I spoke on free speech in this thread but I didn’t cover media
I get that same chill that you are talking about whenever someone asks a question like, “What do we do about Tucker Carlson?” What is being implied here? The furthest back I think we should go would be the days of The Equal Time law and the Fairness Doctrine. It was one of those weird “oh crap I’m old” moments when I realized I had to explain those to anyone who is more than just a few years younger than me.
When I first had school assignments about politics, years before I voted, I watched the Communist Party on prime time TV. It was their Presidential candidate sitting on a folding chair in a mostly empty room, talking about his platform. The law required they broadcast that. It doesn’t now.
The reason we need to let them talk is it’s the best way to learn how to respond to them. If no one was talking about the good things we could get from slavery, or how the world would be better if built more walls, I would advocate for creating theatre that you could go and hear those points of view, and encourage encourage students to learn to make the argument for something they knew was wrong.
Every dystopian fiction includes suppression of voices. Getting people to believe that there is only one way of thinking is how people who think differently quietly gain a following and find a way to manipulate themselves into power.