Don’t try to regulate ‘fake news’
In the 1500s, a new technology allowed for the mass distribution of information in a way the world had never seen. Suddenly, citizens of all continents had access to uniform sources of information, rather than depending on regional myths and customs.
That technology, of course, was the printing press.
The availability of cheap printing presses flooded the globe with books, treatises and pamphlets, exposing people in geographically distant lands to different ideas and soaking the global knowledge base with facts. But the wide distribution of knowledge came with a price; now that just about anyone could print up a pamphlet or book, sources of information became untrustworthy. Even printed materials as simple as maps were often wildly inaccurate; historian Daniel Boorstin once noted that “they were not so much maps of knowledge as maps of Scriptural dogma.”
As America has seen recently with the promulgation of Internet-delivered “fake news,” this new deluge of unverified information struck the world of politics, as well. “I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing,” remarked William Berkeley, a 17th-century governor in colonial Virginia, “and I hope we shall never have these (for a) hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!”
It appears the modern American public has taken Berkeley’s side in the battle against “fake news:” A recent Economist/YouGov poll showed that only 20% of Americans opposed fining media outlets for “for publishing or broadcasting stories that are biased or inaccurate.” Only 29% opposed shutting
down media outlets for the same violation.
Ironically, despite the commonly-held belief that Internet-based “fake news” helped Donald Trump win the presidency in 2016, it is actually conservatives that want a crackdown on biased or incorrect reporting. Conditioned by decades of liberal media bias, 55% of Republicans want to see misleading news organizations fined, and 45% want to see news organizations forced to shut down.
This movement gained momentum last week when Trump suggested that “fake news” networks such as NBC should have their “licenses” pulled. “It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write,” Trump said on Twitter.
Perhaps Trump has a keen sense of irony, as it is literally “fake news” to suggest anyone can “pull” NBC’s license to report news.
But on the other end of the spectrum, Democrats are pushing new rules that would regulate whether foreigners can advertise on social media platforms such as Facebook during campaign season. Former Federal Elections Commission chair Ann Ravel has even suggested relaxing libel laws to go after social media sites that run “fake news,” whether it’s paid for or simply passed on after a five-second vetting session by that guy you worked with three jobs ago.
Of course, First Amendment protections aside, fullblown regulation of political discussions on Facebook is just as unfeasible as yanking broadcast licenses. For one,
the spread of bogus stories will always outpace the regulators’ ability to catch them. Further, who would be the one to determine what constitutes a “political” discussion? Do liberals really want to put Donald Trump in charge of policing their online chatter?
In fact, the evidence “fake news” made all that much difference is still very much in dispute. Of those who saw stories like “Trump Offering Free One-Way Tickets to Africa & Mexico for Those Who Wanna Leave America,” how many actually either believed them or had planned to vote for Hillary Clinton and changed their mind as a result of seeing them?
And while Facebook admitted to accepting $100,000 in advertising from Russian sources, that number is almost infinitesimal in a race that saw $2.4 billion in spending, nonstop mainstream media coverage, three widely-watched debates, and two major party conventions. Anyone who has worked on campaigns knows how difficult it is to direct public opinion with spending and advertisements. As 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign chief strategist Mark Penn has noted, Clinton poured $6 million into Florida, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign. How did that turn out?
As was the case in the 16th century, the world will have to adapt to the influx of unreliable information. Hopefully, trusted sources will once again form to make sense of what’s real and what’s not. But if the mainstream media wants to accept the role of arbiter of truth, it should work harder to understand the half of the country that wouldn’t object to seeing them vanish from the face of the Earth.