Americans Favor Freedom of the Press, Sort Of

Half the country says suppressing “false information” is more important than press freedom.

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 officials clashed with critics over public health policy, elections, and other issues. Rather than debate appropriate response to the pandemic, the origins of COVID-19, or the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, agencies from the CDC to the FBI leaned on social media companies to suppress what they claimed, often with little evidence, was false and misleading messaging.

But alleged "misinformation" and "disinformation" often involved disputes among people with fundamental disagreements over what is true. Those with government jobs sought to silence their rivals rather than admit lockdown orders could do enormous damage, or that the pandemic may have originated in a lab leak, or that the president's son really did abandon a laptop full of damning data.

Last September, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found such suppression "in violation of the First Amendment" and issued an injunction to prevent further arm-twisting.

Do you really want to hand the job of limiting press freedom and suppressing false information to apparatchiks with a history of lying and muzzling critics as go-to policy choices?

A Partisan Press and a Lack of Trust

A big part of the problem is that, like everything else in this country at this time, the media is politicized and polarized. The bulk of the media favors Democrats and the left, while a smaller but significant segment favors Republicans and the right. A scattering of others adheres to other viewpoints (like Reason's libertarian stance) or attempt neutrality.

In those often partisan-leaning media operations, 55 percents of journalists "say that every side does not always deserve equal coverage in the news," Pew Research reported in 2022. That represented the view of 69 percent of journalists working for left-leaning publications and 42 percent of right-leaning ones. "By contrast, 22% of Americans overall say the same, whereas about three-quarters (76%) say journalists should always strive to give all sides equal coverage." That disagreement has consequences.

"Fifty percent of Americans feel most national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public," finds the Knight Foundation in its most recent (2022) report.

Consequently, while trust in media is at a record low 32 percent in 2023, according to Gallup, that breaks down to 58 percent of Democrats, 29 percent of independents, and 11 percent of Republicans.

The partisan divide appears in the relative importance given press freedom vs. suppressing false information. In last week's Pew survey, 57 percent of Republicans say press freedom should always be protected, even if false information could be published, compared to 38 percent of Democrats. Sixty percent of Democrats prioritize suppressing false information, compared to 42 percent of Republicans.

Why the divide? Republicans distrust media, but they also see high-profile efforts by government agencies to suppress "misinformation" as highly partisan and weaponized against them.

With a Democrat in the White House, while overall trust in government, at 16 percent, is even lower than that in the media, it's lower among Republicans at 8 percent than the 25 percent registered by Democrats. "Since the 1970s, trust in government has been consistently higher among members of the party that controls the White House than among the opposition party," notes Pew.

Those whose allies control the state may trust them with authority over the media, but those out of power might well prefer to take their chances with a press free to publish as it will. It would be interesting to revisit this issue once political fortunes turn and a Republican is back in the White House. Will preferences for press freedom vs. suppressing allegedly false information flip?

Better yet, maybe we'll finally get everybody to concede that freedom of the press, like all free expression, necessarily means surrendering control over what other people say.