I think we need a harm reduction philosophy of covering Trump and his party and the election. And these are some things to consider: One is to cut his or Vance’s mic when they start lying.
So not only is censorship the go-to remedy, but it's one-sided — openly one-sided.
And I know this is a hugely controversial idea, and it’s usually controversial because it will enable them to scream censorship, but there needs to be a philosophy of journalism that is oriented toward the public good.
That is, Gessen has thought through the censorship problem and determined that "harm reduction" or "the public good" supervenes the free flow of ideas to the people and allowing us to choose what we like. Gesson seems to object even to the speech that is objecting to the suppression of speech — to the "them" who "scream censorship."
When I talk to my students about it...
Gessen teaches journalism at the City University of New York.
I always say: Imagine that information is water and some of the water is poisoned.
How is speech like water? Speech comes from a human mind. And when is speech "information"? When it is truth? Poison is not water, but an additional substance tainting the water. Lies and mistakes in speech are not like poison in water. How would you go about purifying speech and turning it into "information"? The traditional American ideology is that the way to get to the truth is to have a free flow of words — a marketplace of ideas — and to let people read and hear and think and have their own discussions about what is true. How could you possibly know the truth in advance and deliver it to the people?
But Gessen pushes on with the analogy, which has been tested in the CUNY classroom:
And if you are tasked with conveying the water to the public...
So a censor is posited at the outset.
... it would be a crime for you to convey poisoned water.
The censor is presumed to have the capacity to tell truth from lies. And the government is visualized as having the power to criminalize speech.
And I think that political lies, lies in the public sphere, are just as poisonous to our politics as poisoned water is to humans. And if we think of ourselves as conveyors, as mediators, as media, who transport this information, this water, then we have this abiding responsibility to do something about it. We can’t just turn to one of the candidates and say, “I’d like to see you take a sip of that. And see what happens to you.”
So one idea is to turn off the microphone when the disfavored candidate is deemed to be lying. But that is not all. Gessen continues:
I think we also need to figure out ways to contextualize the candidates. Certainly, this two-minute-per-person debate format is not conducive to creating nuanced or contextualized pictures.
Ah! Nuance! Context! I have tags for "nuance" and "context." I love when that happens. A chime goes off in my blogger brain. But back to Gessen:
But what if we had a different format? What if journalists prepared fact-based reports to create context for the debate? Who said that the debate absolutely has to be broadcast live? If we have one person who is lying in the debate, maybe that’s not the best possible format.
If you increase the power of the journalists who are known to disfavor one of the candidates, why would that person agree to debate? There are so many other outlets for free speech. The water overflows its once-solid banks and floods where it will. Now where is your fantasy of control?
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I really don't think that word means what you're using it for, here. It's sadly not shocking at all anymore.
If you understand that for progressives, lies are statements and opinions, factual or not, that contradict progressive orthodoxy. Which is why, when they say Trump/Vance lies, they do not enumerate the specific points to which they object. Because, like when the non-fact checking moderator fact checked Vance, they hate when we bring receipts.
Perhaps if the writers at the New York Times are so concerned with stopping the spread of misinformation, they should agree to waive the heightened protections of New York Times v. Sullivan and agree to have their liability for falsehood judged on the prior common law standard.
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