Tim Cook responds to criticism that Apple ‘supports’ the NRA

Apple CEO Tim Cook has responded to criticism that Apple offers  the NRATV channel available for download on an Apple TV. It’s the TV channel of the National Rifle Association.

Launched in 2016, NRAtv includes 22 programs. It’s  available via theApple TV, Amazon Prime, Roku, SiriusXM, iHeartRadio, YouTube, iTunes, and Google Chromecast. In February, some activists organized a 24-hour boycott of Apple, Amazon,and FedEx for alleged supporting the NRA. 

“Public discourse is an important part of democracy,” Cook said in an interview on MSNBC and Vox Media’s Recode show Revolution: Apple Changing the World. “Democracy without discourse is not a democracy.”

That doesn’t mean he agrees with all the NRA’s positions.

“I don’t even think they represent their members well, right, from the people that I know from my heritage in the South and so forth,” Cook said. “But their point of view, along with the alternate point of view, I think it’s actually important for the public to hear that, and I wish it could be done in a not vitriolic tone and the – all of the accusation and personal attack that is on there. I don’t subscribe to any of that at all.”

Still, free speech has its limits.

“You can bet that we continue to monitor and if it walks into the path of hate speech or some of these other things then we’re cutting it off,” Cook said.