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Fascinating @emilybazelon article on free speech in today’s Sunday Times. As a piece of reporting it’s great, filled with interesting stuff. As an opinion piece ... I have a lot of disagreements.
The basic thesis is this: conspiracy theories, fake news, and the various ills of social media all suggest that free speech thing isn’t working out so well after all. Maybe speech is the problem, not the solution.
The problem I have with this is what I tend to think of as a “Watchmen problem.” As in, who watches the watchmen?
If we imagine there is some socially optimal level of speech regulation different from the First Amendment, why do we think government is capable of finding it?
If we imagine there is some socially optimal level of speech regulation different from the First Amendment, why do we think government is capable of finding it?
This is partly a problem of capacity, but it is also a problem of incentives. Those who make the law have an incentive to regulate to keep themselves in power, not to strike some socially optimal balance. Even if that balance is knowable (a big if) is it government’s real goal?
The article details Facebook’s struggles as it has tried to intervene in much the way Emily would have the government intervene. If this is all so hard for Facebook, why would government do better?
Or need I even mention the current occupant of the White House? It takes a weird kind of blindness to call for more government regulation of speech in the “fake news” pages of the “failing NY Times.”
The premise of the article seems to be that the “right” people will win the coming election. But even if you accept that one side of the aisle is occupied entirely by saints (a real stretch, imho) why would you think they’ll stay in power forever?
If the left tears down the First Amendment now, I expect they’ll come to regret it next time they need its protection.
All of which is just a long way of saying that a defense of the First Amendment doesn’t have to show it always leads to truth. Because the question is always - what is the realistic alternative, and do we think the alternative would be better?
The article suggests there was a kind of mythic golden age, before the 1980s, when govt regulation held free speech in check. But to the extent media has changed since then—and I think it undoubtedly has—the changes go way beyond the elimination of the “fairness doctrine.”
There are legitimate critiques to be made about our current media environment—the conspiracy theories, the dissemination of half-baked facts, and the online mobs. But if those problems were less pronounced in the past, I don’t see any reason to think regulation was the reason.
That said, if there are problems in the media today, I’d suggest the solution may lie outside the government.
In part, the burden is on the media to make truthful, accurate, and balanced reporting interesting, relevant, and accessible.
In part, the burden is on the media to make truthful, accurate, and balanced reporting interesting, relevant, and accessible.
If it feels like “good” reporting is losing out to conspiracy theories, then the good reporters need to try harder!
I also think part of this is about encouraging respect for certain values—like truth, decency, and respect—that are increasingly viewed as quaint and even naive. The media is in some ways a victim of its own cynicism.
Anyway, I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But my point is that you can’t look to the government to solve these problems, since government’s just people too. If folks in media want a better media environment, it’s up to them to build it.
