Get paid if you said that? Cancel cover could be answer

Afraid to speak your mind? Worried over that ill-timed, unintentional gaffe? Afraid you will lose your job now? Insurance could be the answer, writes the executive editor of the news website deadline.com.

 

While reading a news report that found that half the employees at the New York Times “are afraid to say what they’re thinking,” it struck editor Michael Cieply that maybe “it’s time for Free Speech Insurance.”

 

“This is nothing like libel insurance, which protects a publisher, and maybe a writer, from defamation claims. Under a Free Speech policy from Mutual of Nowhere, you wouldn’t be allowed to defame, abuse or promise violence against anyone,” Mr. Cieply wrote on Monday.

 

“But good free speech coverage would pay if you are fired, suspended, banned from professional status or otherwise deprived of income or community standing for voicing a thought that bothers someone else.”

 

While the product “would pay if you get canceled,” the fine print in Mr. Cieply’s proposal is worth noting: higher premiums for those on social media because that “makes you high-risk,” and “students would also pay more” because “underwriters have to factor in special speech problems on campus.”

 

“But it should be fairly cheap if you’re an ordinary, work-at-home type whose only exposure is to a badly expressed thought or misplaced pronoun on the daily Zoom call,” he wrote.