Who Decides What Counts as Hate Speech? From Henry Ford to Late Night TV

What exactly is “hate speech”—and who gets to decide?

This episode of UnSpun traces the shifting definitions of hate speech across a century of mass media. From Henry Ford’s antisemitic newspaper in the 1920s to Father Coughlin’s radio sermons, from Rwanda’s radio-fueled genocide to Roseanne Barr’s infamous tweet, Don Imus’s firing, and the recent suspensions of Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert—we follow how governments, corporations, and audiences have drawn, erased, and redrawn the boundaries of speech.

Along the way, we uncover how U.S. free speech law differs from Europe’s, how the Chans incubated extremist movements, how YouTube’s “adpocalypse” reshaped platform rules, and how the FCC’s regulatory power still influences what voices we hear.

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