The most infuriating among all of them has been our media - specifically mainstream media. They have played the entire saga down and in many cases many mainstream media pundits actively espoused for Assanges punishment [1].
I no longer hold the view that our media deserves the first amendment protection that it does. Mainstream media right now has no other purpose other than being active vehicle of the powerful and billionaire oligarchs to control the narrative. When 70% of the media empire are owned by billionaires why are we pretending otherwise? How different is that than state sponsored media in North Korea?
Well can you elaborate why you think it is? Because the way I see it, it gives unwavering and constitutionally guaranteed way for billionaires to control the narratives - in addition to the power they already have been wielding through owning politicians using lobbyists and having protection through section 230 in all the stakes they own in the social media companies.
That’s what has been happening in the media space - Murdochs, Turners and Bezos now own vast sum of media sphere. And social medias just use them as proxy for “fact checks”.
My point is the way founding fathers envisioned first amendment protection, they never foresaw the rise of a small billionaires oligarchs owning large stake of media and newspapers to promote views favouring their narratives. I am not speaking of first amendment of individuals which I think is also under attack by the same group of people, look how the mainstream media would love to cancel certain people they don’t like.
> Brown requested the liberty to hold his own opinions, saying that he could "never enter into an Engagement to take up arms against the Country which gave him being", and finally met their demands with pistol and sword. The crowd seized him and struck him with the butt of a musket, fracturing his skull. Taken prisoner, he was tied to a tree where he was roasted by fire and scalped before being tarred and feathered. Brown was then carted through a number of nearby settlements and forced to verbally pledge himself to the Patriot cause before being released. This mistreatment resulted in the loss of two toes and lifelong headaches.
Cancelling someone is also known as freedom of association.
What I find inspiring about the Boston massacre is that founding father, John Adams, defended the British soldiers involved in it and doing so did not prevent him from becoming president in the future. The values of the electorate were quite a bit different in those days and really are knowing about and emulating the better parts.
> Cancelling someone is also known as freedom of association
Personally, I don't care that it's age old. It's still not okay, and I don't care whether it's better or worse in modern times. I'm not even sure how far outside of propaganda some of this stuff falls, which ironically has the opposite reception from the public.
You can absolutely make a personal choice. The moment that you start tricking yourself into thinking that narrative manipulation, harassment, trolling, stalking, etc to get others to make that same personal choice are part of some high moral stance is what people get angry at cancel culture about. There is quite a distinction.
I can’t use my free speech to encourage someone to make the same choice?
Trying to conflate “cancel culture” with the already-illegal concepts of stalking and harassment is disingenuous. Trolling and “narrative manipulation” are pretty clear protected free expression.
I don't really get your point about free speech. That's a government protection. What I am talking about is the tendency of mobs to act as conduits of misinformation and abuse while projecting some form of morality en masse. It teeters on being more harmful than the thing they're mobbing about, typically.
> My point is the way founding fathers envisioned first amendment protection, they never foresaw the rise of a small billionaires oligarchs owning large stake of media and newspapers to promote views favouring their narratives.
The founders largely were oligarchs, heirs of oligarchs, or married into the families of oligarchs,and certainly were not people to whom the idea of someone, or some group, within that class investing heavily in media to promote their political ideas would be surprising.
> look how the mainstream media would love to cancel certain people they don’t like.
Both before and after independence, political cancel culture in the early US involved much more forceful, and often permanent and total, cancellation than what is complained about today.
> My point is the way founding fathers envisioned first amendment protection, they never foresaw the rise of a small billionaires oligarchs owning large stake of media and newspapers to promote views favouring their narratives.
That sounds to me like a problem with the existence of billionaire oligarchs and not a problem with the first amendment.
That journalists and individuals have separate first amendment rights guaranteed by the constitution is a lie created by the same mainstream media you’ve lost faith in.
Overcorrection? No it is not. They enjoy misleading and diverting attention away from the things that really matter. Just take a look at these lawsuits:
Look, these talking heads are simply well-paid entertainers - nothing more. All they spew is lies, propaganda and downplay the things that are really happening. Unfortunately they have a willing audience in the majority of Americans who cannot see through all the bullshit. I personally cannot recall when last I tuned in to any of the mainstream media outlets.
So I'd recommend that they be stripped of all of those protections and get the same punitive treatment that we, the People (we are the ones who pay taxes, BTW), get when we talk shit. Trust me, that'll make them sit up.
> Look, these talking heads are simply well-paid entertainers - nothing more.
Entertainers have First Amendment rights, too.
> They enjoy misleading and diverting attention away from the things that really matter.
If I feel your argument does that, do I get to revoke your rights?
> So I'd recommend that they be stripped of all of those protections and get the same punitive treatment that we, the People (we are the ones who pay taxes, BTW), get when we talk shit.
We, the People, are similarly protected by the First Amendment. Weakening it would impact us, too.
Wow! You actually took my shit serious! LOL. Of course, I'm just being overly dramatic and would never support censorship in any way, shape or form. If you can't sense the sarcasm in my comment, I don't know what else to say :)
Being sarcastic on the internet is generally a bad idea and creates confusion as to whether you truly believe what you’re saying. If you want to make a sarcastic point it’s best to be explicit about it, or else risk being taken seriously.
Nobody here knows what you actually believe. Without the benefit of that shared context, a sly vocal intonation, or a wink of the eye all we can do is take you at face value as someone who actually believes what you’re saying.
Of course, the problem with removing First Amendment protections is you only know about these lawsuits because Business Insider and Glenn Greenwald enjoy First Amendment protections.
That having been said: the First Amendment is not absolute, and there are exceptions to the general principle that people are free to say what they feel (Assange, for example, could be tried on espionage if he's extradited). But in general, exceptions are carved with a jeweler's chisel, and only when extremely necessary and when there are no other possible remedies.
In this case, the sickness you've highlighted has several potential non-first-amendment remedies, including enforcing monopoly laws, passing new monopoly laws, and taxing billionaires at a rate that would make it difficult for them to keep the surplus cash-on-hand to buy 70% of the US's newspapers. And changing the market via law to find a new way to pay for news since the Internet era has completely ingested and digested their traditional advertising model.
Y'all are really taking this shit serious! LMAO. I think my own First Amendment rights should be revoked, actually! LOL
Jokes aside, I'm against censorship. I think information should be available to all but maybe with caveats and accountability.
BTW, I agree with the proposed remedies. But - Who's gonna bell the cat though? It ain't going to be any of y'all's Senators, CongressPeople or the Executive Branch. And we all know for damn sure that it's never going to be the Supreme Court.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
> I no longer hold the view that our media deserves the first amendment protection that it does
I'm sure if you thought through the implications of removing Constitutionally recognized, inalienable rights, you wouldn't say this. Let's assume it is done, the press is now stripped of its rights, and ask some questions about the world and political reality thereupon:
Do individuals still have this right to free speech or is it only media that no longer does?
Does an individual who becomes a journalist still have the right to free speech?
Who would oversee the speech of journalists? Would it be you or right-thinking people like you who decide what is acceptable for the media to say? Or would it be whichever political party were in power at the time? Or billionaire oligarchs?
How would this oversight work? A "free speech oversight" committee? How does one get into the committee? Appointment? By whom? Election?
If I want to run for election in the committee, can I say unpleasant things about my incumbent opponents? Or will the committee declare this speech to be out of bounds? What if they become corrupt? Who can report the truth about that corruption?
If I dislike the committee for some reason, can the committee oversee my criticism, declare it out of bounds?
Could the legal precedence of overriding the inalienable right to free speech also be used to override other inalienable rights? My right not to have to barracks soldiers in my house, for instance.
>I no longer hold the view that our media deserves the first amendment protection that it does.
I think the Assange case is an excellent reminder that "our media" doesn't really have any First Amendment protection. You don't need First Amendment protection if you are spewing DC blob talking points all day. And if you challenge the DC blob, like Assange did (or Gary Webb and others), it very quickly becomes clear that those protections don't exist at all.
I mostly feel contempt for the mainstream media nowdays, but that does nothing to diminish my support for their right to freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is most important for those whose speech we think is harmful and don't want to be spoken. Nothing would be more dangerous than letting those with the greatest capacity for and willingness to use violence (e.g. governments) decide what speech should be allowed.
Anyone who cares about freedom of speech for anyone should defend it for everyone because if nazis, tankies, and journalists can't have freedom of speech, none of us can. First they came for... you know how the rest goes.
>I no longer hold the view that our media deserves the first amendment protection that it does. Mainstream media right now has no other purpose other than being active vehicle of the powerful and billionaire oligarchs to control the narrative. When 70% of the media empire are owned by billionaires why are we pretending otherwise? How different is that than state sponsored media in North Korea?
If you take away the first amendment protection, doesn't that just mean that the government controls 100% of the media instead of 70% or whatever you think the number is?
> no longer hold the view that our media deserves the first amendment protection that it does. Mainstream media right now has no other purpose other than being active vehicle of the powerful and billionaire oligarchs to control the narrative.
You think the oligarchs should hold the media they allegedly control accountable for the things they say so that we can get less biased media? What?
The mass holding of such a view is exactly what's going to end up with me as an American refugee in Canada sometime in the next 10 years. I grew up in Democracy and I plan to die in it. Watching the USA backslide and imagining the very real risk of Trump refusing to give up power when he inevitably gets it in 2024 is sobering... to say the least
Nah, they should keep the 1st Amendment for the journalists. The medias' marketing departments and execs, however, should be regulated to within an inch of their lives. If they let their journos spout shit, they should be legally on the hook if they EVER claim truth. If they lie, don't allow them to take advertiser or subscriber money.
You can say whatever you want, but you can't charge people for it and you can't lie and pretend you're selling one thing (truth) when you're selling another (self-righteous feelings).
Won't ever happen because the government and media are in bed with one another, but that's what I'd like to see.
At this point I think the best chance of implementation would be something like the Board of Labor, OSHA, or some open source bug reporting where specific lies can be be reported and fined/punished for. Maybe random audits like the IRS. I'd like the determination to lie with the public, but the issue is coupling determination from enforcement given how intertwined information control is with power.
Right now? It wouldn't work. It's an angry pipe dream.
You have to remember that the first amendment was written to protect people like the founders - wealthy, bourgeois, powerful men. It was never intended to create a press that challenges state power.
Source? I'm pretty sure that state challenges were accounted for in 1a's derivations. The entire point of three branches was to keep the gov in check with itself. 1a helps to ensure it can be in check with its citizens as well.
I no longer hold the view that our media deserves the first amendment protection that it does. Mainstream media right now has no other purpose other than being active vehicle of the powerful and billionaire oligarchs to control the narrative. When 70% of the media empire are owned by billionaires why are we pretending otherwise? How different is that than state sponsored media in North Korea?
[1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/julian-assange-loses-appeal...