustainable. In doubt? Ask the founder and owner of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who made a point for free speech after the attack but also defended Facebook’s own restrictions and decision to abide by censorship rules in a number of countries. “One of the big questions that we struggle with: in an ideal world there would be way fewer laws restricting speech,” he said. “The reality is most countries do actually have laws restricting one point of speech or another ... So the real question is how do you navigate this?”

France is also navigating its free speech debate. Since the Charlie Hebdo attack, authorities have cracked down on people advocating or justifying — all in speech — terrorism. Some 100 people are under prosecution for this, according to press accounts. Many argue this could amount to a case of double standards in the handling of free speech. A prosecutor, for instance, brought a case against a man in Bourgoin-Jalieu for shouting outside a police station something like this, “They killed Charlie and I had a good laugh. In the past they killed Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Mohammed Merah and many brothers. If I didn’t have a father or mother, I would train in Syria.”

Mark (Mark) Zuckerberg’s words: the world is no ideal place.

@mjotagarcia