An important mistake is being made here. Free Speech is intended to be an unassailable right, NOT simply protection against the government. The right was simply created at a time when the realities of modern communications technology had not even been conceived up, nor had media corporations, or how the media and politicians would engage in a directly incestuous relationship where political and historical re-inventionism and controlling the message directed at the youth to condition them to think like you combined with Omni-present media saturation would become a routinely employed strategy. The idea that a revolution not only against government but oppression by the so called "peerage" and wealthy with their own interests influencing the government intended for individual citizens and merchant-lords to wield more control over the average person than rightfully elected representatives is ridiculous. Such logic is the refuge of the modern liberal who wants to be seen as opposing censorship, and supporting free speech, but encouraging it through back door means.
Right now with PACs (political action commitees) and similar groups so cozy with the government one cannot argue for the right of individuals to limit or suppress the speech of others through any means and be taken seriously as any kind of believer in of freedom and liberty. After all a big part of the problem with government is the deals cut between private citizens and politicians. Meaning you see deals with media companies about what they will promote for political support and vice versa, not to mention all kinds of other deals out there. Someone in the media refusing others a platform or directing attacks and such being done by a private citizen is a technicality when he's working closely with the government to begin with and probably getting various benefits by doing what his (or her) patrons want. The problem of course being compounded by media powerhouses like Ted Turner who also have a clearly stated political agenda. Indeed 'ol Ted at one point had an attempted monopoly broken up by the government in part because of his political plans. Of course that largely failed because while broken up a lot of the big wigs were supporters of his anyway and while they competed they largely held to the same ideologies. When you start looking at various conspiracy theories about the media Ted Turner's name comes up a lot, and getting past a lot of the craziness, you'll be surprised how many big shots out there especially in the media have direct ties to him, including people who will surprise you. One of the big reasons why his attempted monopoly and government action was a big deal (and largely forgotten about today). Cases can be made for the Turners being among the most powerful people in the world despite how it looks on paper, before you even get into psychotic Illuminati/Freemason stuff, or the idea of the whole "Club 33" thing with him, Walt Disney, and The Devil being a sort of trinity, and that upon his passing The Devil will manifest as the Anti-Christ in the world the other two prepared (as I said, utterly insane).
At any rate, all ranting to make this more entertaining I think a lot of what Bob is saying is fundamentally flawed. The idea of free speech is that everyone is supposed to be able to speak evenly. If you don't like what someone else does with their pen, you have the right to use yours back, and just as much of a right to representation in the eyes of society.... that includes the right to a platform, but that was never specified because the current kinds of situations were never conceived of at the time. After all if someone can deny you a platform you might as well not have free speech, especially when the lines between public and private power can be easily blurred. That said as I have posted links to in the past, Muslims produce plenty of anti-western, anti-Jewish, stuff on their own, this is hardly one sided and honestly as "offensive" as some people argue Charlie might have been, The Muslim World is worse, I mean they have children's TV shows telling them to kill Jews and Westerners, and the leaders of oountries like Iran refuse to call the USA by it's name and refer to it as "Great Satan" in televised/reported meetings and stuff.
I think people might need to realize this attack in France was a wild success, it was NOT an attack on free speech, what was said by Charlie just made him a noticeable public person. The point of this attack was to both spread fear, AND to show Muslims that if "Martyrs" are willing to strike it doesn't matter who they kill, there will be no substantial retaliation. Something a lot of opponents of the civilized world are doing. Kim Jong Un stepping over lines set by The President, attacks by ISIS, incursions by China into Japanese and Filipino territory, the invasion of Crimea/Ukraine. None of which have lead to major reprisals by the civilized world, the water is being tested so to speak. The fact that people are actually trying to defend Muslims in France after this and even promote them to an extent based on the actions of a few, never mind engaging in the kind of crack down a lot of Muslims still fear is sort of the point, the fact that a public person/office was killed/wiped out by those willing to die for the cause, doing more damage in the big picture than the loss of the scant handful of martyrs, and nothing happened in retaliation, is going to encourage more of this. Not what a lot of people want to hear though, while we go back and forth about free speech and the barbarity of violence, and actually speak out against large scale reprisals, we're pretty much leaving ourselves open to a bigger attack. Within the next year or so I can virtually guarantee we're going to see another strike somewhere within the west at least as big as this, if not larger, as a result. Remember we're dealing with terrorists, not a few protestors who went too far, on his own this guy wasn't a worthwhile target, you need to look at the big picture.
