Free Speech Without Courage Is…
Jimmy Kimmel didn’t get frogmarched off stage. No riot cops kicked in the studio lights. He wasn’t arrested, sued, or sanctioned. That would’ve been too obvious.
Instead, they just took away the audience.
Nexstar, a media monopoly in heat for a $6.2 billion merger, decided Jimmy Kimmel Live! wouldn’t air “for the foreseeable future.” Why? Because the man dared to speak his mind—about the killing of Charlie Kirk. Cue the outrage. Cue the pearl clutching. Cue the quietly yanked microphone.
Then came the puffed-up peacock at the FCC, Brendan Carr, who hinted—on record—that the federal government might yank ABC’s licenses to “punish” Kimmel. Yes, punish. Not for slander, libel, or actual harm, but for a monologue they didn’t like.
And in record time, Disney did what giant corporations do best: they folded like a bad poker hand. “Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be pre-empted indefinitely,” said the suits, without even the decency of a lame excuse.
But here’s the part that should make your nonprofit think about rather than sweat.
You don’t even have an FCC license.
You don’t need to worry about federal regulators pulling the plug on your emails, your social posts, or your rally cries.
and yet you’re thinking about silencing yourselves anyway.
Why?
Because you’re afraid. Afraid of riling up your big donors. Afraid of a Fox News segment. Afraid someone will file a bogus complaint and the IRS will show up like Men in Black over your 501(c)(3) status.
So you gag your Kimmels. You muzzle your truth-tellers. You stick your creative people in the closet and only let them out to write Thank You letters in 12-point Times New Roman.
Meanwhile, the right-wing machine rolls on—louder, meaner, and more shameless by the day. They don’t silence their attack dogs. They build them podcasts. They don’t worry about “tone.” They worry about dominance.
And you, with your mission statements and your good intentions and your carefully curated Instagram grids, are self-censoring into irrelevance.
Let’s be clear
The government hasn’t silenced your message. Your audience hasn’t abandoned you.
You’ve just stopped showing up with a microphone.
In a world where outrage travels at the speed of Wi-Fi, timid is a losing strategy. If you’re still worried that saying what needs to be said might cost you a grant or bring a nasty tweet, let me offer you a reality check: Free speech without courage is just cowardice in a cardigan.`
If you’re going to stand for justice, then stand up. If you’ve got a Kimmel on your team—let them speak. Turn them loose. Give them a camera, a Canva login, a keyboard, a soapbox. Give them room to raise hell.
Don’t pre-empt your message before it’s even aired.
Otherwise, what’s the point of having a voice at all?
Roger
18 responses to “Free Speech Without Courage Is…”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Thanks so much for raising this. Yes, capturing donor information can be helpful for stewardship like newsletters, thank-you letters, impact updates. But how you ask matters. Forcing full data capture introduces friction that can significantly depress conversion, many donors may simply abandon the process. Beyond the friction itself, required fields also shift the emotional experience […]
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Unlike holidays that everyone already knows, Giving Tuesday is a created event. Many donors recognize the name but not the exact timing, so referencing it becomes a helpful cue. It serves as a reminder and taps into social norm activation (“everyone’s giving today”), which boosts response. However, we still want it paired with the mission, […]
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When a subject line leads with the match (“Your gift matched!”), it risks triggering market-norm thinking: the sense that giving is a financial transaction rather than an act rooted in values, identity, and care. This shift reduces intrinsic motivation and, over time, can weaken donor satisfaction and long-term engagement. It also makes the email indistinguishable […]
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There’s no evidence that QR codes suppress mid-value giving; all available research suggests they either help or have no negative effect. In fact, behavioral and usability research consistently shows the opposite: reducing friction at any point in the donation process increases completion rates and total response. And that has nothing to do with capacity and […]
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What you’re experiencing is very common. Resistance often isn’t about capability, but about motivation quality. If board members feel pushed into fundraising, that triggers controlled motivation (low quality motivation) i.e. obligation, guilt, or fear of judgment, which often results in avoidance. Instead, we need to create conditions for volitional motivation (high quality motivation) by satisfying […]
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That’s a really thoughtful question, and you’re not the first to raise it. Many of our clients have been cautious about placing the ask at the very end. To address their concern, we’ve tested both approaches, and the results are clear: when the ask comes last, even if that means it appears on the second […]
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Thank you, Roger!
Thank you Roger!
Well said Roger.
It is time to stand up and be counted, to be brave, courageous and defend the causes and organisations we care about. If not now, then when
Preach!
Hear hear!! Thank you erica
Love this rallying cry, Roger!!
Thank you for the truth.
… shit. Love this, Roger. You nailed it. Most silencing doesn’t come from regulators, it comes from fear inside the house. Psychologically, that’s anticipatory fear: imagining the worst before it happens, which leads to avoidance. But avoidance only reinforces fear. And real courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s acting with fear in the room. Research shows when people speak in line with their values, even at a cost, they gain resilience, meaning, and influence.
“Cowardice in a cardigan” is dead-on. Free speech without courage isn’t free at all.
Well said, as always, Roger!
Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t fired for speaking his opinion. He was fired for two other reasons. #1 – He lied. He knew full well Kirk’s killer wasn’t a MAGA person but he said it anyway. Disney was perfectly within their rights to fire an employee that they deemed was damaging their reputation. #2 His audience has shrink by 33% over the last three years. This was as much about an unproductive and money losing employee as anything else
So clear and so necessary.
This is not only the wrong time to be quieter than usual. It’s time to be louder, clearer and more unflinching than we’ve ever been.
Yesterday I had the privilege and sheer delight of sharing with a webinar audience the only Roger Craver-written appeal I know of that boasted a teaser on the outbound envelope. That teaser? SUE THE BASTARDS.
I don’t know which of Roger’s many successful campaigns this message was devised for … but I DO know that the #1 question being asked by many right now is: “What can we do to fight back against the current administration’s chilling ideas and momentum?”
Personally, I’m channeling my Inner Simone Joyaux (hi, honey!!!), shit-stirrer par excellence. As she would have done, I’m trying to say every day something publicly in support of democracy, equality, community and the US Constitution. GOING SILENT is not really an option.
As a sidebar, it’s been illuminating to read recently the thick, detailed (almost day by day) biographies of Washington, Hamilton and Mark Twain by Ron Chernow … and to discover from his accounts that the politics of their times … (Missouri’s Twain fought for the Confederacy for a short while; but he later, as an international celebrity, became an outspoken advocate for racial equality and women’s rights) … were equally crazy, hostile, divided, mud-slinging, wrenched, self-doubting, etc. etc. Yet US society on the whole has so far always emerged stronger and more vibrant and more tolerant … despite industrialization, a civil war, the Gilded Age, two world wars + periods of intense selfishness and isolationism.
IMHO… i.e., this is NOT the first time America’s (miraculous?) democratic experiment has been threatened by sectional political differences, would-be kings and the sour influence of “more for me, less for you” oligarchy. One of the rising voices that gives me hope right now is a movement called Patriotic Millionaires, who want to tax the rich proportionately. And it’s a Golden Age for opinion writers in newspapers (even in Wapo mostly, though Bezos-owned).
Roger, you’ve kicked up such as useful discussion — as you often do!
Otis reminds us ” But avoidance only reinforces fear. And real courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s acting with fear in the room. Research shows when people speak in line with their values, even at a cost, they gain resilience, meaning, and influence.”
I’m reminded from my coaching studies there are two kinds of fear. (1) One is paralyzing. It comes from our lizard brain, and is mostly designed to deal with physical (not emotional) threats. It’s a fear of projected or imagined things — and we instinctively seek to get out of it. We over-emphasize “possible” vs. “probable” threats. We shut down, walling ourselves off from potential connection/engagement/action — all things that can help resolve the fear. (2) Another is fear that enables us to see a way to enter a larger space than we’re used to. It’s scary, but if we can approach it we can find a big, life-giving, present focus that feeds our souls.
The good news is Fear is conscious state. If we can step into another state — playfulness, joy, gratitude, grace, calm, freedom, desire to serve — we can displace fear. Today’s world requires some cognitive reframing.
And, agree with Tom, it’s somewhat calming to look at history and see what we’ve managed to survive.
[…] “Otherwise, what’s the point of having a voice at all?”I urge you to read Roger’s whole post on The Agitator. Here’s the link: https://agitator.thedonorvoice.com/free-speech-without-courage-is/ […]
This is the best thing you’ve ever written, and I’m wondering how my non-profit clients would take this if I sent it to them. My Head Start/early childhood education non-profit is losing their HS funding. My Black theatre client has already lost state funding for the arts. My large, private university is scrambling to explain the importance of early research as they wait to be threatened directly with more funding cuts to general research.
Thank you, Roger. You remain an inspiration for us all.
What Paula said, I’m hearing from subscribers every day. Amen and thank you, Roger.
Amen!