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Fake News and the First Amendment

Fake news is very hard to distinguish       from the real thing, and we have to     balance actions against fake news with    First Amendment rights.

REALLY? Is that true, I wondered, as I listened to NPR’s talk show version of CNN style hyper news, “On Point,” hosted by Tom Ashcroft, from WBUR.

This topic is perhaps more important now than it was when I first posted this. I’ve added some new links at the bottom of the post, and will try to keep this updated.

The event that precipitated the show was the “Pizzagate” scandal. A man, acting on his own to investigate the completely false accusations of Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of the basement of a Washington, DC area family pizza restaurant, (if she was so tired and weak from the campaign activities, I wondered how would she find time to run a sex ring??? And oh, by the way, according to CNN, the pizza place has NO basement)  fired an assault rifle in a room crowded with families enjoying their pizzas.

Thus, we have entered a new age, where fake news not only influences people’s opinions about who to vote for, or what to think, but starts chains of actions that have a lethal potential. Of course, there might be those out there who think that it should be a capital offense (benefiting from vigilante action, and needing no criminal proceedings) to eat in a pizza parlor that is owned by someone who donated money to the Democrats. But assuming for now that most Americans have not gone that far, what other lessons might we look for in Pizzagate and it’s origins?

What was surprising to me was the juxta-position of the First Amendment with the right to publish fake news.

But what is the First Amendment FOR EXACTLY? Is it to protect liars and libelers? That was never my impression from my civics classes in school. I thought it was to protect the expression of opinions about how we SHOULD live. Even the Nazis have a right to to assemble and speak and try to convince the rest of the country that we should kill or oppress all those they don’t like. That is protected speech. However, we do have laws against libel and slander, and that is much of what fake news is.

Here is what Scholastic.com says (red is Shona’s highlight)

Freedom of Speech. This freedom entitles American citizens to say what they think, provided they do not intentionally hurt someone else’s reputation by making false accusations. Neither may they make irresponsible statements deliberately harmful to others, such as yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire. There are many issues about which Americans disagree, from child-rearing practices to baseball teams to Presidential candidates. Freedom of speech enables people to state their opinions openly to try to convince others to change their minds.

The First Amendment also gives you the right to disagree with what others say without fear of punishment by the government authorities….

Freedom of the Press. This freedom makes it possible for Americans to keep informed about what is going on in government. It helps them to be responsible citizens. Reporters and editors can criticize the government without the risk of punishment, provided they do not deliberately tell lies. Newspapers, magazines, and books, as well as television and movie scripts, do not have to be submitted for government inspection before they are published. This censorship would violate the First Amendment.

Back to Shona’s thoughts now… What I can’t figure out is why the journalism and philosophy professors, the journalist, and the host of the show could not see that the purpose of the First Amendment is to protect the individual going about their business as a free citizen. The idea of the First Amendment is not and never was to protect liars whose goal is to interfere with the democratic process, or to intentionally harm law abiding citizens they do not like. In other words, we don’t have the right to help God punish those who we don’t like, for something they did not do.

My understanding of the First Amendment was in line with what Scholastic.com wrote. Now maybe some would consider this a “dumbing down” of the First Amendment. All parents teach their kids not to lie, since they don’t want their kids lying to THEM about household matters. But the God of the Hebrew Bible did not make a commandment against lying. That God knows that lies have a valid purpose in life. The God of the Hebrew Bible prohibited BEARING FALSE WITNESS. This is  a specific TYPE of lying, that would undermine the foundations of a just society. Bearing false witness in a court proceeding before a judge is a crime in American law as well. We call it perjury, and if we bear false witness we can be held in “contempt of court,” since the court proceedings include swearing that the witness will tell the truth.

I understand that becoming a public figure widens the opening for allowed criticism. However, outright lies that harm an individual’s reputation should not be protected “speech,” whether they are a public or private person.

Currently, if someone slanders or libels an individual, the individual is responsible for bringing the legal action against the perpetrator. Maybe this should change. If someone physically or psychologically harms or kills an individual, the STATE (the government) takes the action against the alleged perpetrator. If I am killed, my family members do not have to sue the alleged murderer in order for the murderer to be brought before the justice system. There are problems with this system, as the OJ Simpson trial showed, and the victims’ families did end up having to go to civil court to get some justice… But there will always be times where individual justice fails in the interest of having a “neutral justice system.”

Maybe it is time to rethink the way libel and slander laws operate. When the target is a public figure, a political figure, maybe it is of interest to all of the people to know the truth, and the State (Government) should represent THE PEOPLE in an action against the liars.

I just keep scratching my head about why the two professors and the journalist could not come up with this “angle” on how to slow the tsunami of fake news while protecting the First Amendment. The First Amendment is not there to protect liars. It’s there to protect the ignorant. And we are all ignorant of a lot of things, even if we are experts in others.

NEW LINK: Check out this interesting editorial about how fake news is used by those in search of power.

The Sacred Media: Another new link to some thoughts about freedom of the press, from a fellow writer of Mid-Michigan Word Gatherers.

Another link to how to tell fact from opinion. A well done video.

Critical thinking and fake news webinar in French https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6544146427755409409

Yet another link on how tech companies are dealing with hateful speech.

I took the NaNoWriMo Challenge

Just About 108,000 Words Later, Space for Meaty Ideas

I first wrote the story of Star Fool and Silver Wing for National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org) in 2012. It took a lot of editing.

It’s been fun and frustrating at the same time. I’ve learned a lot about creative writing styles, and decided that I’m going to write the way I want to write at least some of the time. I LIKE old books and I like reading what the action was rather than having to read a description of a situation and figure out what it looks like. Most description of action is hard for me to see in my mind anyway. I have a cognitive dis-function in that area. That’s why I’d rather read than see a movie. I miss stuff in movies. My story doesn’t have much of that type of physical action. It’s more an exploration of ideas.

Hope you enjoy!

Shona

I’m starting a new novel now that Knomo is done

It took a lot of restarts to get The Convolution of Knomo Choicius to its almost finished state. I still have to get an artist to the cover. I may tweak a few more things based on my beta readers comments. At one point, I lost heart, thinking there was so much work to get it to the point that people would read it, that it was easier to give up and start afresh with all the new knowledge of creative writing that I have. So I got this idea…

A crazy idea about a winged and armed species living on another planet. They have an advanced spiritual practice. Homo Saps and Knomos arrive and things change!

Here’s the beginning of the first chapter…

Moses of Kosbar

Bondage

You might as well call me Moses. That’s what my mother did. She had quite a sense of humor. You see, I was a girl.

Moses isn’t my formal given name. But that’s another story. Mom wanted me to aim high and she thought calling me Moses would remind me of my duty to my people.

Of course, in the old days, we did not call ourselves people. In our language, it’s a different word. But ever since you Homo Saps arrived on our planet, we’ve adopted a fair number of your words, and people is one of them.

Anyway, going back to the story that I was asked to record, the time was four hundred of our “years” after a renegade group of homo saps took us away from the rest of the autochthonous people of Kosbar. That’s part of why mom called me Moses. She said it was now time for freedom and being reunited with our Magenta, Cyan, and Yellow family members, and resuming our duties and dietary habits so we could reclaim our place as the Blue Seers. Same number of years after which Moses appeared to liberate the Israelites from Egypt. Of course the Israelites originally went voluntarily to Egypt, and that was not the case of our removal from the homeland.

We were essentially forced into bondage when some Homo Saps snuck onto the grounds of our campground during our annual nature festival, while we slept. They dispersed a drug in the air to deepen our sleep, tied our hands behind our backs, clipped the feathers on our wings, loaded us into wagons and carried us away. This was all for our own good, those who were on the scene were told, when they awakened in what was essentially a prison compound. Now we would no longer be kept in the dark unless ordered by the Yellows to perform some out of doors task. We would be free to see the sunlight all day, and freed to do what we wanted. What they didn’t understand is that we were not treated like mushrooms against our will by our own people. We Blue Seers were those who successfully went through a rigorous application, training, and apprenticeship process. We Blue Seers came from all three of the other color groups, and did not turn Blue until we changed our diets to accord with the teachings of The Great Merwogon.

We tried to explain, but the Saps didn’t listen, even when the offspring turned out to be of all of the other three colors, and even when the original Blues reverted to Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta.

Our arms were free to move, but with our wing feathers clipped, we had no way to escape. We eventually found out that we had been transported to a different continent, which was an island. The plants were different enough that it wasn’t obvious how to recreate our spirituality supporting diet and get our powers back.

So now, here we were. Four hundred years or five generations after our ancestors were first brought to the far continent. The Saps claimed we could go when we wanted, but the fact was that we had no idea where home was, or how to find out. Four hundred years after the kidnaping, they no longer clipped our wings. Maybe if we had our Blue Seer powers, we could attempt to go. Practically speaking, four generations after all those who knew the techniques to become a Blue Seer had passed on, it was highly unlikely. How good do you think a soufflé would turn out, when made by someone who had never seen an egg beater?