31 March 2023
Press Freedom Does Not Mean Accurate Information
| The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that all opinions can be disseminated in our liberal democracy. Apparently, it was thought by the Founders that competing consideration of those opinions would result in the eventual selection of the most practical expression of our government ideals. Unfortunately, those Founders ignored the fact that 1A would also guarantee the freedom to express views that don’t have liberal democratic goals in mind. When a media company believes that making money is its paramount objective and decides that it can maximize that by entertaining a select segment of the population, regardless of the accuracy of its “news” reports, the implied foundation of the Constitution on a diligent fourth estate starts to crumble. The business of FOX News is entertainment, not truth. This is the crux of the Dominium Voting Systems suit against FOX, i.e., that FOX acted to satisfy the preference of its audience for arguments they could use to support their own preconceived notions and to deny the legitimacy of the Democratic victory in the 2020 presidential election over evidence that their favored candidate had lost. Unfortunately, there may not be an enforceable standard of objective truth, or even a requirement that facts be checked and reported as such, in the government’s broadcast or cable licensing protocols. The defamation claim that Dominium has made against FOX is probably the only sanction that can be used to enforce a standard of good faith on a media company in the American free-market system. The First Amendment protects the right of anyone, including Rupert Murdoch, to express anything he wants as long as he does not cause harm to someone else. The size of Dominium's defamation claim has perhaps caused Mr. Murdoch to rethink how freewheelingly he wants the FOX Network to exercise its First Amendment rights. |
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