posted ago by cassar
+91 / -0
Every day the MSM promotes horrible, damaging, dangerous provable lies with impunity and without retraction. This blatant propaganda is so damaging to the public. In any other court besides the court of public opinion, they'd be in jail. Does this "criminal" behavior fall under protected speech? Lincoln jailed newspaper editors for shuff like this. Is there a way to hold these assholes to account without violating the 1st amendment? Should we be pushing for this? Pushing GEOTUS to issue an executive order punishing these "journalists" for intentionally misleading the public and essentially brainwashing the public with anti-American, pro-Chinese/Globalist propaganda?
Every day the MSM promotes horrible, damaging, dangerous provable lies with impunity and without retraction. This blatant propaganda is so damaging to the public. In any other court besides the court of public opinion, they'd be in jail. Does this "criminal" behavior fall under protected speech? Lincoln jailed newspaper editors for shuff like this. Is there a way to hold these assholes to account without violating the 1st amendment? Should we be pushing for this? Pushing GEOTUS to issue an executive order punishing these "journalists" for intentionally misleading the public and essentially brainwashing the public with anti-American, pro-Chinese/Globalist propaganda?
What about falsely claiming theres no evidence of fraud, when there clearly is an abundance of it, but there is also no libel?
Honestly, you'll never get anywhere with this. I mean, I totally understand where you're coming from, but proving what they say is false is one thing. Proving they intentionally/deliberately lied is another thing altogether. I'm all for it, but I think it would be nearly impossible to prove they deliberately lied. They could just claim they were confused, or their sources were wrong, etc.
actually obamas ndaa of 2012 was it made all the lying legal
I remember that, he legalized the use of propaganda against the domestic population
yup ... nasty pos
The free speech hole in Democracy itself is the loophole that China tore wide open and has been abusing the USA and other countries with ever since.
China would never let American companies issue anti-China propaganda 24/7 on their news networks. But that's exactly what America allows.
the only reason they get away with it, is that people on the right follow the law and wouldn't take it upon themselves to be vigilantes and dole out the punishment these people rightly deserve
I'm waiting to see what trump does.
I think you have a point here.
There was that Supreme Court case when Larry Flint (owner of Hustler magazine, very fine publication by the way, I mainly buy it for the articles) did a satire piece about Jerry Falwell. Falwell sued but the speech was protected because it was obviously satire and not intended to be take seriously.
That is very different from what we see in MSM today. Just like Larry Flint, they are obviously lying but the intent of a news broadcast must be for it to be taken seriously and not as satire or comedy.
They could probably get away with it if CNN changed their name to Comedy News Network or MSNBC to Mainly Satire National Broadcasting Network.
Slippery slope.
yes
How do we do this? How do we keep them honest?
In my country we have some kind of complaints board where anyone can lay a complaint - onviously you must bring receipts.No publication wants to be cited.I feel the US media is out of control.You can find a way to regulate without making content criminal.
There should be. Tarred and feathered and paraded through the streets.
I agree with you. I am a huge free speech advocate, it is how I first got interested in law and politics. Something is seriously wrong with the current system, and some comments in this thread point out how China and Trump's political opponents used it as a soft underbelly to attack him and the United States. Our first amendment should never function as a weak point. The constitution is laid out to protect us from the government, and in this case it's being used against us.
I'm just kind of thinking out loud here, but here are some considerations I've come up with on this issue. First of all is that free speech is extended to private entities/platforms. The problem with this is that corporations today function with (effectively) as much power as people and more power than government. So what you have, is corporations that are both on the one hand allowed to say whatever they want (as you and I are allowed to say whatever we want) but that can also effectively punish others for the same thing.
This is an obvious corruption of the First amendment that everyone has long defended with the "private platform" argument. I need to come up with a better way to explain why this is corrupt, but, it goes back to the "gay wedding cake" debacles. Regardless that the Supreme Court ruled bakers don't have to make the cakes, the bakers were tried in the court of public opinion and there was a huge assault and twist of the first amendment around this time as it was seen as a tool social conservatives were using to combat the progressive agenda. Something shifted around this time.
I just looked up the baker and he's been sued since then for refusing to bake a transgender transition cake. Obviously this is a case of the justice system being weaponized against a citizen, which we see all the time these days. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/10/jack-phillips-masterpiece-cakes-asks-judge-dismiss/
I'm really interested in what you say about Lincoln and I've been hearing more about how he cracked down on the press. Lincoln's time was closer to the founders and involved none of the "wild west" of social media so I'm very confused about what justification the executive branch lacks today for similar reigning in of our out of control media. The first amendment doesn't cover defamation or threats, so I'm confused about things like all the very concrete and pointed lies told about Trump and the obvious threats like when that actress held up a fake and bloodied Trump head. We've CLEARLY lost our way and I'm interested in untangling it from an analytical perspective but the bottom line is, we have lost first amendment and other constitutional protections, as they are textually presented.
Sorry for the long essay! This is in my head a lot.
Tl;Dr: The constitution is nothing but a piece of paper in a museum.