The New York Analysis concludes its latest review of the ongoing attacks on the First Amendment.
How extreme is this threat getting? Consider California State Senator Pan’s proposed legislation, which reads: “This bill would require any person who operates a social media, as defined, Internet Web site with a physical presence in California to…prominently display a link on the site to a disclosure informing users how the site determines what content to display to the user, the order in which content is displayed, and the format in which content is displayed, and to inform users of the site’s strategic plan to mitigate the spread of false information, among other things. With respect to a social media Internet Web site that utilizes factcheckers to verify the accuracy of news stories, the bill would require the disclosure to state what policies and practices the factcheckers use to determine whether news stories are accurate and what the site does with the content that the factcheckers determine is not accurate.”
A key problem with Pan’s proposal, among others, is that many of the “fact checking” organizations which are on the list to consult are politically biased, as a number of studies, including those by George Mason University have revealed.
Ben Kamisar, writing in The Hill describes how the use of biased fact checking is becoming an increased challenge to free speech: “Conservative groups are crying foul after discovering that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is helping YouTube decide what content is too offensive for the video platform.”
Kyle Smith, in a National Review article, describes SPLC: “ SPLC… spends far more on direct-mail fundraising pleas ($10 million) than it ever has on legal services, according to an analysis by Philanthropy Roundtable, and has never passed along more than 31 percent of its funding to charitable programs, sometimes as little as 18 percent. Meanwhile it has built itself a palatial six-story headquarters and an endowment of more than $200 million. In essence it is a machine for turning leftist hysteria into cash that portrays itself as a non-partisan, fact-finding group and has long been treated as such by media institutions such as the Washington Post and the New York Times.”
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While federal bureaucratic assaults on free speech, particularly from the FCC which, during the Obama years actually sought to impose government “monitors” in newsrooms and concocted schemes to regulate conservative news outlets have diminished, the threat continues. The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard found that “Democratic efforts on the Federal Election Commission to punish media and stifle voices like the Drudge Report and Fox are going ‘underground’ after failing in public, according to the agency’s outgoing defender of media and digital outlets… Lee Goodman… ‘The desire to regulate Americans’ political speech on the internet remains alive and well here at the commission and now even in Congress,’ added Goodman.”
More chilling than the question of bias, however, is the central concept behind Pan’s proposal, and others like it. Despite the existence of the First Amendment and centuries of precedent, Pan, like other leftist politicians, pundits and academics, assume that they have the right to pass laws or enact measures that regulate free speech.
Photo: U.S. National Archives