We have often discussed the embrace of censorship by the left and many Democratic politicians, including President Joe Biden. However, the most distressing aspect of this trend has been the support of many in the media. That erosion of support for free speech was on display this week in a tweet from a New York Times’ reporter. Sheryl Gay Stolberg said that this week’s effort by Democrats to censor Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “raised thorny questions” about whether misinformation is protected speech. The statement shows a breathtaking lack of understanding of the First Amendment as well as a lack of fealty for free speech values. There are no “thorny questions” over the censorship of this speech, because misinformation is unquestionably protected under the First Amendment.
The media’s embrace of censorship was on display on various channels after the recent opinion finding that the Biden Administration had violated the First Amendment in “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” However, the New York Times immediately warned that the outbreak of free speech could “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.” Yet, no one expressed it more simply and chillingly than CNN Chief White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly who stated that it “makes sense” for tech companies to go along with government censorship demands.
The most recent controversy arose after Democratic members responded to a hearing on censorship by trying to censor Kennedy. Not only did members object to his being able to discuss his censorship on social media, but Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz (who has led previous attacks on witnesses on censorship) sought to move the hearing into executive session so that the public could not hear what he had to say.
What followed were unrelenting attacks on Kennedy who was repeatedly asked questions by Wasserman Schultz and others but then denied the ability to respond. As in the past, Democratic members asked insulting questions and then reclaimed their time to prevent the witness from defending himself.
Democratic members made clear that they supported barring people from social media and even congressional hearings for opposing views on Covid. One member told Fox News “I am not afraid of anything that he would say, I just do not want to hear him.”
After watching this abusive treatment, the only “thorny question” for Stolberg was whether Kennedy’s speech and misinformation in general has any protection under the First Amendment.
Misinformation is generally defined as information that is false, but the person who is disseminating it believes that it is true. In other words, others believe that a speaker is mistaken. Yet, Stolberg believes that such mistaken beliefs may fall outside of the First Amendment. Of course, this leads to the Zen-like question of whether the mistaken belief that the First Amendment does not protect mistaken beliefs is itself protected. But down that road lies either enlightenment or madness.
Note that Stolberg was not discussing whether social media companies can legally censor speech. While that is a denial of free speech, these companies often note that they are not covered by the First Amendment as private entities. (In reality, that is not accurate since they can be agents of the government, which I previously discussed in my testimony in the first of these censorship hearings).
Stolberg was discussing whether misinformation in general is protected under the First Amendment.
What makes the statement chilling is that it is part of a growing chorus from the left suggesting that hate speech and now disinformation may be exceptions under the First Amendment. Indeed, when I testified before this same committee,
I was taken aback by the opening statement of the committee’s ranking Democrat, Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.). Besides opposing an investigation into the role of the FBI and other agencies in such censorship, Plaskett declared that “I hope that [all members] recognize that there is speech that is not constitutionally protected,” and then referenced hate speech as an example.
Hate speech is indeed a scourge in our nation, but it is also protected under our Constitution. Yet many politicians and pundits are using this false constitutional claim to defend potentially unconstitutional actions by the government.
Recently, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who is a lawyer, said that “if you espouse hate … you’re not protected under the First Amendment.” Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean declared the identical position: “Hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.”
Even some dictionaries now espouse this false premise, defining “hate speech” as “Speech not protected by the First Amendment, because it is intended to foster hatred against individuals or groups based on race, religion, gender, sexual preference, place of national origin, or other improper classification.”
Now the New York Times is posing the question of whether misinformation is protected. It is. When false information is used to steal money, it is called fraud. Speech can also be the basis of other crimes like conspiracy. However, simply stating something that others view as misleading or wrong is protected under the First Amendment.
The First Amendment does not distinguish between types of speech, clearly stating: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
It does not say “good speech” or “factually correct speech.” It says speech. Accordingly, the Supreme Court has declared that even lying about military honors is protected. The Supreme Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act. In United States v. Alvarez, the Court held 6-3 that it is unconstitutional to criminalize lies — in that case involving “stolen valor” claims.
Likewise, spewing hate-filled lies is protected. In Snyder v. Phelps, also in 2011, the Court said the hateful protests of Westboro Baptist Church were protected.
Yet, at the New York Times, the most “thorny issue” was not the effort of Democrats to censor a witness at a censorship hearing, but whether his speech has any protection under the First Amendment.
Ironically, the government could have raised this “thorny issue” when the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, claiming that it was just “misinformation” that was harmful to the public. While that was a prior restraint case, would the government have had a stronger case if it argued that the Times was publishing information that it thought was true but was misleading or false?
What about the disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation spread by the New York Times in the last few years on issues like Covid-19. For years, scientists faced censorship for even raising the lab theory as a possible explanation for the virus. Their reputations and careers were shredded by a media flash mob. The Washington Post declared this a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory “racist.” Are Mandavilli’s writings unprotected?
Yet, it is not a thorny issue when a Democratic member admits that she sought to prevent Kennedy from speaking publicly because “I just do not want to hear him.”
What is so troubling is how the “legacy media” has jettisoned the most noble aspects of its legacy and has become that enabler of censors.
Turley says: “We have often discussed the embrace of censorship by the left and many Democratic politicians, including President Joe Biden.” What is Turley referring to when he claims “the left” and “Democrat polticians” “embrace censorship? Did they pass any laws forbidding certain things from being published? No, they didn’t. Contrast this with what’s happening in Republican-led states, especially Florida, that dictate, AS A MATTER OF LAW, what school children are and are not allowed to be taught, plus the content thereof–for instance, in FL, school children are compelled to be taught that slavery benefitted the enslaved because it taught them things they wouldn’t have previously known about–in other words, slavery was a GOOD thing–right? Why not asked the descendants of the formerly-enslaved, or consult the writings of the formerly-enslaved for their perspective on whether it was a “good” thing to be coerced to serve white people, instead of requirng the “slavery was a good thing” trope to be taught? Also, school children may not have questions answered about anything related to LGBTQ people and human sexuality below a certain age. In some states, teachers are REQUIRED to “report” to parents that a child has expressed a desire for a certain pronoun to be used in reference to them. There’s all the difference in the world between suggesting to a social media company that certain claims about communicable disease and vaccinations are dangerous to the public health of all of us because they are misinformation–a polite word for “lie”, and REQUIRING compliance, such as laws requring controversial topics to be taught a certain way, and/or for teachers to rat on their students. It’s the difference between de facto and de jure segregation–the first resulting from residential patterns of settlement of whites and blacks and specific laws FORBIDDING black children to attend white-designated schools. The former did not require busing to achieve racial balance–the latter did. Then, there are the laws in Republican-led states that REQUIRE doctors to tell pregnant patients considering abortion certain things, including developmental information about their fetus–some of which is not true and is calculated to induce shame and guilt for seeking abortion care. Why should a doctor be forced, by law, to lie to a patient or to assume that she’s too stupid to have thought through her decision and/or that she should feel shame over deciding to end an unwanted pregnancy? Turley has nothing to say about these LEGAL constraints on free speech, because he isn’t neutral–he’s paid to advocate.
The upshot of all of this is Turley has once again been purchased to use his credentials to add credibility to the Republican lie machine, belief in which is necessary for Republicans to “win” elections, especially Trump. Anyone who dares to criticize the lies is trying to “censor” free speech. It’s BS, but it’s all Republicans have.
Every state dictates “AS A MATTER OF LAW, what school children are and are not allowed to be taught, plus the content thereof.”
What is ‘misinformation’? In the past numerous things we believe to day would have been considered ‘misinformation:
– The continents are not fixed on the Earth and move over time.
– The Earth revolves around the sun and is not the center of the universe
– The world is round and not flat
Now you may say that those are ancient misbeliefs and we now the correct answers. After I stopped teaching, I would do guest lectures at our kids’ schools. One I called ‘Everything you know is wrong’. I basically pretended I was teaching a lesson on the solar system at various points in time – and at each time the view was different than previously and each time they thought they finally had it right. The point was…science is a journey, not a destination.
I opened the lecture with a quote from Men in Black: “Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
Everyone ‘knew’ Trump wasn’t spied on, everyone ‘knew’ he conspired with Russia, everyone ‘knew’ hunter’s laptop was ‘disinformation’. I could go on and on and on.
It’s gotten to the point where any conspiracy theory has to be given consideration as sooo many that were claimed to be ‘debunked’ or ‘obviously false’ have turned out to be true.
CNN Chief White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly who stated: “it ‘makes sense’ for tech companies to go along with government censorship demands.”
There you have it, a textbook example of the fascistic Left… from the DNC Ministry of Propaganda (aka MSM) who tow the Nazi line.
The political infospace is suffocating on cooked-up false narratives. The way you counter the opposition’s lies is to craft your own, and bank on them being more compelling.
Think back to the success of Nicholas Sandmann using defamation law against CNN and WaPo. Or, the Sandy Hook families using it against Alex Jones. Wouldn’t it be great if the Public could sue Mile Morrell for pushing out a Pubic Fraud 3 weeks before a Presidential Election — hoping it would tilt the outcome?
Or, the Public suing Jussie Smollett for his theatrical infowarfare gambit hoping to dupe the public?
We have in Defamation Law most of the tools we need. We just need to expand it to cover Public Frauds, and evolve rapid-response due process so that the truth prevails officially over crafted lies in the timeframe where the truth still matters.
The NYT really needs to clean house.
Jonathan: If there was any further proof needed to show what DJT meant when he told the Iowa radio host the if Jack Smith tries to put him in prison that it would be a “dangerous” thing, here is DJT’s repost on Truth Social just a few days ago:
“If you f**k around with us. If you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done
before!”
So there it is. We don’t have to speculate about what DJT meant by “dangerous”. It’s what mob bosses do when corned by the law. Threaten prosecutors, judges and witnesses. That’s DJT’s MO. Fortunately, Jack Smith and his team will not be dissuaded. But they take DJT’s threats seriously. That’s why they have spent millions in taxpayer money on personal security. They know what to expect from the mob boss as more indictments are presented and trials are scheduled. It’s not a pretty picture for the world–seeing a former US president threaten those in the legal system with violence if he is prosecuted and put in prison. But that’s the world we now live in–the “age of rage”–as you call it.
Source, please.
Jack Smith has worked international prosecutions against crooked leaders and crime bosses– he knows how to handle a zealot-cult-figure like Trump. It’s something he’s experienced dealing with.
Talk about misinformation. That quote was taken from a DJT speech about IRAN!! It was reposted by someone else, not DJT. You are a fool!
True. That’s the age we live in. People want to believe what they want to believe. Not the Truth. Like Rush used to say, “we’re living in the age of insanity.”
Dennis: You’re right. And Trump reposted the statement on Truth Social. Do you think Trump intended and directed the post to Iran? If you do you are living in an alt universe. Jack Smith is about to drop another hammer on Trump. Smith was the intended recipient–not Iran!
Jack Smith is a mob boss. Second only to Garland and the rest of the Marxist ruining this country.
That quote was taken from a DJT speech about Iran. You just misinformed and passed on a lie. You just proved you cannot research anything and have zero integrity passing on lies. Call it what it is, it’s not misinformation it is lies and propaganda.
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-tells-iran-f-k-183940320.html
Wow, I’ve see Dennis the Penis go OT before, but this may be a high water mark.
Trump lives rent free in this guys head, right where I assume a brain once resided.
Jonathan: Another thorny Q is whether threats of violence are protected under the 1st Amendment? I ask this Q because of DJT’s latest statement in reaction to SC Jack’s Smith probable second indictment of the former president over Jan. 6. DJT has called Smith all sorts of names but Smith doesn’t respond in kind. He speaks through his court filings. But DJT doesn’t miss an opportunity to attack Smith. At a rally in Iowa this week DJT was on a local radio station and when asked by the host about Jack Smith’s probable second indictment. This was the former president’s response:
“I think it’s a very dangerous thing to even talk about it, because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters, and I mean maybe, you know, maybe 100, 150–I’ve never seen anything like it. Much more passion then they had in 2020 and much more passion than they had in 2016. I think, uh, it would be very dangerous”.
Perhaps some of your loyal readers on this blog might have ideas of what DJT meant by this statement. I have my own reaction. First, DJT can’t mean he has only 100-150 or even 100-150,000 supporters. He must mean 100-150 million. Every estimate I have seen indicates DJT has around 40 million supporters. So here, again, is a good example of misinformation coming from from the former president.
Then, what to make of DJT’s use of the word “dangerous” –not only once but twice? Now if we were talking about anyone else we might conclude this means that the candidate’s supporters would turn out at the polls in massive numbers in 2024 and sweep him back into power as a repudiation of Jack Smith’s criminal persecution. But we are not talking about anyone else.
We are talking about someone who incited an insurrection to try to stay in power. So I conclude DJT’s use of the word “dangerous” has a different meaning. It’s what you hear from Mafia bosses who get indicted for their crimes. They lash out at prosecutors and threaten them. In DJT’s case he is warning Jack Smith that his “passionate” supporters will repeat Jan. 6 and prevent any prosecutions of their cult leader. That’s the really “dangerous” part of what DJT is saying.
Does this pondering include the New York Times misinformation also?
Who was it who said, “Nobody f*cks with a Biden”? Was it Joe? Yes, yes it was.
Apparently according to Biden the rest of the nation has no recourse. He certainly has been screwing us over and over again. Lets retire this demented fool as soon as possible. Lets Go Brandon.
Trump is saying the obvious: that politicized prosecutors indicting, indicting again, and again, on obviously trumped up charges, while protecting Biden and even being willing to jail Trump as a result, if they can — is dangerous.
At least half of the country will not accept the results of these obvious political persecutions. This is obviously very dangerous for the country.
But again, they don’t care. They know it and are doing it anyway in order to stop Trump by any means necessary.
Dennis said: “We are talking about someone who incited an insurrection to try to stay in power.”
That is misinformation, my friend.
Trump thinks he can wield power through mob action. He’s delusional about law enforcement and the military breaking in his direction.
This sounds like the one in a drunken stupor woke up and stole someone else’s name. It may be too late to put him in the trash bin.
Is it criminal misinformation, disinformation or malinformation to deliver fraudulent ballots to an outdoor ballot dropbox at 3am? You would think that the DNC & MSM would want t o curtail this election scourge. But, they’re happy with it.
The greatest gift Donald J. Trump has given the American People is the exposure of the fascism within the Democrat Party & legacy media.
Insurrection? If Jan 6 were an insurrection the participants would have been armed and the results would have been rapid and deadly. As it was, covert feds instigated bad behavior, a trigger happy cop shot an unarmed woman, a goofball in a horned hat sat at Pelosi’s desk, and iirc some cops beat someone else to death. If you believe Jan 6 was an insurrection you are Pelosi’s dupe and beyond help. If you know better and insist on repeating the mantra you are sickeningly dishonest.
It seems to me like the lawless pursuit of Trump is an actual danger to our Constitutional order. It shows that lady justice has no blinfold and the Left is holding a gun to her head. Trump’s statement was an accurate assessment not a threat
What voters of both parties, especially Republicans, should really be worried about is “Non-Confrontational Blacklisting” of U.S. citizens residing in the United States.
Currently, there is no federal oversight agency for this type of unconstitutional practice.
Galileo was the first real spreader of misinformation. His comment sotto voce “Eppur si muove,” (“and yet, it moves”) contradicted the Science with a capital S of the time, got him imprisoned under house arrest for the remainder of his life, and irrevocably changed our understanding of the solar system and man’s place in it. In 2023, do we really still need to learn the hard way that today’s “misinformation” is tomorrow’s proven fact? Do we really need to learn the hard way that the people trying to suppress speech – and therefore, facts – are never the good guys? All of this talk about misinformation really started during the Trump years for the purpose of hiding facts. The laptop from hell, the Russia hoax, the Covid shots, and now, this idea that children have the maturity to change sex, these are all the sacred cows of the misinformation cult. Does anybody really believe anymore that this is all just innocent or misguided?
She’s a total agent who randomly give words to random customers…hello…can our Intel services suck so much.
And I wanna see the stats…alll society has to change for the few who ‘might’ committ suicide born on the wrong body…and change our language…but lace by fetenal doesn’t matter? Let em overdose. That’s what it’s called…an overdose….yeah let them confused overdose and let our good kids live….oh wed have to choose….who are we going to choose? The confused or the laced. Simple china. Who won’t ever know for real….our ammo or our reserves…or the spy at 56567 Casey’s repeater station russion spy. Seriously? All this and trumps the fall guy. Seriously?
You’ve got to Love the English Language. Words like; Oxymoronic, Hypocritical, Paradoxical, Contradictory, Aposiopesis, …
are good encompassment for what the Democrats did to RFK.
First though, I’d like to state an observation made over time. The Kennedy Democratic Party of the 1960s is not the Democratic Party of Today.
In fact I would venture to say that The Democrats of the 60’s ideologically are more aligned in Republican ideology when compared to the atmosphere of today.
So when RFK went to the Hill and was shouted-down, it was not surprising. He is Democrat in Name only, indeed he’s still a part of his Families ideology of the 60s. I don’t make this opinion lightly, I can qualify it as a member of the Butler and Morley Family.
(Paul Butler Sr. (Dem. Chairman for the JFK 1960) and William Morley (Dem. Vice Chair 1968 for RFK Sr.) respectively.
Every Generation, Decade or so on, finds it’s ’cause’, to which it creates an atmosphere. I look at whats happening to Robert more over as the Young vs. Old. The Politicians Today ‘are not’ the Politicians of yesterday. I watch people like; Wasserman-Schultz, AOC, Schumer, Biden (lol) … and realize that I’m older and I am not ‘that’, aligned with the Democratic Party. But I have maintained respect for Peoples opinions and for those that stick to their traditions and those that cling to memories of Camelot. Reflecting back I can see that the ”atmosphere’ in those days was Young. But We’ve come a long way from that, and some of the exuberance has been lost. Today’s 20-30’s something have a right to it (exuberance) but it’s increasingly hard to create and maintain. I have no doubt that they will find a New Direction. The future is always bright.
Thank you Jonathan for providing this opportunity and space to speak freely.
And thank you for your insight.
Yes, today’s twenty somethings (I have over a dozen of them a generation down) have every right to set up society the way they want… free college if they want, no oil or natural gas heating if they want, free health care if they want, no military/police if they want-*, free housing if they want, no family structure if they want, free public transportation, no internal combustion engines, free food, no need to work (UBI), free-from-worry retirement (which seems odd if there’s no need to work), no borders… All they have to do is pay for their preferred approach like we did.
Those of us now in our 60s and 70s completely paid for our SS and Medicare (if you’re in your 80s you got a bit of a free ride on Medicare but only those born before 1900 got a totally free Medicare ride). We willingly supported a complete revamping of those systems in the 1980s and 1990s to make them survive through our lifetimes, reducing our benefits. We supported what it took to bring inflation to almost a grinding halt (from 1982 to 2021 it worked). We paid back mortgages and college loans ourselves (also often the latter for our kids). We even got the disaster of energy dependence perpetrated by Carter in the late 70s back to energy independence (and became an exporter) in 2019. With one disastrous exception, we avoided “foreign entanglements.” We survived (sadly only 99.5% of us did) polio and pandemics in 1957, 1968, 1979 and 2010 without completely ruining (or even affecting) the economy and giving idiots like Fauci Nazi-ish control over schools and churches.
In other words, we lived the same way our parents (who won the big one) and grandparents (who immigrated here lawfully) did. Too bad our grandkids won’t get to experience that independence and freedom.
____________
*Oddly they seem to want their friends and others their age to go fight in a civil war in Southeast Europe
The current ‘Democrat’ Party is not… it is communist and socialist. I refer to them as CommuNazis.
This is classic JT naivite — defending extrema of “free speech” that hands power over to the unscrupulous, delusional, autocratic and misanthropic in their quest to covet power through crafty deceptions.
First, I can list dozens of laws which make it illegal and punishable to lie….on your tax return, in your SEC filing, in Court under Oath, in applying for US Citizenship, applying for a gun purchase, lying to the police or FBI, fraudulent marketing claims for medical devices and drugs, fraudulent data to EPA on pollutant testing (Volkswagen), doctoring product safety claims, identity theft and fraud, money laundering….and on and on.
But, according to JT, misinformation is protected by the 1st Amendment. Since when?
I grew up in the ’60s, with 3 TV networks and news bureaus, a dozen national magazines, 2 newspapers in most American cities. Whackos had to face a gauntlet of editors, producers, and other well-informed gatekeepers — they had a right to publish on a public bathroom stall. Would you call that regimen of news curation “censorship”? Yet, important narrative-busting breakthroughs were possible — the Pentagon Papers, J. Edgar Hoover’s personal filing system, Watergate, Iran-Contra. Walter Cronkite earned credibility and respect by going to Vietnam….and squelching the paranoid, ill-tempered, ill-informed meanderings of thousands of would-be, self-appointed “critics” every year. Those voices were sidelined. They went invisible.
If you stop and think about it, govt. plays an essential, neutral role in sorting out fact from fiction — in our Courts of Law.
The govt. presides as neutral magistrate, provides strict rules-of-evidence, a Judge that enforces them diligently — and the Jury of 12 acts with finality as deciders-of-fact. Upon appeal, facts stand firm as decided by that Jury. In other words, falsehoods and truth are NOT equally protected by the Bill of Rights. Under 250 years of established law, false-hoods-of-consequence are challengeable (e.g., defamation law), and punishable thru fines, prison, loss of licensure, disbarrment….up through impeachment. Why?
No free society can persist very long steeped in deceptive infowarfare. Our legal system reflects this preference for truth over falsehood in thousands of ways. You have to be willfully blind to not recognize this.
This is why I’m so frustrated with slogans like “I may not like what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”. That is a promise that cannot be kept, because it is a license to intentionally deceive — using the most sophisticated psyOps known — and funded by rich and powerful operators who covet power beyond the ability to challenge it. The entire concept of our Constitution is the authority to make and enforce law flows from “the consent of the governed”.
But, if that consent is obtained through trickery and deceit, what is left of our governing blueprint’s substance?
Based on common-sense logic, therefore, the 1st Amendment implies the 4th Estate’s freedoms are contingent on serving the public’s needs as a truth-seeking medium. 1A also must therefore prohibit govt. from engaging in psyOps meant to pull the wool over the public’s eyes. The overarching purpose of 1A being to deny govt. powers of mind-control over the public. So, disinformation pushed out by govt. has zero claim to being protected free speech.
RFK Jr. most recent diatribes aren’t worth listening to.
Oh, BTW, when you ignore what someone is saying (a basic human right), you are censoring. It’s part of our free way of life to deny those we adjudge as unreliable an ear. There is no right to an audience…it is something that is earned.
JT has an indefensibly expansive idea of free-speech if it places deception on the same level as honesty and candor. It is a grand miscalculation of infospace needs to pretend intentional disinformation is somehow “protected”. This is why we have defamation law, and I hope soon, Public Frauds torts law with rapid-response PF courts where Juries decide matters of fact. This system very rarely errs, and we should trust it as a highly-evolved asset.
That’s one of the best false dichotomies I’ve ever seen.
This is probably a concept a step beyond you — given your mixing up lying on a gun license application (odd choice of an example) with the right to oppose American involvement in the Russian Civil War — but the freedom of speech is absolute and even comes with the absolute freedom not to listen
All I’m suggesting is that, now that it’s clear that journalism has willingly crossed the line into advocacy, the Court of Public Opinion and “free press” are no longer a reliable way to separate fact from fiction. Plus we have AI deep-fakes coming online rapidly, augmenting the advanced toolkit of deceptive infowarriors (some like Mike Morrell with formal training in psyOps).
We have a very successful model (albeit very slow and plodding) using Civil Torts. The adversarial process is tamed in the Courtroom by rules-of-evidence and due-process. Juries where all 12 agree
can settle feuds over what is true vs. false with finality and a very miniscule error rate. Specialized Courts would have to be designed for speed and response time in order to effectively deter and punish those who attempt to dupe the public.
Or, we could do like Turley says, and give those manipulative info-thugs equal legal status to promulgate carefully constructed lies….a consequence-free greenlight to mind-control the public using the strongest belief-shaping tools. Which would you rather have?
Ugh? It’s not even August 1st in mn when pot becomes legal….but im not tracking what you are saying. Especially about the rich and powerful…..so autism has gone from one outa ten thousand (per the govt) to one outa 100 (per the govt)..
I guess it needs to get to one outa 12 for your jury to makes sense…..about finding the “truth” …. that’ll suck.. what mis info is Kennedy actually spreading? He’s actually just amplifying gov info. And he’s going to win the dnc nomination. But the ad pharma doesn’t want that. 1 of 100….most those families don’t want money yet hey want why
..why….now and how. And I can’t remember if it’s called a derivative or an integral….or worse but if you think a jury….can “come up with” the ” truth ” about autism you are high!
The panoply of nitwit bureaucrats in government agencies, in alignment with counterpart nitwit censors on social media, are not akin to a court (“government”) in which both sides get a full hearing on whether or not something uttered is true or false.
It’s already been proved, e.g. that much of what was censored about covid and the vaccines, was in fact true, and much of what was put out by “the government” was demonstrably false. And where were those “gatekeepers” you so love when the Covington kids were defamed? (Oh, right… they were who was putting out the “disinformation”.)
Perhaps the New York Times will sign on to a brief in favor of overturning NYTimes v. Sullivan and progeny, a Supreme Court mistake that unfortunately has facilitated defamation and lies by “well-informed” dingbat “journalists” in the legacy media — who quite obviously have misled too many left-wingers who spout ignorami on this website.
“But, according to JT, misinformation is protected by the 1st Amendment. Since when?”
Since 1789.
Or did I miss the footnote: Except for misinformation.
Pbincas
Wow, i am impressed with such a lucid, well thought out objection…overruled. Its a shame you had to use a bag full of red herrings and gas lighting to prove your point.
Did you actually compare posting a tweet that the govt censures with perjury under oath? You have to be willfully deceptive to equate the two.
The “government” that you are referring to is not being conducted with “the consent of the governed”. Most of the NOT NEUTRAL people making the decisions about who can be heard are unelected bureaucrats with partisan agendas. You have to be willfully blind to not see that.
I suppose you would be ok with someone at the state department asking turley to take down your post just because you tried to equate a tweet to lying on your 1040 or in an FBI interview.
As jonathan said, the problem is who decides what is misinformation. The new york times won pulitzer prizes for articles that have since been shown to be demonstrably false. No one censured them. In your world, that speech was not protected and Trump, who knew it was false, should have been able to prevent them from disseminating their lies by executive order. Not how it works. The supreme court has ruled on this stuff over and over again. As you said, There are laws that cover the consequences of hurtful misinformation and lies. They dont include some rando fbi agent or white house aid pressuring a company to remove a tweet they think (or even know) is false.
To reiterate…the problem is who is being censured. Anthony Fauci said masks were ineffective. He later admitted, when he claimed we needed masks, that he was purposely deceptive, so people wouldnt buy up all the masks. WTF dude? Who censured his ass? Everything he ever said after that should have been ignored. Instead he engaged in attempts to censure other people who did not agree with him.
The new york post was censured for reporting on a story that has since been shown to be entirely true. Meanwhile, people were censured for asking questions about the safety of the covid vaccine. Was kamala harris censured when she said she didnt trust the vaccine???
September 6, 2020: Kamala Harris says “I think that’s going to be an issue” when asked if she would get an approved coronavirus vaccine.
July 28, 2020: Joe Biden suggests the coronavirus vaccine won’t be “real” and may not be “safe.”
August 6, 2020: Biden says the vaccine is “not likely to go through all the tests that needs to be and the trials that are needed to be done.”
September 3, 2020: Biden asks “Who’s going to take the shot? Are you going to be the first one to say sign me up?”
September 7, 2020: Biden said he would take the coronavirus vaccine “only if we knew all of what went into it.”
Get a grip.
Tom, you’ve misconstrued the idea I was proposing, which is to give the public the legal tools (civil torts lawsuits) to challenge intentional govt. mistruths, such as Fauci’s coverup of NIH-funded gain-of-function viral R&D carried out in Wuhan — or to sue Mike Morrell and Antony Blinken for pushing out a whopper (the HB laptop being Russian hacked) to influence the election.
In the media and Court of Public Opinion, those lies can persist for years, decades, because there is no official finder-of-fact with finality. Civil torts is an under-utilized process for settling such infowars. It’s incredibly hard to buffalo a Jury, because of adversarial presentations, and rigorous evidentiary standards.
To talk like Turley (“we must protect intentionally dishonest actors in the infospace”) is defeatist.
And we can do it without govt. being the one to decide what is factual. Just the opposite, we can make sure
govt. is promptly sued for lying to the public, equipped with public frauds law.
Pbincas
This is what you said.
“First, I can list dozens of laws which make it illegal and punishable to lie….on your tax return, in your SEC filing, in Court under Oath, in applying for US Citizenship, applying for a gun purchase, lying to the police or FBI, fraudulent marketing claims for medical devices and drugs, fraudulent data to EPA on pollutant testing (Volkswagen), doctoring product safety claims, identity theft and fraud, money laundering….and on and on.
But, according to JT, misinformation is protected by the 1st Amendment. Since when?”
Unless i’ve lost my reading comprehension skills altogether, i didnt misconstrue anything. You conflated misinformation of the type jonathan says is protected speech, with perjury and fraud.
His point was that the constitution was designed to stop government from determining what the “truth” is. Marxists like Dennis want the government to determine what the truth is and silence anyone who disagrees.
Citizens enjoy the absolute freedom of speech.
Citizens may be prosecuted for criminal offenses or sued for civil offenses when they employ speech as a weapon.
@ pbinCAs
You’re an idiot, playing semantics. By your ‘logic’ all books and media based on fiction should be banned for ‘misinformation’.
Freedom of the Press does not refer to so-called ‘credentialed media’… it refers to the printing press, the freedom to publish.
Wouldn’t anyone who uses a false name or “handle” while leaving comments on internet websites also be eligible for censoring under the new Democrat Kleptocracy that runs our country?
Correct: it is your right to ignore what someone has to say for any reason you like.
But denying others the right to hear them and decide for themselves is censorship and when it is done by government personnel, directly or indirectly, it is a crime. A very serious crime. One that truly ought to be a capital crime.
It is incumbent upon every citizen in a free society to weigh and consider the claims and counterclaims that saturate our society. Traditionally, there has been a vigorous free market for ideas in the U.S. that tends to highlight the blatant nonsense while still allowing people to speak what is on their mind. Indeed, it is the endless abundance of nonsense in the public square that teaches citizens to be skeptical consumers of the kinds of wild claims that charlatans (including those in government) constantly spew.
It is the height of arrogance to believe that you or other aspiring masters can be the unerring arbiters of Truth. That you seriously believe you can is evidence that you have spent much time currying favor within your own ideological circles, and precious little time in the kinds of self-reflection that removes the blinders to your own foibles.
Ten great moments in DOJ/FBI history:
1. Successfully defusing those nasty rumors that J. Edgar Hoover was a gay cross-dresser. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
2. Compiling a detailed and thorough dossier on the sex life of Martin Luther King.
3. The time their assault force soundly defeated David Koresh and the Branch Davidians at the Battle of Waco.
4. When they successfully thwarted a hideous plot by Islamic terrorists to attack domestic targets with airliners in September 2001.
5. Safely delivering Jeffrey Epstein to stand trial so that we could all understand what happened on the Lolita Express, and with who.
6. Jim Comey’s sensitive and judicious disposal of the Hilary Clinton email scandal.
7. Demonstrating their mastery of the secret FISA court process by using a dossier funded by the Clinton campaign to obtain a warrant to spy on the presidential campaign of her political opponent.
8. When they successfully prevented domestic terrorists from speaking out at their local school board meetings.
9. Their dogged determination to indict Donald Trump. For something. Anything.
10. Their deft handling of the Biden family corruption scandal.
Great list.
Democrats with all their censorship training were unable to read any of it.
Who knew history could be so funny?
Well this was a defamation argument to the jt article at root…..but I just drove a teen three days nonstophome listening to some cranked off gals lyrics….and allegedly she won the defamstion case. Hence two or more songs on the same topic….so yeah there are defamation torts…..and even when obvious from all the songs on the emblem…”.can’t stop this…..”. And that wasnt even First amd!
Another day, another goosestep in the leftists march toward the criminalization of The United States Constitution.
Speaking of misinformation, two liars are company, three are a crowd, and four or more Biden’s Administration
Harris: Florida is ‘pushing propaganda’ on children
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4110794-kamala-harris-florida-pushing-propaganda-on-children/
Harris accused “extremists in Florida” of trying to instill fear in teachers through book bans, restrictions on teaching about gender or sexuality and lying about slavery.
translation: Harris’s favorite book “It’s Perfectly Normal” is of the 10 year old boy giving another boy oral sex:
Libs of TikTok
@libsoftiktok
EXTREMELY GRAPHIC:
@AlachuaSchools has the pornographic book “It’s Perfectly Normal” available in 3 ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.
The book encourages masturbation and teaches about gay sex. This is what they’re offering little kids to read in school.
(graphic image from book)
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1626268309753589762
Testing, second try.
Testing.
“New York Times Ponders Whether “Misinformation” is Protected Speech”
No time to read the article or other replies (sorry), but it seems to me that the REAL question concerns WHO decides WHAT is “misinformation,” because there are MANY people who don’t like free speech (aka democrats and some RINOS) who would label ANYTHING that they disagree with as “misinformation,” so as to have an excuse to silence anything with which the disagree. Third-party speech would be especially endangered.
Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Christopher Wray et al. must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for the willful and deliberate destruction of the free American republic.
I can’t imagine my 80s if they’d of chopped my boobs off. I was a tom boy. It’s a wierd time…you got “boy friends” and “…no friends…..but you out live it…later I married and I gave four kids mothers milk….and we are dearly bonded. If they had chopped off my boobs…I’d of got so little purpose outa my life. My life is ‘mom’….thankfully my parents didn’t face today’s confusion…..on decisions….they knew I was female….heck o got them
Two more grandkids their way natural. My problem is the likes of buuplug don’t think moms matter.
Because that’s really the argument…
It’s not about who you get rocks off with….it’s about moms. Does our society want to dispense with the natural protective instincts of mothers….or not? And then what….unchartered.
Show me the study…..
Because I guess for some unstated reason…until just recently custody went to moms….I guess all that ‘reason’. Wasn’t based on fauci.
Jaelyn: did you ever FEEL as if you were born male, that you didn’t belong in the body you were assigned at birth–that you knew, in your heart, that you were really a male in a female body? Parents do not, and cannot “decide” this for children–and how you don’t understand this is truly confusing. Most parents want their children to be secure and happy. Transsexuals KNOW, from a very early age–toddlerhood for most– that they don’t belong in their body, and it is distressful for them to be forced to live what they consider to be a lie. And, despite all of the outright lies of alt-right media, surgery for transsexualism is NEVER done on anyone under the age of 18, and, even then, not until after EXTENSIVE psychiatric testing and care for several years. Your post proves you don’t even have the slightest understanding of transsexuality and that you’ve been listening to and believing the drivel put out by alt-right media. And, why in the world would you even bring up Dr. Fauci? He was the head of the Communicable Diseases and Allergies section of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Your statement about Dr. Fauci (see infra) proves you don’t have a clue about any of this, and that you’ve been led to believe that somehow Dr. Fauci is some kind of medical villain. Dr. Fauci has saved countless lives–which you might know if you ever consulted anything other tha alt-right media and the ony reason he is being villified in alt-right media is because he stood up to Trump, one of the stupidest and most dangerous people ever to run for public office. The fact that there are people like you who support him after all of his crimes is stunning.