Americans Favor Freedom of the Press, Sort Of
The good news is that Americans overwhelmingly support freedom of the press. The bad news is that a good half of the population doesn’t seem to have the slightest clue what that means, favoring content controls even if they restrict free expression. How do you reconcile these views? You can’t, unless you accept that many people want freedom only for publications and ideas with which they agree.
A Free Press, but…
“Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults (73%) say the freedom of the press – enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – is extremely or very important to the well-being of society,” the Pew Research Center reported last week. “An additional 18% say it is somewhat important, and 8% say it is a little or not at all important.”
While support for press freedom varies across demographic groups, “there are no major differences by political party.”
In a country as bitterly divided as the United States, this is a rare example of shared support for the core right to observe the world around us and share information with— Wait. Hold on.
“About half of U.S. adults (51%) say that the publication of false information should always be prevented, even if it means press freedom could be limited,” adds Pew. “Meanwhile, 46% of Americans say press freedom should always be protected, even if it means false information could be published.”
What? How do you support press freedom and make it secondary to suppressing “false information?”
If we’re being charitable—and I’ll step out of character for a moment to do just that—this could mean that the half of respondents who prioritize suppressing false information over a free press believe that falsities are easily identified, and their spread is always a matter of malice rather than of legitimate debate over what is true. But that’s not reality and it is unlikely to ever be the case.
Importantly, the government officials who would inevitably be tasked with limiting press freedom to prevent false information are often the most enthusiastic sources of blatant untruths.
Who Watches the Misinformation Watchmen?
“A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable,” that newspaper’s Craig Whitlock reported in 2019.
Two years later, the U.S. chaotically withdrew from that country amidst circumstances that continue to bring official credibility into question to this day.
In the intervening years, federal official
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