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--:-- Georgia Howe: Good morning, and welcome to Morning Wire. I'm Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: And I'm John Bickley, the editor-in-chief of Daily Wire. It's November 6th.
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--:-- John Bickley: Last month, the Chinese Communist Party passed a new censorship law for filmmakers. What does the law mean for free expression in Hong Kong? And what does this crackdown on speech abroad mean for content creators here in the U.S.? We'll get to that in a minute.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The UK, too, is pushing for limits on speech, this time online. We'll break down the latest censorship proposal from across the pond. And this week, we once again saw the convergence of politics and sports, with multiple headlines about high-profile athletes weighing in on social justice and vaccines. We'll look at the latest political developments in the sports world.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: speech in Hong Kong. Its latest strike? A new law that allows the state to censor movies the state deems a threat to national security. Here to explain the details of this new legislation and what it will mean for filmmakers in both Hong Kong and the U.S. is Daily Wire entertainment reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So the law, which was passed by the Beijing-controlled legislature last Wednesday, well, it's widely seen as kind of a new extension of that sweeping 2020 national security law. So that law essentially outlawed any dissent against China in Hong Kong. This is basically another step in China cementing its control over Hong Kong.
--:-- Georgia Howe: You and I talked about all of this a few weeks ago. Chinese authorities started shutting down museums that commemorated events in Tiananmen Square. I know Daily Wire sports reporter Joe Morgan was on recently discussing Boston Celtics forward Enos Kanter's criticism of China's brutal rule. After those comments went public, Chinese authorities blocked his NBA games from airing on streaming platforms there. So this goes along with all of that.
--:-- Megan Basham: This new film law allows Hong Kong's chief secretary to revoke a movie's license if he feels it conflicts with China's national security interests. Violators will be punished with up to three years in prison and $130,000 in fines. This has got to be a huge blow to Hong Kong's filmmakers, though. Yeah, it is. And as a semi-independent territory, Hong Kong really enjoyed a lot of creative freedom that filmmakers in mainland China didn't have. And that allowed the area to really develop into something of a movie hub But that all began to change in 2019 when China aggressively started moving against the pro forces there Then when it instituted that new national security law in 2020, as we discussed, that gave it broad censorship powers.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And a lot of filmmakers left the territory at that point. And I think what we can expect is that more are going to leave now, which, of course, will further decimate Hong Kong's entertainment industry.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, given the 2020 national security law, this new film law isn't really a surprise. No, it's not. And we did already see ominous signs that Beijing was going to use that security law to censor films. One example, in April, the opening selection of the Hong Kong Film Festival, a gangster movie titled Where the Wind Blows, so not something you might typically think of as being subversive. Well, it was pulled for, quote, technical reasons. So that's a term you'll often hear Chinese authorities use, it typically means the censorship board wasn't happy about some aspect of the film.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So the international filmmaking community has kind of quietly begun confronting this issue. In July, the Cannes Film Festival announced at the very last minute that it had added filmmaker Kiwi Chow's documentary, Revolution of Our Times, to its lineup. Now that movie is about the 2019 Hong Kong freedom protests, and Cannes organizers intentionally kept its inclusion under wraps, so China wouldn't have a chance to retaliate by forcing other Chinese filmmakers to withdraw from the festival.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, Chow is now out warning that this new film law is going to, quoting here, worsen self-censorship and fuel fear among filmmakers in Hong Kong. Now, in recent years, we've also seen American studios that are now catering to this Chinese market. Do you expect that we're going to see an impact in the content created here from this law?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, I think we could. I don't quite know how it will play out yet, but I think streaming platforms will be the first entertainment industry businesses that are going to get impacted. One director told The Hollywood Reporter that it's likely to have a chilling effect on the big streaming platforms' relationship with China. Though, like I said, we don't know what it will look like. But Netflix and Disney Plus are both currently available in Hong Kong, And both of those platforms carry plenty of content that could fall afoul of the new law and censor boards. So things are going to get complicated very quickly for those companies in the region.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: So this is just yet another crackdown on speech in China. Yeah. Megan, thank you. Thanks so much.
--:-- Megan Basham: That's Daily Wire entertainment reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Coming up, the UK looks at criminalizing harmful content online. Inflation is destroying the dollar. Birch Gold Group can help you protect your IRA or 401k with a precious metals IRA. Text WIRE to 989898 to claim a free info kit on physical gold and silver. There's zero obligation. Text the word WIRE to 989898 to protect your savings today.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: The intersection between freedom of speech and the internet is growing more complicated in Europe. with governments looking to further legislate content posted online. With laws in some countries already resulting in arrests of people who post offensive comments, a new proposed law could broaden even further what kind of speech is banned. Here to tell us more is Daily Wire's Ian Howarth.
--:-- Ian Howarth: So, my dystopian tech story for the day is from the UK, where British politicians are trying to outlaw posting content which could cause emotional psychological or physical harm to its audience This is all part of what they calling an online safety bill and it could lead to jail time for internet trolls of up to two years for sending messages or posting content that supposedly causes or could cause harm under these subjective measures. So jail time for online speech, based on theoretical harm, it might cause.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, that's a big part of it. So what group or political party is behind this idea?
--:-- Ian Howarth: Well, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which is headed by Conservative MP Nadine Doris, who doesn't really have a background in culture, media or sport, is driving this effort to effectively criminalise even more speech. Doris wants to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. And in an op-ed for the Daily Mail, Doris justified the attempt to legislate online speech by referring to the recent stabbing of a British Member of Parliament. Even though she acknowledged that these new laws would likely not have changed what happened, she said that online hate has poisoned public life and that it has to end.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The UK government is also looking to hold tech companies responsible for this regulation, punishing them if they don't remove content that could be harmful to users, even if the content itself is legal. Now, big tech companies have been calling to be legislated in the past. So how are they reacting to this now?
--:-- Ian Howarth: Well, honestly, not all that well, mainly because the standard is so incredibly vague. Twitter, for example, came out and said that the draft online safety bill failed to answer key questions on how to define content that is legal but also harmful.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Zooming out, though, this is really indicative of what the debate over free speech looks like outside of the United States, where things like the First Amendment simply don't exist. In Europe, for example, multiple countries claim to have freedom of speech, but that simply isn't the case, especially in an increasingly online world. For example, back in February, a man was arrested for an apparently offensive tweet about a British military hero who had recently passed away. He was charged under the UK's Communications Act, which makes it a criminal offense to post content on social media that is, quote, grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.
--:-- Ian Howarth: And it's the subjectivity here which is the issue for those who care about true freedom of speech. Harmful, offensive, menacing, they're all by definition entirely subjective terms which are being used to legislate speech and even ideas, which, at least for now, are protected under the United States Constitution.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So another Black Mirror episode from Ian. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Ian Howarth: That's Daily Wire's Ian Howard.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Whether we like it or not, politics has entered the world of sports. Here to give us a weekly update on all the happenings in the world of sports and politics is Daily Wire sports reporter Joe Morgan.
--:-- Joe Morgan: Well, John, Colin Kaepernick is back in the news. So his new documentary, Colin in Black and White, was released on Netflix. And from the very start, look, it's raised more than a few eyebrows. In a clip that began circulating on Saturday, Kaepernick compared the NFL Combine to slavery with images of black men in chains and alluding to NFL scouts and coaches being the modern day slave traders.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What they don't want you to understand is what's being established is a power dynamic. Before they put you on the field, teams poke, pry, and examine you, searching for any defect that might affect your performance. No boundary respected. No dignity left intact.
--:-- Joe Morgan: The six Netflix series explores Kaepernick childhood and really the challenges he faced as a black man black child growing up and trying to play quarterback Pretty loaded comparison there So we also had a development involving Aaron Rodgers right We had quite a bit on Aaron Rodgers Rodgers was asked in August whether he was vaccinated, and his response was that he was immunized. Okay. Now, there is a difference between being immunized and being fully vaccinated, but at that point, we did believe that he had received the vaccine. It came out on Wednesday that he has tested positive for COVID, and he will miss Sunday's game against the Kansas City Chiefs.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, testing positive doesn't mean that you aren't vaccinated. Well, that's very true. As we know, there are quite a few vaccinated individuals throughout sports that are testing positive for COVID. What made us kind of question what was going on is that in being told that he was missing the game on Sunday, we now know that you're unvaccinated because there is a rule within the NFL that if you are unvaccinated and test positive, it is a mandatory 10-day quarantine. If you are vaccinated, you can get a negative test twice within 24 hours and can then play.
--:-- Joe Morgan: So once we found that out, we knew he was unvaccinated, even though he had said he was immunized in August. I see. It then came out by the NFL Network that he was, in fact, unvaccinated. And obviously, the world has now gone crazy. They believe that Aaron Rodgers has lied. There is a deeper level to this as well. The rules that apply to the unvaccinated do require wearing a mask. in every team facility and when you're doing interviews, et cetera, on the sideline. Rodgers hasn't done all that.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Everything that has been reported, according to sources, is that he was wearing a mask around his players and his coaches. But the problem is, is he's done a lot of his press conferences, well, excuse me, all of his press conferences without a mask on. And so he's in a lot of trouble for this, I assume.
--:-- Joe Morgan: He's absolutely in a lot of trouble. I mean, however you feel about it, the NFL does have certain rules. The question is now going to be, how does the NFL go about it? Do they go after the Packers or do they go after Aaron Rodgers? The assumption is going to be that the Packers are going to get hit hard for this. The NFL came out with a statement basically saying it's not our job as a league to regulate what your players are doing. It is the organization's job to know whether your team, the player, is vaccinated or unvaccinated. So there are going to be some fines here. Rodgers will more than likely get fined. Whether that impacts him obviously is a completely different conversation considering how much money he makes.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But the big story here is that it does seem that he deceived the public in whether he was vaccinated or unvaccinated. And as one can expect, the media has decided to that it's open season on Rogers.
--:-- Joe Morgan: Well, thank you so much for the updates, Joe.
--:-- Joe Morgan: Yeah, you got it, John. Daily Wire sports reporter Joe Morgan.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Another story we're tracking this week. San Francisco will soon require children ages 5 to 11 to provide proof of vaccination in order to enter some indoor venues, including restaurants. The city currently has a vaccine requirement for all persons ages 12 and over. A health officer for the city stated Tuesday that the mandate will go into effect within eight weeks after the Pfizer vaccine is available for children.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: If you liked this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five-star review. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back next week with the news you need to know. If you like this podcast, subscribe to our Morning Wire newsletter, available exclusively to Daily Wire members. Get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code MORNINGWIRE to try a Reader's Pass membership and get your first month for only 99 cents.
