Fake news and free speech

It’s up to consumers to fight back

AFTER the gunfire ended, false claims that the Las Vegas carnage was the work of Islamic State terrorists or left-leaning Donald Trump opponents flooded Facebook pages, YouTube searches and news feeds. Again, we saw how socalled “fake news” can fuel chaos and stoke hatred.

Like most fraudulent news, those deceptive articles are protected speech under the First Amendment and international free expression safeguards. Unless they cross specific legal red lines — such as those barring defamation or libel — fake news stories are not illegal, and our government does not have the power to prohibit or censor them.

But the fact that fake news is free speech does not nullify the danger it poses for open discourse, freedom of opinion or democratic governance. The rise of fraudulent news and the related erosion of public trust in mainstream journalism pose a looming crisis for free expression.

Usually, free expression advocacy centers on the defense of contested speech from efforts at suppression. But it also demands steps to fortify the open and reasoned debate that underpins the value of free speech in our society and our lives. The championing of free speech must not privilege any immutable notion of the truth to the exclusion of others. But this doesn’t mean that free speech proponents should be indifferent to the quest for truth, or to attempts to deliberately undermine the public’s ability to distinguish fact from falsehood.

Both the First Amendment and international law define free speech to include the right to receive and impart information. The power of free speech is inextricably tied to the opportunity to be heard and believed, and to persuade. Fake news undermines precisely these sources of power. If public discourse becomes so flooded with disinformation that listeners can no longer distinguish signal from noise, they will tune out.

Autocrats know this well and thus tightly control the flow of information. They purvey falsehoods to mislead, confuse and — ultimately — to instill a sense of the futility of speech that saps the will to cry foul, protest or resist. On social media, the problem is not one of control, but one of chaos. The ferocious pace with which false information can spread can make defending the truth or correcting the record seem like mission impossible, or an invitation to opponents to double down in spreading deceit.

The problem of fraudulent news right now is compounded by social and political divisions that undercut the traditional ways in which truth ordinarily prevails. Investigations, exposes and studies fall short in a situation where a significant portion of the population distrusts a wide array of sources they perceive as politically or ideologically hostile — including sources that traditionally commanded broad if not universal respect.

The debate over solutions to fraudulent news has centered on what the government, news outlets, social media platforms and civil society actors such as fact-checking groups can do. Each has an important role to play, but they also must respect sharp limits to their interventions. Of course, no president should routinely denigrate legitimate news that he dislikes — as Donald Trump continually does. But Trump’s misuse of his authority merely reminds us that it’s for good reasons that the Constitution forbids the government from adjudicating which news is true and which is false. Google and Facebook, as private platforms, should monitor their sites to make sure that dangerous conspiracy theories don’t go viral — but if they over-police what appears on their pages, they’ll create new impairments for edgy speech. Certainly, news outlets should strive to uphold professional and ethical standards, but they

alone can’t convince cynical readers to trust them. Similarly, those who believe fake news tend to distrust the fact-checking outlets that try to tell them the stories are bogus.

Ultimately, the power of fake news is in the minds of the beholders — namely, news consumers. We need a news consumers’ equivalent of the venerable Consumers Union that, starting in the 1930s, mobilized millions behind taking an informed approach to purchases, or the more recent drive to empower individuals to take charge of their health by reading labels, counting steps and getting tested for risk factors.

When there were only a few dishwashers to choose from, buyers didn’t need Consumer Reports to sort through their features and flaws. But when the appliance shopper began to face information overload, trusted arbiters were established to help them sort out the good from the bad. In decades past, news consumption centered on newspapers, magazines and network shows that had undergone layers of editing and fact-checking. Most consumers saw little necessity to educate themselves about the political leanings of media owners, modes of attribution for quotes, journalistic sourcing protocols,

the meaning of datelines or other indicators of veracity.

Now, with the proliferation of overtly partisan media, lower barriers to entry into public discourse and information flooding across the web and cable news, consumers need new tools to sort through choices and make informed decisions about where to invest their attention and trust. The fight against fake news will hinge not on inculcating trust in specific sources of authority but on instilling skepticism, curiosity and a sense of agency among consumers, who are the best bulwark against the merchants of deceit.

A news consumers’ movement should include several prongs, building on Pen America’s newly released “News Consumers Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” from its new report, “Faking News: Fraudulent News and the Fight for Truth.” The movement should furnish credible information to help consumers weigh the reliability of varied news sources. It should include an advocacy arm to prod newsrooms, internet platforms and social media giants into being transparent about their decisions as to what news is elevated and how it is marked.

This movement should advance news literacy curricula in schools and equip the next generation to navigate the information ocean into which they were born. It should conduct

outreach to diverse constituencies and strive continually to avoid ideological bias. It should develop an investigative research arm to expose, name and shame the purveyors of fraudulent news and their financial backers. And it might provide periodic ranking of, and reporting on, newsrooms and other outlets to hold them accountable to their audiences. The movement should also mobilize the public to become good news consumers by encouraging them to apply a critical eye to news sources, favor those that are trustworthy, validate reports before sharing them on social media and report errors when they see them.

Recognizing fraudulent news as a threat to free expression cannot be grounds to justify a cure — in the form of new government or corporate restrictions on speech — that may end up being worse than the disease. Unscrupulous profiteers and political opportunists may never cease in their efforts to infect the global information flow of information to serve their purposes. The best prescription against the epidemic of fake news is to inoculate consumers by building up their ability to defend themselves.

Tim Brinton