More on freedom of speech

MFB,

Sounds like an argument for well financed public service. Brings a different actor into the market that can compete on different terms.

From my experience well financed public service improves the quality of news, public debate, and the quality and quantity of public information ( e.g. through documentaries), not only by way of its own programming but by competing with private actors. For example it helps to keep the quality of news programming from sinking too low in the private sector because they eventually have too big of a credibility problem in comparison to public service.

This is beyond absurd. You’re riding around in a model T, putting up fliers arguing for the public provision of buggy whips, and wider ownership of publich horse stalls. Newspapers are going obsolete! Who the heck cares who they’re owned by?

And to all you logic people I didn’t mean “infinitely more” literally.

Is “abb1” a sock-puppet operated by the American Enterprise Institute?

Well, one thing it would certainly involve is some restrictions on the ownership of the media, so that it could no longer be the case that the content of public political debate is decided by the private interests of a few rich proprietors, like The Sun’s Rupert Murdoch.

Rich proprietors? Nope — the two TV industry figures in the U.S. with the most outsized personal impact on the political debate are very obviously, with no close challengers … Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. How can I be a true citizen in this democracy when Stewart’s and Colbert’s voices have, literally, a million times the impact of my own? Why should two men be able to own an hour of infinitely valuable TV time, day after day, month after month, year after year? Shouldn’t this monopoly on the public attention be broken up? And it’s not just the time — their natural wit and humor (and the money they can command to spend on writers and slick production) enable them to drown out we tens of millions of unknown aspiring political satirists who lack their talent and resources. How can we allow that and call this a ‘free’ society?

And I notice you all are talking about Rupert Murdock, but somehow have forgotten about Pinch Sulzberger.

It’s the same elemental mistake again and again — imagining a shiny new government weapon with your political adversaries in the crosshairs but no awareness of who the thing would be pointed at when the wrong party was in control.

Slocum,

Is this supposed to be an argument against more media diversity? If so explain how more diversity is bad. Is this supposed to be an argument against public service? If so please relate to the fact that many liberal democracies do an excellent job of funding public service while allowing it to operate independent of the current government. That is quite obviously the model I am suggesting.

“I do, of course agree that the BBC is much better than the FOX News, no question about that. Still, is it really “delivering a truly democratic society”? I’m not sure. If it does, what are the mechanics behind it?”

Better is better, in what way is this supposed to be an oppositional argument?

The political philosopher John Rawls, in defining his principles of justice for a democratic state, talks about the significance not only of ensuring that citizens have equal basic liberties (such as freedom of speech, freedom of association and the right to vote), but of further ensuring equality in the fair value of the rights and liberties involved in political life.

But he also ranked these; freedom of speech (e.g.) had lexical priority over even fair and equal access to offices and political life.

Now, Rawls himself was of the view that only rights of personal, not productive, property were among the basic liberties; and he came to express the view that no basic liberties were implicated even in pretty radical restrictions on private money being spent to support political speech and advocacy. But, *if* the debate is a Rawlsian one, it has to be, basically, “Is it a part of freedom of speech or freedom of the press to be able to own and publish a newspaper?” not, or before, “is the freedom of the press, so construed, detrimental for fair equal access to the democratic process?” An answer to the second can’t be treated as if it were an answer to the first.

Is this supposed to be an argument against more media diversity? If so explain how more diversity is bad.

Media diversity isn’t bad. Granting the government the power to enforce media diversity is bad.

As Steward and Colbert make clear, there are more direct, effective ways to have an oversized influence on the public debate than to buy newspapers or TV stations. Aren’t you at all worried about how a government writ to stop individuals from gaining undue influence through domination of the media might be wielded?

Engels,

Yep,

1) Basic Liberty
2) Equal access to offices
3) Difference principle

Levy is claiming that this media stuff is in 2), although it is not obviously that what is at issue here is individuals’ access to offices. Rather it seems to be the social conditions in terms of information and ideas that could make the formal access to equal basic rights translate into genuine equal treatment in terms of individuals’ ability to exercise such rights meaningfully in the public sphere.

Rawls does, however, include fair value of the political liberties within the statement of the LP in both PL and JasF. And since his argument for lexical priority is wobbly, and in JasF he withdraws his claim that FEO has lexical priority over the DP, I don’t think Martin O Neill’s interpretation should be ruled out as unreasonable.

Yes, Barry, I’m hideously evil for pointing out that newspapers are going out of business. And that you’re all discussing this on the medium which is replacing them, a medium with vanishingly small entry costs.

Are you really trying to claim that the internet has no relevance to this discussion?

To clarify: in #17 I wasn’t disputing Martin O’Neill’s interpretation of Rawls, but Jacob T. Levy’s.

I am suggesting that the government should fund a serious competitor on in the TV media market, and that the government should do what it does in most sectors to prohibit monopoly, no more.

And what that translates into is a powerful, national TV service and ‘anti-monopoly’ actions that assure any non-governmental alternatives are small, weak, and fragmented. Think Putin’s Russia. Or Chavez’s Venezuela. An independent press is critical, and a weak, poorly-financed, fragmented independent press is not sufficient.

You don’t think that there should be national newspaper chains — that this is too much power? Well, why should there be TV networks with national (or even global) reach — wouldn’t that be too much power by the same logic?

Murdock and Sulzberger and the Tribune Company and Knight-Ridder (or whoever owns them now now) don’t worry me — least of all now. They have competitors. And their profits, readership, and influence are already in steep decline as alternatives to traditional print (and broadcast TV) multiply.

And they don’t have the power of arrest. But having the only permitted large media company in a country in the hands of the same organization (the government) that has the monopoly on legal coercion — THAT worries me.

“Are you really trying to claim that the internet has no relevance ”

Who claimed that Brett? This kind of disingenuous BS won’t cut it here. Again nothing you say contradicts the position that TV and newspapers are still the biggies. Anybody who cared to check out the data would easily see this. Appealing to the fact that there is a handful of people debating the issue on crookedtimber is an astoundingly pathetic attempt at argument.

“finding a way to make censorship look intellectually respectable” Do you think you could relate the arguments that people have actually made, or to you doubt your own abilities that much? I can think of about a half dozen decent arguments against my own position off the top of my head, why can’t you?

And what that translates into is a powerful, national TV service and ‘anti-monopoly’ actions that assure any non-governmental alternatives are small, weak, and fragmented. Think Putin’s Russia. Or Chavez’s Venezuela.

Or Britain and the BBC…

“If The Sun took the democratic rights of the British people seriously, then it should be campaigning for the influence of foreign tycoons like Murdoch to be extirpated from British political life”

Why does it matter that Murdoch is a “foreign tycoon”? What’s the reason why that’s worse than being a “domestic tycoon”? Or is that just thrown in for extra kicks?

Seriously, read that article carefully, paying attention to the things the author says that he doesn’t know he says and tell me how that is not basically “we should restrict the media that disagrees with me, because if you disagree with me you are disagreeing with democracy for I am democracy!”

On the topic at hand I seriously doubt the opposition to the euro or the support for the… um … “undemocratic” referendum on it has much to do with Murdoch’s influence. Hell, in US most people think evolution is some grand atheist conspiracy and that has nothing to do with the media influence. There’s no guarantee that a democracy will produce outcomes that are in agreement with your preferences. There’s not even a guarantee that it will produce tasteful, aesthetic or just outcomes all the time (though it might do better than most). This just sounds like a revision of the old leftist self delusion that “the people are with us, and if they’re not with us it’s because they’re traitors or they’ve been brainwashed! Either way we are the people!”

Also. If I spent my time and money trying to influence your opinion (as I am doing now), in the end, I’d like to have some influence to show for it, otherwise why bother with public debate? Which means that if you restrict media, the influence will pop up somewhere else or you kill the debate.

Also also. The article asks “But what would be involved in delivering a truly democratic society”? But aside for calling for media censorship in the next sentence it does not specify the alternatives. State run tv? Restrictions on size of media outlets or vertical or horizontal ownership of these?
Without these details the proposal just sounds spooky. With them it probably would too.

This is why, as a proud Southerner and a proud liberal, I am in favor of liberal societies, not necessarily democratic ones.

There was a time when I used to find statements like the above shocking, but nothing I read on these boards surprises me anymore.

I am not going down any “road”, Radek, just giving the obvious answer to your rather stupid question.

Aaron_m, I’m glad you’re handling the troll fumigation around here. Someone’s gotta do it…

And so another iteration of the positive rights/negative rights debate goes on. In order to ensure ‘TRUE’ freedom of speech, the speech of certain people has to be suppressed.

Please note how quickly we have stepped from the allegedly hard case for free speech advocates–hate speech–directly to suppressing the speech of people you ‘just happen’ to disagree with politically. Andrew Sullivan jumped the gun. Now is the time to be decrying the (not so) hidden agenda.

The surprising thing here is that the assumption that only people who agree with you will be the side able to suppress the wrong kind of speech. It combines the silly idea that you are always right (going to suppress only bad speech) with the really silly idea that only people like you are going to be in power.

Exactly Slocum I am recommending “Putin’s Russia” and a weak independent press. Russia, Venezuela, UK, Sweden, Germany, Canada, they are all the same thing.

Nobody said you were recommending Putin’s Russia. There are two elements here:

1. A national news organization (like the BBC or CBC), and

2. Powerful restrictions on private news organizations that provide non-government approved views.

The UK and Canada, for example, have 1 but not 2. But my reading here is that original posting (and you) are recommending both 1 and 2 (though not imagining it would lead to anything bad — a serious lack of imagination, IMHO).

You won’t be surprised that I’m not a fan of government owned news agencies either, but there’s a big difference between the situation where you have a government press and a unrestricted private press in competition with it than a situation where the government owns a news agency and restricts the activity of private alternatives.

And your answer is “yes, restrict media ownership to citizens of a country only”, right?

“2. Powerful restrictions on private news organizations that provide non-government approved views.”

I never even came close to suggesting such a view. Get serious!

No, Radek, that’s not my “answer”, nor am I going to attempt to give one in the space of blog comment. I was responding to your query by clarifying O’Neill’s point about Rupert Murdoch: if one believes in the ideal of democracy as a limited group of people governing themselves then the control of large parts of the media by outsiders does not seem consistent with that.

Sebastian Holsclaw,

I am defending my own views not O’Neill’s. Look at what I wrote.

Radek, O’Neill made a claim: “X is a bad thing”. You objected by asking “Why does it matter?”. I explained to you why it matters. You don’t appear to be interested in defending your original point (that it doesn’t matter) but for the last few posts you have been badgering me to say exactly what I think would be a better way of doing things. Of course I have my views about that but my (and O’Neill’s) critical judgement is independent of them and I’m not willing to get into a discussion about all that right now, I’m afraid.

Btw I think O’Neill does a great job in his article of bringing these issues up in a topical way. I really don’t know what to make of the fact that it has engendered these rather depressing displays of anti-intellectualism and anti-democratic sentiment. You can lead a horse to water, I suppose…

“I really don’t know what to make of the fact that it has engendered these rather depressing displays of anti-intellectualism and anti-democratic sentiment.”

It is because he brought it to the table in conclusory fashion: “But what would be involved in delivering a truly democratic society, in which citizens’ democratic rights were not merely a charade – all form and no substance? Well, one thing it would certainly involve is some restrictions on the ownership of the media, so that it could no longer be the case that the content of public political debate is decided by the private interests of a few rich proprietors, like The Sun’s Rupert Murdoch.”

“They have a lot of money these days, they can afford it. Would anyone here have a problem with that?”

I don’t. If they manipulated it, it would become like the Washington Times in terms of reputation about reporting certain things–suspect. And if they didn’t manipulate it, who cares?

Radek, you said:

Why does it matter that Murdoch is a “foreign tycoon”? What’s the reason why that’s worse than being a “domestic tycoon”?

I answered by saying why it does indeed matter, from the point of view of democracy defined as national self-government. If you are now saying that you didn’t really want an answer and were just being deliberately obtuse for rhetorical purposes then so be it: I shouldn’t have bothered responding.

I think you may have missed the rest of my reply: “If they manipulated it, it would become like the Washington Times in terms of reputation about reporting certain things—suspect. And if they didn’t manipulate it, who cares”.

I think you may have missed the rest of my reply

no, because I’m quite sure that even if they wouldn’t become suspect, there would be a threshold (50%, 70%, 90%?) were even you would have problems with it

and if they became suspect and couldn’t be laughed off like the Washington Times, but had acquired some real power in shaping public opinion, there would be a point were you would favour regulatory intervention

Why is it so hard to understand that in order to guarantee a certain amount of diversity the government has to have the right to regulate. Governments do that all the time in order to guarantee a certain amount of free market activity which involves real competition. Big time capitalists generally don’t like free markets, because they don’t like competition and tend to gravitate towards consolidation. The assumption that an unregulated market leads to diversity is just flat out wrong, both as far as business and free speech is concerned.

As regards the media not shaping public opinion, the lockstep media offensive in the run up to the Iraq war proved otherwise.

Do you really think that if the tables had been turned, if the 95 percent of the media that were openly or tacitly for the war had been openly or tacitly against the war – do you really think things would have panned out in the same way?

Since the Bush administration is the one that would have been administering this program you envision, your point is hard to follow.

Now you’re just being willfully obtuse: it’s not about giving some administration Stalinesque powers to silence the media at will, it’s about enshrining certain powers to regulate, if the concentration of power in a sector such as the media rises to such a level that diversity and competition is endangered. The EU trade commissioner, for instance, has such powers to regulate businesses and contrary to what you might believe, the people who’ve held this post so far were all committed free marketeers, while the businesses they brought cases against were all trying to undermine free markets in one way or another.

Citizens should not only be equal before the law, but should have an equal opportunity to influence the outcomes of democratic deliberation.

This is the sort of thing that sounds wonderful as a philosophical ideal. But i really have trouble imagining how the ideal could be actualized even in an approximate way. I could think of various ways of reforming or reorganizing the media economy in a country which could have an impact on which voices are heard; but I can’t imagine a system of reforms that would produce anything even close to “all citizens having an equal opportunity to influence the outcomes of democratic deliberation.”

What often seems to be lost in these discussions is that the communication of messages is not mainly a process whereby the producers of messages play the dominant role, and the messages that are produced just wash over a mass of passive recipients. Communication occurs because the recipients of messages continually and actively seek out the messages that they want to receive. Even the most passive of television viewers exercises a great deal of choice over the messages they hear.

Australia has a system of restrictions on media ownership, and a government-funded state broadcaster (2 in fact, one aimed at ethnic minorities). The restrictions on media ownership set rules about how many television stations and newspapers someone can own in the same state, or nationally. This is generally considered necessary by Australians because small markets are easy pickings for monopolists like Murdoch (who has come close to this on occasion). Despite these laws Australia has high concentration of ownership of the media.

I never realised I lived in a fascist state, but there you go…

Suppose two citizens; One inarticulate, the other eloquent, one holding widely despised views, the other widely popular. Give them an equal opportunity in one sense, and the outcome is already decided in another.

But Brett (and Dan), the whole point of this controversy is that 1. an unpopular view repeated often, loudly, skillfully, and for a long time eventually becomes not just popular but a common wisdom and 2. eloquence is mostly a function of the amount of money one has and is willing to spend on propagating his/her views.

Indoctrination (aka PR) is the name of the game. Powerful institutions are generally much more successful at indoctrinating the masses than less powerful ones. It’s that simple.

“Powerful institutions are generally much more successful at indoctrinating the masses than less powerful ones. It’s that simple.”

Ah, those poor masses. Incapable of thinking for themselves. So much better if we, the enlightened ones, decided things for them.

Ah, those poor masses.

Ah, an excellent illustration: CJCJC here reacts predictably to the word “masses”. Bad word, CJCJC, right? And why, do you think, it feels so unpleasant to you?

Based on the belief that the public is stupid, ignorant, and gullible, and so has to be protected from wrong ideas.

Stupid or not, do you realize, Brett, that if you were born in an Amish village, you would’ve probably been operating a horse-drawn buggy now and sporting a large beard? Is it not true? How do explain that?

“And why, do you think, it feels so unpleasant to you?”

abb1 – what feels unpleasant to me is your patronising approach. Of course, you know what’s best, and that’s what the masses should be taught.
After all only a superior mind – such as yours – can rise above the Murdochian propaganda.

As for Perot’s campaign, well, do you really believe he thought to himself: I know, I’ll spend lots of money to brainwash people into voting for me.

Rather he almost certainly thought: I bet there are quite a few people who will like the sound of my agenda. Let’s have a go and find out.

“If Rupert Murdoch controls 50% of the channels and Fidel Castro controls the other 50% of the channels, then you should expect to see a Che bumper sticker about as often as a Bush-Cheney one.”

There you go again – assuming that the “masses” – ignorant as you obviously believe them to be -simply do as they are told.

So what has your mind had “entered into it”, which the benighted masses have not, that you alone are able to see the truth so clearly?

“There you go again – assuming that the “masses” – ignorant as you obviously believe them to be -simply do as they are told.”

Isn’t the entire advertising/marketing industry predicated upon at least a weak assumption of this point? That a mass of people (not all usually) can be strongly influenced by the proper input signals? Or, for another example, the concept of a talking point–repeat something over and over again and eventually you’ll persuade, through sheer repetition, a sizable number of people. Catapulting the propaganda, in the President’s words.

I guess it comes down to a vision of human rationality. A gulf has seemingly come into play; on one side, individuals are presented as less than ideally rational in that they can be manipulated by shiny images on a television or, in a more halycon period, eloquent words from a forceful orator. The other side, best examplified by cjcjcj, seems to presuppose the oppsite: that the “masses” have ample mental resources to combat these overtures (please correct, cjcjcj, if I am misreading you).

I think, on the whole, the first point has greater force to it (see the advertising example, for instance). Human beings are not the truly rational creatures we think ourselves and we are quite open to manipulation, both subtle and overt. [To steal a quote concerning William Seward that I just read in Eric Foner’s “Free Soil…”: “Mr Seward is a power in the state. It is worth while to understand his course. It cannot be caprice. His position decides that of millions.” This is similar to the point made about Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart earlier in the thread. Suffice it to say, that the influence of these individuals isn’t gained through a rigorous logical proof, but usually through appeals to an intuition that leads to a rational justification.] In such a world, populated by such creatures, I think it obvious that we should be concerned with how our public discourse is managed–who gets the biggest seat at the table and what their interests are, how costly is access, the form our discourse takes (as Al Gore laboriousy argues in his most recent book) and so on.

In such an environment, I think it makes sense for a plurality of voices, of cross-cutting pressures upon our opinions, to be nurtured. The proactive method for any government would be funding an alternative (the BBC, etc). The defensive posture would surely involve some sort of limitation on how many stations or avenues of access one gets to purchase; as there are indeed present in the United States, although watered down from previous years, in the prevention of one person/company from owning both a TV station and, I think, a radio station in the same market (although perhaps I’m misremembering the actual rule).

Democratic societies have to be attuned to concentrations of power, wherever they occur. The American constitutional writers were so attuned to political concentration of power and thus attempted to diffuse it (Federalist 10 beinig the Bible of that cause). Economic concentration, by the time of the Jacksonians at least, in the form of corporations, were next under target (at least rhetorically, at first, but eventually through labor laws and anti-monopoly rules). That concentration of media power, in our 24/7 media universe, should also be considered something to regulate should not seem too controversial, even if some methods do.

Josh, incidentally deliberate manipulation is often unnecessary. For example, one speaker could be arguing that outsourcing to India and China is a great bonanza for the consumers, while another speaker could concentrate on the hardship it creates for the local workers. Both speakers are telling the truth, both are sincere, no deliberate manipulation. Still, if the first speaker gets the front pages of the NYT and WaPo and the second can only get published in some low circulation magazines – then the public opinion (the masses!) will be affected accordingly.

IOW, the speakers themselves are not necessarily liars and manipulators, it’s just that different POVs get different play, based on what’s beneficial for the most powerful. It’s a natural thing, you don’t really need any conspiracy.

I don’t disagree that balancing from the top is a lousy long-term solution.

Nobody, of course, is talking about protecting/shielding anybody from “wrong ideas”, quite the opposite in fact – introducing into the mainstream ideas people are (mostly) being shielded from now. Obvious example: the “class war” idea is routinely rejected by the mainstream media (in the US at least, but I suspect the BBC isn’t much different) as a wrong/harmful one. A lot of the US foreign policy matters can’t be discussed, of course. Pretty much anything negative about Israel, obviously. And so on. I don’t think the government (in the US, at least) can help here, simply because the government is a part of the problem. At least in the US, at least at the moment. But it’s probably inevitable (to a degree) in any liberal socio-economic system.

MQ – No, that’s not why I took issue with those posts. I’ve always considered myself to be a socialist btw; you may disagree but perhaps you could show a little humility when passing judgement on who is and who isn’t a “genuine” member of a political movement of which you are not yourself a member. Also, I have a lot of respect for Marx’s ideas; I don’t, frankly, see any evidence that abb1 knows the first thing about Marx, and I am not really sure why you draw the conclusion that he does (and presumably that I don’t).

One thing that the left, at least in my country, used to care about rather a lot was something called “public ownership of the means of production”. Maybe they were wrong to do so, but this was (perhaps by definition) a socialist concern, not a “liberal” one. abb1’s opening comments on this thread appeared to be saying–it is often not clear to me what he is arguing–that it doesn’t really matter whether media corporations are under public or private ownership because they will of necessity be but weapons of the “establishment”. That doesn’t sound very “radical” or “right on” to me, on the contrary, I think it’s extremely narcissistic and a recipe for political inertia, as well as being factually mistaken (the BBC really is a hell of a lot better than Fox News, as you or abb1 would surely recognise if you had watched them both, notwithstanding the fact that it has strong pro-establishment biasses of its own) and it seemed especially annoying as a flippant response to what seemed to me an interesting and well argued piece.

btw, this:

should get some award, not sure what to call it yet though, any suggestions?

The Public Reason Award for Rawlsian Egalitarianism in Action?