New Poll Shows Majority Want Government to Prevent Fake News. That’s a Terrible Idea.

Morning Consult has come out with one of the first polls to quiz Americans on their beliefs about the recently trendy problem of “fake news.” There were two aspects of the poll that caught my eye, one I find troubling and one I find comforting. First the good news: A whopping two-thirds of respondents told Morning Consult that news-readers themselves have a responsibility to avoid fake news. When asked who had the most responsibility for fake news, “the person reading the news” also garnered the most responses.

This, I believe, is the correct approach. Ultimately, the scourge of fake news is a symptom of our toxic political environment, not the disease itself. Infowars doesn’t get the traffic it does because people are tricked into believing that Sandy Hook was faked to take away their guns. RealNewsRightNow (yes, seriously) doesn’t trick people into believing that Donald Trump is bringing back the draft. People click on these stories because they want to believe they’re true. The allure of fake news is that it confirms all the deepest and darkest things you’ve suspected about the people you already hate.

Once upon a time, propaganda worked partly because people lacked access to competing information and ideas that would discredit it. When a Russian peasant read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they feel for it because the research proving it was a forgery was a continent and a generation away. But more important;y, they also feel for it because they wanted to believe that an evil outside force was responsible for the ills in their life.

Today, we live in a world where anyone with an Internet connection can read all the reasons the Protocols are bunk… but many people in free societies still believe them to be authentic. These are not unintelligent morons who simply need Glenn Kessler or Facebook to tell them what’s what. These are intelligent, educated adults who choose to believe in hateful crap and choose to close their eyes and ears to all else.

That’s an example of a particularly odious conspiracy that is no longer widespread (in the West at least). But when one poll found that 90% of Americans believed in one or more conspiracy theory about either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, allow me to suggest that TrueRedStatePatriotNews.Info is not to blame. Fake news will only go by the wayside when the average American learns to give his fellow man the benefit of the doubt and to question his own assumptions. No amount of media campaigns, Twitter censorship, or public shaming will change the underlying social conditions that make otherwise rational people buy into utter baloney.

So yes, the fact that a plurality realize that the America public is primarily responsible for combating fake news is comforting. What is not comforting is that more than half of respondents– 56 percent– also say the government is responsible for “ensuring people aren’t exposed to fake news.” 14 percent even say the government has the primary responsibility to stop fake news.

This is precisely the sort of attitude that I’ve been worried about when seeing some of the more hysterical rhetoric about fake news. After all, suppose it really is a “threat to democracy,” that it really did “decide the presidential election,” that it really is “corroding public trust in government” and “fomenting hate against vulnerable minorities.” Why then shouldn’t the government step in and ban speech I don’t like? [Insert platitudes about yelling fire in a crowded theater and Chaplinksy here]

I would be more at ease if respondents said that it was the government’s responsibility to “counteract” or “rebut” fake news. But the question was whether the government should stop people from being “exposed” to fake news. I struggle to think of a way it could do so that doesn’t amount to censorship before the fact, or censorship in punishment for something the government deems false. At best, it might mean the government pressuring private actors (something I denounced back when it was Senate Republicans trying to stop Facebook from dealing with fake news).

Whether the government can ban speech simply for being false is something of ongoing legal controversy; when the issue recently came before the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Alvarez, four justices penned a plurality opinion arguing that false speech is constitutionality protected while three dissenting justices argued that it is not. Regardless of whether one agrees that false statements are constitutionality protected, Justice Kennedy’s plurality opinion persuasively laid out the chilling practical effects that punishing false speech could have.

Permitting the government to decree this speech to be a criminal offense, whether shouted from the rooftops or made in a barely audible whisper, would endorse government authority to compile a list of subjects about which false statements are punishable. That governmental power has no clear limiting principle. Our constitutional tradition stands against the idea that we need Oceania’s Ministry of Truth. Were this law to be sustained, there could be an endless list of subjects the National Government or the States could single out…

Were the Court to hold that the interest in truthful discourse alone is sufficient to sustain a ban on speech, absent any evidence that the speech was used to gain a material advantage, it would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this Court’s cases or in our constitutional tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power casts a chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain a foundation of our freedom.

Or put another way, do you really want Donald Trump in charge of deciding what speech is “fake” and should be removed from the public eye? To the Trump supporters who nodded fervently to that question, how about if a Democrat wins in four years? Even if you trust the government to decide for the U.S. public what is and is not false (and you shouldn’t), can you really trust them not to abuse that power?

Call out fake news, educate yourself, install widgets and apps you trust to shield yourself from untrustworthy outlets. Do whatever is necessary to educate others and to blunt the power of disinformation. But for God’s sake, leave Uncle Sam out of it.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.