Category Archives: Free Speech

Misinformation As A “Wicked Problem”

I continue to be a “when” person, not an “if” person. What I mean by that is that I become more convinced every day that America will emerge from the disaster that is Trump and MAGA, and that the pertinent questions we will face have to do with how we will repair things when that day comes and we have to repair not just the damage done by the mad would-be king, but the structural flaws that enabled his unfit occupancy in the Oval Office.

Political scientists, sociologists, lawyers, law professors and a wide variety of experts in other fields are already offering their perspectives on how to address the Supreme Court’s corruption, protect Americans’ voting rights, jettison (or at least alter) the filibuster, and neuter the Electoral College– proposals intended to fix the structural weaknesses that have become all too obvious.

In most of these areas, we’ll undoubtedly argue about the approaches and details, but fixes are possible.

There is, however, one truly enormous problem that has no simple answer. As I have repeatedly noted on this platform, we live today in an absolute ocean of mis- and dis-information. There are literally thousands of internet sites created to tell us untruths that we want to believe, technologies that were created to mislead, cable and streaming channels in the business of reinforcing our preferred biases–even psuedo-education organizations that exist solely to propagandize our children. There is no simple remedy, no policy prescription that can “fix” the Wild West of our “information” environment–and virtually any effort to shut down propaganda will run afoul of the First Amendment and its essential Free Speech guarantees.

The widespread availability of misinformation is what academics call a “wicked problem.” Wicked problems have a number of characteristics that make them difficult to manage and– practically speaking– impossible to actually solve. They can’t be fully defined because their components are constantly changing; there’s no one “right” solution– possible solutions aren’t true or false, but rather good or bad, and what’s good for one aspect of the problem might exacerbate another part (in other words, the interconnections mean that solving one part of the problem can easily aggravate other parts); and there’s no clear point at which you can say the problem is solved.

Misinformation is a whole set of wicked problems– on steroids.

As a Brookings Institution publication put it some time back, 

Disinformation and other online problems are not conventional problems that can be solved individually with traditional regulation. Instead, they are a web of interrelated “wicked” problems — problems that are highly complex, interdependent, and unstable — and can only be mitigated, managed, or minimized, not solved.

The Brookings paper recommended development of what it called “an architecture” that would “promote collaboration and build trust among stakeholders.” It noted the availability of several models that currently promote collaboration among a number of  stakeholders, including the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) and the Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs). These and similar successful organizations have learned how to adapt and innovate, and have focused on trust-building and information-sharing.

Any effective effort to counter misinformation and propaganda will need to go beyond the creation of other, similar organizations. If and when we re-institute a rational government and are gifted with a working Congress, there will be a role for (hopefully thoughtful) regulation. And of course, long term, the most effective mechanism must be education. Students need to be taught to recognize the difference between credible and non-credible sources, shown how to spot the markers of conspiracy theories and propaganda, and given tools to distinguish between deep fakes and actual photography.

The crux of the problem, of course, is that all-too-human desire to justify one’s particular beliefs and biases–the allure of “information” that confirms what that individual wants to believe. We all share that impulse, and its existence is what makes the manipulation of data and the creation of “alternative” facts so attractive. It’s also what feeds “othering,” bigotries and self-righteousness.

The persistence of that very human desire is what makes misinformation–also known as propaganda–such a wicked problem.

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Media Consolidation And Free Speech

There has been a huge reaction to the silencing of Jimmy Kimmel by our thin-skinned, can’t-take-a-joke (let alone criticism) wanna-be King. Pundits have pontificated. Some citizens have protested by canceling their Disney streaming subscriptions and/or trips to Disney theme parks, others are demanding a boycott, and a number have even turned up in front of Disney offices in California and New York. All of those actions have been entirely appropriate, but very few have focused on an element of our media environment that has enabled–even invited–the sort of ham-handed blackmail that has allowed the administration to muzzle speech of which it disapproves.

A recent essay from Lincoln Square connected the dots between that blackmail and the unprecedented media consolidation that has made it much more effective than it would otherwise have been.

As the essay noted, Kimmel was suspended because “billionaires who own the American media decided they were willing to capitulate to a dollar-store despot who decided his voice was no longer acceptable.” When a government regulator of broadcasting licenses goes on television and threatens to punish a network if it doesn’t rid the administration of the offending comic, the subsequent and immediate removal of the program “isn’t free will. It is state coercion made possible by billionaire media consolidation.”

The suspension also exposes a structural problem. A handful of companies control nearly every lever of American media. Nexstar is in the process of buying Tegna, a $6.2 billion deal that would give it reach into almost 80 percent of U.S. households if regulators (like Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr) approve it. Sinclair already holds enormous power. Gray is not far behind. Together, they dominate what gets marketed and sold as “local news.”

On the studio side, Larry Ellison and his son, David, just closed an $8 billion merger with Paramount. They are now openly vying for a Warner Bros. Discovery deal. Combined, that would give them control of two of the largest content pipelines in the world. Oracle, Larry Ellison’s company which has made him the richest man in the world, is also expected to play a central role in a restructured TikTok, potentially handing him primary cloud partnership and equity shares in a U.S. majority carveout. Ellison is also one of president Trump’s top political donors.

The picture is stark: The same billionaire network of Trump allies (including Rupert Murdoch and Fox News) controlling the studios, the broadcast stations, and the digital platforms — which we saw with Trump’s recent tech dinner. When government pressure comes, those choke points collapse inward. That is what just happened with Jimmy Kimmel.

And–as the essay points out–it’s interesting that those on the Right who’ve previously been the loudest about the importance of free speech have been suspiciously silent.

The cancellations of Colbert and Kimmel are examples of the power that media consolidation gives to into the billionaires who own the media and especially to the regulators acting–as the essay puts it– as “mob enforcers for the White House.” As it concludes:

If we let this moment pass without rightfully losing our shit and naming it for what it is, then the precedent will harden. The next comedian, journalist, or critic who challenges Trump or his allies will face the same weaponry — or think twice before doing so. And if Rogan and the rest of the self-proclaimed “free-speech advocates” continue to stay silent, then they are not allies in this fight. They are accessories to the silencing.

Billionaires loyal to the president are about to own nearly 80% of local and national media in this country — ahead of midterm elections and widespread military and police crackdowns in Democrat run cities. Jimmy Kimmel may be one of the first high-profile hosts to feel the wrath of this new system, but he will not be the last.

What went dark this week wasn’t just the Jimmy Kimmel Live! studio. It was a signal about where the First Amendment stands in Trump’s America.

Americans who still insist that “it can’t happen here” need to consider a “blast from the past” in a recent column by Charlie Sykes. The column reproduced a 1939 article from the New York Times, titled “Goebbels Ends Careers of Five ‘Aryan’ Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime.”

Read it and weep.

A postscript: since this was written, Kimmel’s show was returned to the airwaves. Evidently, the huge negative public reaction to Disney cowardice had an effect. We the People need to keep up the pressure!

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When You Elect Despots…

Stephen Colbert. Jimmy Kimmel. A close relative. Just three of the many victims of our Mad King’s effort to erase the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.

Most of you reading this are already aware that the Trump administration’s threats–to block mergers and pull broadcast licenses–led their cowardly networks to pull comedians off the air, despite huge audiences and excellent ratings. Many of you have also been reading about the ordinary citizens who have been fired or suspended for comments made on social media. In all these situations, the comments at issue were protected by the First Amendment–and most of them were anything but inflammatory. 

One of our Mad King’s favorite accusations is that he is the victim of a “witch hunt.” Like most of his pronouncements, it’s projection. What we are seeing now is a witch hunt, carried on by the administration and MAGA–and it threatens more than the First Amendment. 

As usual, Indiana’s MAGA Governor has hopped on the Trump/Rokita train, threatening the state’s teachers, and announcing that “The Secretary of Education has the authority to suspend or revoke a license for misconduct and the office will review reported statements of K-12 teachers and administrators who have made statements to celebrate or incite political violence.”  In a Sept. 12 X post, Rokita encouraged people to report teachers who “celebrate or rationalize” Kirk’s Sept. 10 killing so they can be included in his office’s government dashboard. That platform has been used to list and condemn instances of “objectionable” political ideology entering the classroom. Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith has also asked for such reports.

Orwellian.

You might wonder how these purported opponents of “cancel culture” justify their 180-degree turn on that issue. You might suggest they take a remedial course on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. But far worse than this display of hypocrisy and constitutional ignorance is the real-world effect of igniting actual witch hunts.

Rokita’s “dashboard” and Braun’s statement are invitations for disturbed or angry people, or people with grudges, to slander the objects of their hostility. My relative was a recent object of such vilification. That relative teaches at a charter school; an individual that relative has neither met nor heard of — a person who had evidently disagreed with my relative’s political postings on Facebook for some time– decided to “send a report” to virtually every public official in Indiana, along with numerous parents and funders of the school. The “offensive” posts consisted of statements that Rightwingers have been responsible for more violence than people on the Left (a fact found by the FBI that the Trump administration has now scrubbed from the official website), and one comment to someone else’s post to the effect that calls for empathy were inconsistent with Charlie Kirk’s own statement that he did not believe in empathy.

Hardly hate speech. Certainly not a call for violence. But a clear warning about the actual effects of a “snitch” society.

If MAGA folks were able to learn from history, they might take a lesson from other times and places, where people seeking favor from autocratic governments, and people with personal grudges, were encouraged to “turn in” friends and neighbors considered insufficiently loyal to the regime. Those societies weren’t pretty.

Frederick Douglas, among others, was eloquent on the importance of free speech, saying: “No right was deemed by the fathers of the government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government.” Dougles also said that freedom of speech “of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.”

There can no longer be any doubt that Trump–ignorant and incompetent and mentally-ill as he is–is a wanna-be tyrant. But he isn’t the real threat. The real threat comes from the powerful people who obey in advance, the businesses happy to discard integrity in exchange for official permissions, the GOP elected  officials who “suck up” to their cult leader rather than standing up for civil liberty or even for their own prerogatives. 

What’s worse is that those who are bending the knee would easily prevail in a court of law. 

We have a would-be King who is so thin skinned that he can’t even take a joke, and a political party that is a joke. But it’s not funny, and we need to reverse it. 

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Legacy Media Bends The Knee

The Right’s propaganda ecosystem is a huge problem. The spinelessness and cowardice of today’s legacy media is arguably worse.

A week or so ago, I argued that Trumpism has been aided by the inadequacy of our mainstream, “legacy” outlets. As I pointed out, there’s a reason that so many professional journalists have decamped to places like Substack– a reason why so many of us depend upon daily reports from reputable scholars like Heather Cox Richardson and Paul Krugman. My complaint was aimed at news reporting that “sanewashes” and normalizes behaviors that are objectively insane and abnormal, and as an example, I cited NBC’s report of the attack on California Senator Alex Padilla when he tried to ask Homeland Security’s Kristi Noem a question. Tom LLamas repeated Noem’s  assertion that the Senator had failed to identify himself–but made no mention of the fact that widely available video of the incident showed that Padilla had in fact done so. 

It wasn’t a “one-off.”

A couple of nights ago, NBC reported on the status of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” and rather than describing any of the truly horrific elements that explain public resistance to that legislation–its vast increase in the deficit or the millions who stand to lose healthcare– it reported that the bill would “reduce taxes,” and ignored the fact that those reductions would lopsidedly benefit the rich. 

NBC’s evident fear of incurring Trump’s wrath–its “compliance in advance”– pales, of course, in light of Paramount’s recent agreement to pay off the Mafia Don who occupies the Oval Office. Paramount has been in the process of an $8 billion merger with Skydance, for which it needs regulatory approval. The company settled a lawsuit with Trump that was so ridiculous that a first-year law student could have predicted it would have been laughed out of court. (Trump sued over what he claimed was unfair editing in a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris.)

Paramount’s agreement to pay sixteen million dollars for dismissal of this laughable threat was widely–and accurately– seen as a kickback that will allow the merger to go forward. It was payment for a government approval–in other words, a bribe. CBS thus joined Disney (the parent company of ABC News) another part of the mainstream media that has bent the knee to our gangster President.

An opinion piece in the Washington Post summed up the betrayal of 60 Minutes and professional journalism.

After “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens in April announced his resignation, correspondent Scott Pelley said on air, “Our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”

Honest journalism requires noting that Paramount’s leaders will never, ever hear the end of this abject decision. Nor should they. Much has been made in the recent past about attacks on the First Amendment, whether it’s the administration’s expulsion of the Associated Press from the White House press pool because it won’t swallow “Gulf of America” (a dispute that’s tied up in the courts); the targeting of student protesters for their speech; attacks on lawyers for their past work; or any number of actions seeking to snuff diversity language from the handbooks of corporate America.

There is ample case law establishing the right of editors to choose what material they publish and the manner in which they cover public issues and officials. “That very function — the one that happens many times a day at newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, networks, social media accounts, newsletters, whatever — is what Paramount failed to stick up for. It doesn’t deserve the likes of “60 Minutes.”

So here we are. We’re awash in propaganda from Fox News and its even more pernicious clones. And now we’ve learned that we can’t depend upon the so-called legacy media to set the record straight. Sometimes, it’s sins of omission–NBC failing to provide even rudimentary “both sides” coverage. Increasingly, it’s the betrayal of the very purpose of journalism, which is to inform as accurately and completely as possible.

It’s one thing to make honest mistakes. It’s another thing entirely to allow your bottom line to dictate your coverage. 

America’s experience under Trump has made one thing abundantly clear: American institutions are filled with self-protective cowards devoid of integrity. Those cowards dominate Congress and corporate boardrooms. The lesson of Paramount’s shameful capitulation to our gangster President’s blackmail is that corporate ownership of previously reliable media outlets  deprives We the People of news we can trust.

Unfortunately, without a fully and accurately informed electorate, democracy cannot exist.

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Trump’s Phony War On Anti-Semitism

If there is any aspect of Donald Trump’s “character,” (note quotes) that has been amply documented, it has been his bigotries. (Extensive research has also confirmed that agreement with his racial animus is a characteristic of the vast majority of his supporters.) Trump’s own virulent anti-Semitism has been consistently displayed by his numerous reported comments and social media posts, and by his ongoing relationships with, and support from, various neo-Nazi figures.

So the administration’s assertion that its war on universities is an effort to stamp out anti-Semitism is ludicrous. What he wants to “stamp out” is intellectual inquiry and free speech. And plenty of Jewish academics are having none of it.

On Indiana University’s Bloomington campus, thirty-eight current and former Jewish professors delivered a letter to President Pamela Whitten, Provost Rahul Shrivastav and Board of Trustees Chair Quinn Buckner, urging them not to invoke their names or Jewish students’ names as justification for limiting free speech at IU.

Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy professor of political science, signed the letter. Isaac said the group opposes antisemitism, and he’s been involved in activism against antisemitism.

Isaac said existing laws and the university’s regulations and policies already protect Jewish people from antisemitism. He’s never felt afraid on campus, and his students haven’t said they’re afraid either.

“I don’t mean to question every person who says they’re afraid,” Isaac said. “We need to listen to them. But that’s different than saying we need to shut down anything that disturbs them, and that’s what’s going on in this country now.”

In the letter, with which I entirely agree, the professors declined  to be used as “justification for any action that further limits academic autonomy or freedom of expression at IU.”

We, the undersigned, have all been “Jewish students on campus” somewhere. Our children have been Jewish students on campus somewhere. We teach Jewish students on this campus. And we—unlike Gov. Braun or Education Secretary Linda McMahon—have known antisemitism firsthand. But we also know that our identities, both as Jewish Americans and as public university employees, require respect for free speech and tolerance of opposing viewpoints.

Those values lead us to remind you that IU has a responsibility to stand firmly for freedom of speech.

In coming months, Secretary McMahon and Governor Braun will seek your compliance in enforcing their vaguely defined prohibitions against “antisemitic harassment and discrimination” from “radical organizations and individuals.” The lessons of last year’s overreaction to the protests on Dunn Meadow, withdrawal of Samia Halaby’s Eskenazi Museum retrospective, suspension of Prof. Abulkader Sinno, and imposition of an overbroad expressive activity policy are clear: censoring legal expression—even in the name of bringing us together—only tears us apart.

The letter concluded,

These are fraught times for universities and other American institutions asserting their commitments to the protection of the First Amendment. Still, we recall the words of Hillel: “If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I?” This university’s best means to protect the well-being of all of its students will be to affirm its commitment to civil liberties and to protect its academic programs from political interference. We count on you to do so.

Although it remains to be seen, it is unlikely that President Whitten–a politically-connected appointee who has thus far survived several faculty votes of no confidence, and whose response to previous student protests has ranged from unsatisfactory to appalling–will defend civil liberties against the assaults by Trump and Braun. But those who signed the letter, and the many others of us who endorse its sentiments, have made it clear that they do not consent to be cynically used by the blatant hypocrisy of Rightwing partisans who have a long history of actual anti-Semitism. We recognize this ploy as an obvious and thinly-veiled smokescreen for their consistent assaults on basic American civil liberties.

We know our history, and its lessons.

And if there is one lesson Jews all over the world have learned the hard way, it is that–like all marginalized minorities–we can only thrive in an open society that respects the civil liberties and free speech rights of all citizens, whether we agree with them or not.

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