A distinguishing feature of "cancel culture" is that the targets - mostly self-absorbed academics & hacks who turn a coin through controversy - make a poor contribution to the public sphere. Whatever their sins of tone or vocabulary, they add little to dialogic democracy.
Steven Pinker's erroneous pop-history may command space in the press, & JK Rowling can signal-boost trite or bigoted views on gender, but neither are going to meaningfully influence the evolution of policy, any more than Kenneth Clark or Mary Whitehouse once did.
They clutter-up the public sphere with either complacement reassurance or moral panic. The purpose is to resist critique, often by paying lip-service to ideals such as plurality & free enquiry while preserving the old vocabulary & defending established manners.
In contrast, ye olde "hounding" (seen in the treatment of Dawn Butler & Lloyd Russell-Moyle, as well as the doorstepping of Jeremy Corbyn) is clearly concerned with setting limits on substantive discourse. It is not just anti-free speech, it is an attempt to erase prior speech.
The media treatment of "cancel culture" is a meta-exercise in hogging the bandwith that features both complacent reassurance (you can rely on the "free press") & moral panic (unis are a hotbed of woke terror). Meanwhile, the public sphere is further eroded by political caution.
