The latest storm over “free speech” came when Disney’s ABC yanked Jimmy Kimmel Live! after the host joked in the aftermath of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The White House nodded, boycotts trended, and corporate statements poured in like pre-mixed cocktails. The episode revealed something we often pretend to forget: Speech is never just speech. It is tied to owners, advertisers, regulators, and moods of power.
We like to believe free speech is a clean switch — on or off. In truth, it is a mixer. Volume turned up here, cut down there, fine-tuned by those who control the sound system. The First Amendment in America protects citizens from the state, not from their bosses. A company can silence you in the name of brand safety or culture fit, and still claim to be defending freedom. The law keeps you out of prison, but it does not guarantee you a primetime slot or even the courage to raise your hand in a meeting.
Inside offices, “freedom” is usually reduced to posters and pep talks. Real speech is managed through appraisals, non-disparagement clauses, and a well-oiled culture of “fit”. Sociologists have long pointed to the chilling effect. Employees swallow harassment, bad leadership, and even honest ideas, because the risk of offending power outweighs the right to speak. The workplace is not a marketplace of ideas. It is a mall with security guards, where even your tone of voice is policed.
And rulers? Show me one head of state who enjoys being mocked daily on front pages and television screens. Even in strong democracies, governments lean on media houses, whisper to platforms, and signal displeasure. In the Kimmel episode, political pressure hung in the background like humidity. Louis Brandeis once said the purpose of speech is to free us from irrational fears. Yet, in practice, it is fear — of advertisers pulling out, regulators frowning, mobs trending — that silences faster than any censor.
Theorists have been saying this for a century. Walter Lippmann spoke of the “manufacture of consent.” Democracies, he argued, need managed persuasion to survive. Noam Chomsky later showed how ownership and advertising shape journalism long before a censor’s hand. By the time a talk-show host sits at the desk, the boundaries of expression have already been marked in pencil by economics and access.
And there is the deeper question: Whose speech is even counted as “public”? Scholars of coloniality remind us that the doctrine of free speech was born inside unequal orders. Neutral rules often amplify those who already have reach, while marginal voices are left shouting into the void. Freedom without equality is simply a megaphone for the loud.
The algorithm has only made this more visible. Platforms boast: “We don’t remove speech, we reduce reach.” In reality, the two are indistinguishable. What good is a right to speak if your words vanish into silence? Censorship is no longer scissors. It is a slider on a dashboard, tuned by engineers who answer not to voters, but to quarterly earnings.
Then there is the hypocrisy when power gets personal. One business magnate, a fierce champion of free ideas in public, learned that a senior executive once told his college-going daughter her idea was “not well thought out”. The man was shown the door by week’s end, humiliated in front of his peers as punishment for exercising the very freedom his boss so often preached. Liberty sounds noble in speeches. It feels less noble in drawing rooms.
So, is freedom of speech a myth? If you define it as the absolute right to say whatever you want, wherever you want, without consequence, then yes, it is. As protection from the state, it still matters greatly. But once you step outside the courtroom and into the newsroom, or from the street into a studio, the microphone belongs to owners, advertisers, and unwritten rules. That is not conspiracy. That is architecture.
What would real freedom look like inside companies and countries? It would mean more than slogans on walls. It would mean allowing criticism of leaders to breathe. It would mean drawing a line between harm and embarrassment. It would mean clear rules applied evenly, real appeal systems, and honesty about when reach is reduced. Most of all, it would mean knowing the difference between protecting the brand and protecting the boss. One safeguards the enterprise. The other only cushions egos.
The Kimmel affair should not be seen as television drama. It is a case study. It shows how speech bends under ownership, regulation, politics, and fear. It shows how governments can silence without bans, how corporations can punish without censors, and how audiences, too, join the game — rewarding, boycotting, amplifying, ignoring. Free speech is not a switch. It is choreography. And all of us are dancing, even when we think we are just clapping from the side.
The myth, then, is not that free speech exists. The myth is that free speech is untouched by power and consequence. If we want the ideal, we will need to build it: transparent rules, plural platforms, and leaders who can endure the sting of being questioned. Until then, we will keep mistaking the loudest microphone for the people’s voice. Free speech will remain a rented loudspeaker, cut off the moment it becomes inconvenient. And that, not a stray joke at 11:35 pm, is the real punchline.
The writer is an advisory professional
Jimmy Kimmel speaks at the Oscars in Los Angeles in 2017. (Photo: AP/ File) 
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