How Freedom of the Press Works

Countries around the world – capitalist democracies to communist unitary states – guarantee a free press in their constitutions. It turns out, though, that there is a galaxy of methods for subverting a free press. Find out why that matters in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is
stuff you should know constitutional uh Professor's edition. All right.

(00:24):
It was the best I could come up with on
such short notis I only had a couple of days
to think of it. Yeah, this one was sort of
depressing for me. Yeah. Yeah, because we're talking about freedom
of the press, and while we have that in the
United States, I mean, I guess we can go ahead

(00:45):
and spoil a little bit. If you look at rankings
of freedoms of the press is worldwide, we're not near
the top of that list, my friend. No, the UM
Reporters without Borders. It's a French organization. They um they
basically rate um the uh the press freedoms I guess

(01:07):
in a hundred and eighty different countries as either as
either hot or not and wore it best, right, So um,
that's basically the state of the press anyway. So UM,
the United States is number forty four. It's actually down
to two slots. It used to be forty two for

(01:28):
a few years before that. So um, if you want
to know more about that. Check out the World Press
Freedom Index because it goes into a lot more detail.
And who's number one? Of course Number one is Finland, right, yeah,
I mean the top five is riddled with countries in
that area as always, Sweden, Denmark, Costa Rica, get it

(01:51):
all right, Costa Rica. That was a wild card, but
good for them. Yeah, but it's it's nice to see. Yeah,
hats off Costa Rica. But yeah, it's like you said,
in the United States, we absolutely, without question have guaranteed
freedom of the press, but in practice it's a much
much different thing. Altogether. There's a lot of different ways
that the press can be limited in what it says, uh,

(02:14):
for for good or bad. I mean, there are definitely
times where it's like, yeah, that's that's not really anything
anyone needs to know about necessarily, especially like say reporting
on the failings of a private citizen or something like that.
But um, overall, the idea of a press reporting um
of like a journalism that that is like just able

(02:36):
to really get to the heart of a matter and
explain it without restriction on what it says or how
it explains it or what it talks about. It's really
really important and we definitely equate it with democracy. It's
like one of the pillars of a free society is
a free press. And we also kind of trace a
chuck back to the First Amendment, UM, and it definitely

(02:57):
was enshrined there. But even after the First Amendment was
created in the Bill of Rights in UM, America was like, okay,
we we put that in there. Let's just forget about
it for a century or so. Yeah, I mean, it's
it's been what Paul McCartney would call a long and
winding road. Okay, that's a song by the Beatles, by
the Way I Got You. I figured that from context

(03:20):
they've never heard it. I also figured from context that
I probably wouldn't like that song. That's a great song.
Uh So should we go back in time and sort
of poke around at the beginnings? Yeah, because it's not
like America came up with that, right, No, of course not.
Uh what I love like kind of one of my
favorite things every time we talk about UM the beginnings

(03:41):
of the printed word is the fact that and this
was starting in the fifteenth century when the printing press
became a big thing, like and one of the reasons
for creating their printing press like, some of the very
first things were people writing about and writers were usually
also printers, but people writing about criticisms of either the

(04:03):
church or the government. A lot of times those were
kind of one and the same, and it was it's
just kind of cool to look back and think all
the way back then. One of the big reasons the
printed word existed and became so widespread was so people
could talk to one another when they had a you know,
sometimes despotic government looming over them. Yeah. So if you

(04:25):
were the head of a despotic government, um, with a
suddenly printing press in your country, you wanted to try
to limit that as much as you can. So I
wanted to destroy that printing press from right right exactly. UM.
So you would have laws that basically said, no one
can release a book until the government has read it
and signed off on it. UM. Laws like that they

(04:45):
are also criminal laws. UM. I believe in England there
was um uh seditious libel and blasphemous libel, and libel
was basically not exactly liabel as we understand it today.
It was if you say anything mean or bad or
critical of either the government or the church, even if

(05:06):
it's true you can go to jail for that even
if it's true. Yeah, factual printing, factual things, Yeah, which
is so contrary to the concept of you know, any
kind of freedom, especially freedom of speech or freedom of
the press as we understand it today. But that was
that was just kind of how things were for a
good century or so after the printing press was created. Yeah,

(05:28):
and one of the big turning points. And these guys
really it's amazing how how like hard they nailed it
so long ago. But there were these essays named John
Trenchard and Thomas Gordon who wrote for in the American
Colonies Britain's American Colonies between the seventeen early seventeen twenties.

(05:49):
I guess it was all in the early seventeen twenties,
and they wrote under a pseudonym what was called the
cape Cato's Letters and named after obviously the Roman statesman.
But they really nailed the fact right out of the
gate that like free speech is an essential thing and
citizens being able to like communicate with one another. And

(06:12):
you know, of course back then it was like you know,
a letter that you would print up and and nail
upon a wall, or you would have chained letters that
people would forwage one another. It was sort of like
they're forwarding an email back then. But the people, the
citizenry of the world needed to be able to speak
to one another about their grievances and not have their

(06:32):
voices squashed. I think they even uh they talked about libel.
They said, it's wrong to criticize private and personal failings,
even of public figures. And citizens must be free to
discuss officials actions when they affect people. And this wasn't
a notion like I think you sent me that extra
thing that said, like prior to this, the notion of

(06:53):
free speech wasn't even like a political rallying cry. No,
it just wasn't a thing like you can basically say
that trend. Tridan Gordon essentially made it up or or
put better. They discovered it, you know, the importance of it,
and they the importance that they placed on it was
twofold one. They said, people need information because the more

(07:14):
information you give the general public, the better the decisions
that they're going to make are. And in a democracy,
if you're letting the general public vote on stuff, they
need they need to be informed. You just can't keep
a lid on on facts. And then the other thing
that they said too that was really really important is
they said free speech is so important that even the

(07:34):
person whose opinions you disagree with has should have freedom
of speech. And that was a mind blowing new concept
because in the Colonies prior to that, it was a
lot like it is today. I should have free speech,
but if I don't agree with you, you shouldn't. Yeah,
And I feel like this stuff really hits home for
me and for us as a show, because even though

(07:55):
we're not journalists and we never claim to be, we're
not a new show. I feel like we always championed
the idea of like knowledge is power. Kind of going
back to the kids. What was that was that kids
in the hall? Now, I feel like it was a
kid's educational knowledgeist power? Is it? Say by the belt?

(08:17):
That's what it was. Screech said that at the end
of every episode. Um, no, you're talking about the more
you know? Now, I'm talking about the literally knowledgeist power
is it? It might have been uh schoolhouse Rock, it
might have been one of their things. But anyway, this
just hit home for me because I feel like we've
always tried to be a show that we get stuff
wrong here and there, but we try to spread facts

(08:39):
about things, and it's not news, he related always sometimes
it is, but just about the world. Like the more
you know, the better off you are as a human. Yeah,
Like I said, the more you know with a star over.
A big early victory legally speaking, came in seventeen thirty five.
There was again a journalist who was also a prey.

(09:00):
Her name John Peter Zinger. He's he's he's really good
with a joke at a cocktail party. That's where that
comes from. Hey, that was his catch friend. Uh, so
he was printing attacks on I believe it or not.
William Cosby was the guy's name. Cosby's are always up
to something. Yeah, I don't think he went by Bill,

(09:21):
but uh this was the colony's governor, New York's governor
at the time, and he was arrested, jailed for liabel
for about ten months, and managed to beat the rap
at the trial. Even though that he was acquitted. It's
kind of confusing because he was a critic acquitted on
the grounds that he was printing factual things. But as

(09:41):
we said before, like even if you were printing factual things,
that didn't matter this particular jury just chose to ignore that. Yeah,
jury nullification. They said, we think this law is wrong.
They were convinced of it by a guy named Andrew
Hamilton's who became Zenger's lawyer after his first two lawyers
were disbarred from by the judge in the case for

(10:02):
questioning the judges conflict of interest. And it was like
quite a conflict of interest, Chuck. The whole thing was
over the removal of a judge that Governor Cosby found troublesome,
and his replacement was the judge that was hearing this
case trying the guy who printed stuff about how corrupt

(10:23):
that movement, that removal of the judge was. That's how
screwed up this case was. And the the Andrew Hamilton's
still managed to get the jury to ignore the law
and to quit Zenger, which was a huge deal. It
didn't immediately like open the floodgates and now all of
a sudden there was just press freedom everywhere, but it
definitely laid a foundation or helped build on the foundation

(10:44):
that Trenchard and Gordon had first elucidated. Um, you know,
just a few decades before and this is a few
years after that chuck um. Sweden, I guess heard about
all of the hubbub going on in the American colonies
and said, um, we want to be first first. Sweden
likes to to do that and comments on the internet
they just right first everywhere. Yeah, they said, yeah, sure,

(11:09):
that'sn't it wrong to say? Surely the Swedes have a
good sense of humor about that, Right, we'll find out.
Maybe do we have listeners there? Sure? All right, I
don't know that we've ever don't remember any emails from
Sweden when we call them the Dozen, but yeah, the Dozen,
the dirty dozen. Although they're very clean people, that's right,
the fastidious doesn't. So yeah, this was in December seventeen

(11:30):
sixty six. They were the first country to pass the
Free of Freedom of Press Act. But it wasn't all
that was cracked up to be. Uh, they still censor things.
They basically put the onus on the publishers instead of
the government to censor things. So, you know, good for
you in a way, Sweden. But this is just part
of that long and winding road. But but one thing

(11:51):
that that act also did was, um, say, if you're
a citizen of Sweden, you have a right to access
government documents to see what your government's doing. So in
one way it was not at all helpful. In another way,
it was pretty sweeping, you know. And then Virginia um said,
all right, well, Sweden was first in the world, we
want to be first in the in the colonies. I

(12:14):
guess the States because they know I guess it would
have been the colony still because they came up with
um part of their charter, or they made amendment to
their charter that said, Um, we really like what Trenchard
and Gordon came up with, we like what Zinger stood for,
and um, we're gonna include the idea that quote, freedom
of the press is one of the greatest bullworks for

(12:35):
liberty and that can never be restrained but by despotic governments.
So they're saying, like, if you have freedom of the press,
freedom of spree, speech like that will actually defend liberty
by holding despotism at bay. Because if people know, and
this is the basis of all this, chuck, if people
know what's going on, they will hold people to account.

(12:57):
If people don't know what's going on, people who are
attracted to power tend to go um toward the dark side. Yeah,
I mean that's really it. It's it's again, knowledge is
power if you and well we'll get to all that,
because there are certain nations of the world that don't
do that, and we'd see it playing out all the time. Uh.

(13:18):
The U s A. You know, you think when we
got the First Amendment going on, that hey, it's all
it's all great now, But as you hinted at earlier,
it would be a hundred plus years until they were
truly sort of like protections for the press. Uh. Seven
years after the First Amendment was born, it was just

(13:39):
a little baby in first or second grade. Uh, Congress
pass the Sedition Act of s and uh, you know,
said we can deport you, we can find you, we
can imprison you if you publish false, scandalous or malicious writing.
And you know, scandalous and malicious are very broad terms

(14:00):
to use when you're saying, like you, if you print
that against the federal government, then that's you know, something
we can do bad things to you for. Uh. And
it just lasted a few years, that particular act, but
it would come up again later on in a different form, right.
And also just um a little tidbit on that that
act was passed by the Federalists who were in power,

(14:22):
they had the White House and Congress, um, and they
passed that act in part to um hold that power,
to maintain that power, to keep from being criticized in
the press. And apparently, um, the early Americans found out
about this what was going on, and they disliked that
law so much that they actually voted the Federalists side
of office. And that's how Jefferson became president. That's right,

(14:45):
that's a little yeah and backfired. That's what happens when
you try to put a strangle on the power. The
people say nay. People say nay, and I say, let's
take a break. Okay, let's get those dinner party invitations
going and get Zinger on the list, and we'll be
right back. All right, we need to talk a little

(15:23):
bit about the Supreme Court of the United States, because
here's where it all really begins. Yeah, they factor in
obviously pretty large here at um Well I mentioned this
Edition Act. There was another Sedition Act that came along
in nineteen eighteen, which again criminalized a lot of political speech.
And this is pretty broad as well. It was a

(15:45):
crime to willfully utter, print, right or publish disloyal very vague, profane,
not as vague, uh scirrel us super vague or abusive language,
a little bit vague about the form of government of
United States, or to speak out against war. And they
you know, they went after people. They prosecuted uh close

(16:07):
to two thousand people under the Sedition Act uh and
the Espionage Act, and the Supreme Court upheld some of these,
but it at least got them talking. Yeah. So that's
a really critical thing is the Supreme Court at the
time was like, we generally agree with that law. But
all of this, all these cases that were reaching the
Supreme Court at the time about you know, freedom of speech. Um. Yeah,

(16:31):
like you said, it got them talking. And in particular,
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Lewis Brandeis kind of
banded together and brought their their rather considerable um juristic
minds to bear on the idea of um, free speech
and freedom of the press and like what that meant
and what protections it should have, And they used their

(16:53):
tenure on the Supreme Court to basically establish precedent in
the United States that said, everything you understand about freedom
of speech and freedom of the press, uh, we're going
to basically enshrined together through some basically opinions, not even
necessarily like um to sending opinions. Sometimes they appended their

(17:13):
support for you know, um upholding somebody being um uh
convicted under the sedition actor espion object. But they would
say things like, you know, um, if you if you
put people out there and let them talk, you're going
to have like an exchange of ideas, and the best

(17:33):
ideas are going to bubble to the top. And so
this whole idea of freedom of speech that led up
to Oliver Wendell Holmes that it was a personal liberty
that you were guaranteed into democracy. They said, yeah, true.
In addition to that, it's actually a common good if
you have free speech, because us the best idea can

(17:54):
be compared and compete against rival ideas, and the one
that suits society best can win the day because it's
been debated and hashed out in the marketplace of ideas.
Right and Holmes champion the marketplace of ideas idea, But
that was originally uttered by another justice right, yeah, William O.

(18:16):
Douglas back in the fifties, so about forty years after that.
But a lot of people credit Oliver Wendell Holmes for
for coming up with that. Yeah, he just liked to
wear it on his on his robe, on the back
of his robe in Rhyinstone. Oh man, that'd be nice. Uh.
So ur comes another big milestone. Supreme Court heard New

(18:37):
York Times v. Sullivan and this was this was pretty
interesting and this was boy, this was a big one
because this is where we finally got the idea that
libel isn't just a word that means you said something mean.
Libel means that you you had actual malice behind it.
And that is still the standard by which we judge libel. Uh.

(19:00):
This was an ad in nineteen sixty uh in the
New York Times. It was run by the UH it
was or I guess paid for by civil rights advocates,
and it was criticizing officials in the South for violating
civil rights. But it had a few um factual inaccuracies
inaccuracies in there, one of which was how many times
uh Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Had been arrested. So

(19:23):
they didn't take kindly to that down there. Uh. There
was a police commissioner in Alabama that filed the defamation lawsuit.
Alabama Supreme Court agreed with him, But then the U. S.
Supreme Court went on to overturn that ruling with just
a milestone majority opinion, which was, you know, actual malice
has to be approven, and it's on you to prove

(19:45):
that they meant to have malice. And that is was
a huge, huge and continues to be a huge deal. Yeah,
because prior to that, it was, you know, up to
this this decision, if you said anything wrong and there
was any kind of factual er in that you were
at at fault, and that would have an enormous chilling
effect on the press. And and that's a huge deal.

(20:07):
That's like part and parcel with protecting press freedom is
to also guard against a chilling effect that can happen
where that that kind of comes about when things are unclear,
when you're not quite certain of where the line is
or anything like that, people start to kind of c
o a, you know, And so they prevented that by
saying no. Now it's on the person who has supposedly

(20:30):
been defamed to prove that that person willfully reported facts
that they knew were wrong. Then you've got slandered, then
you've got liabel. But up to that point, if you
can't prove that, then you're you're in the clear press. Yeah,
and here's the thing, like this was a big deal
because humans make mistakes. I think there's been none. I

(20:52):
think it's pretty clear. Over the past, oh, I don't know, uh,
five years or so, there's been this notion that the
press purposefully gets things wrong to to back up whatever
opinion they have on something. And by and large, journalists
in the United States do have integrity and and they

(21:13):
want true journalists, not you know, entertainment journalism, but true
journalists want to get things right because their reputation is
at stake, and the publications they work for their reputation
as at stake. And you were a journalist for a while.
I was a journalist for a while. You want to
get the stuff right. And if you don't, you can't
have a law hanging above you. What you do is

(21:34):
you make it right, and you print retractions and say,
I goofed up. But uh, it's just it's Yeah, I
can't stay on the soapbox because of like onion juice
will start squirting out of my pores. Yeah, I'm sure that. Wow,
that was really growsy. I was trying to think of
something disgusting that. Yeah, I think, well you nailed it

(21:56):
on the head, Charlis. That was really good work. Um yeah.
The problem with that though, the last part that you
hit upon is the retraction and saying you goofed up.
Those are a few and far between and when they
are done there. Yeah, so there's like not enough effort
to restore someone's good name if it's been besmirched, to

(22:18):
to get all nineteenth century on on you, um, you know,
through retractions, through things like that, and like making an
effort to say, hey, we actually really got this wrong. Um.
You know. I think it's gotten better at the on
the with the Internet because it's printed below the article
that got it wrong. Initially they'll say that this was incorrect,

(22:38):
so it's gotten way better. But back in the days
of print only um or even network TV, like, those
retractions were just so far separated from the actual error
that they might as well just not connected them at all.
Uh So, what let's talk a little bit about the
Pentagon papers because that was another I feel like I

(22:58):
had an extra P in there. Didn't say Pentapon today No, okay,
it's I can't get pessling in juice? Why did that
come out of my mouth. That was so weird. It
came out of your mouth, your poor, your ears, my god,
your h oh boy. Uh yeah, let's talk about the
Pentagon papers in seventy one. What was that all about? Well? So, uh,

(23:20):
what was his name? The Ford exact? Who was will
you McNamara. He was the fog of War guy. Right.
He ordered um like basically a forty seven volume exhaustive
investigation in history of the United States involvement in Vietnam
from World War Two onward. I think this was the
sixties up to the late sixties, early seventies. And there

(23:43):
was this researcher who worked on it for the Pentagon.
His name is Daniel Ellsberg. He was super into the
idea that the United States was fighting the good fight
in Vietnam. But the more he helped compile this and
the more like of the horrors and the atrocities that
he saw, uh, he became really um he became a
conscientious objector in a way. He turned into a whistleblower

(24:06):
and handed over this super secret classified volume document to
the New York Times. We started publishing articles on it,
that's right, And the US Department of Justice originally got
a temporary restraining order saying you can't do this. Uh,
you know it boils down to national security basically. And

(24:27):
then we get the case the New York Times Company, Uh,
the United States quite a foe. And the Supreme Court said,
in a six three ruling, you know, you, United States,
you didn't prove that these articles harmed national security. And
these are in fact protected under the First Amendment. And

(24:49):
not only that, just Justice Potter Stewart wrote these very
wise words, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and
power in the areas of national defense and international affairs
may lie in again, and an enlightened citizenry and an informed,
in critical public opinion, which alone can here protect the

(25:10):
values of democratic government. Right. And so you can see
from Justice Potter Stewart's um like little note basically is
opinion when the government, when the government brings cases like these,
it really opens itself up for the Supreme Court to
tee off on free speech and um and freedom of

(25:31):
the press. And there's a good example, um of the
government not doing that, to not set of self up
so that it can it can keep that lyne blurry,
so that it can create a chilling effect with journalists.
And that's with the fact that they've never prosecuted a
journalist for publishing leaked information. By not doing that, they've

(25:53):
never set themselves up for the Supreme Court to say, irrefutably, yes,
journalists can do this. Journalists don't worry about that anymore.
You can't be prosecuted for that. The fact that no
one ever has means that there's still a possibility that
with the right case, the government could get you. You
could go to prison, even though you know, generally the
way that things go is you're not even prosecuted. It's

(26:14):
not viewed as illegal, but there's no precedent. So by
not setting a precedent either way, the government has that
threat of of prosecuting you hanging over journalists heads, and
it makes some journalists think twice before accepting, you know,
leaked in classified materials. Um, I guess you know, we
kind of teased earlier that some nations are uh I

(26:37):
guess you could say a bit more threatening than others
or controlling. UM. China obviously is a country that um,
you know, in their constitution they technically include the right
to freedom of the press, but it is a country
that is so highly regulated under the thumb of their
Communist Party that they just squash reports, they stop things

(26:58):
from running. Uh, they everything to them. It seems like
falls under the banner that it would harm the country.
And you know the Great Firewall. While we've talked about before.
I don't even think our podcast is available there if
I'm not mistaken, right, I don't know when it wasn't,
I don't I don't know, Uh probably won't be after today.

(27:18):
And this, you know, some have argued that there is
now a nation of young people, not all of them,
but a lot of them that have bought into this,
and that this has had the exact effect that China
wants to have, and that they believe the Communist Party's
propaganda machine, and they'll report their professors, they will report

(27:40):
on their their friends or family if they deviate from
that party line. And uh, it's it's scary, man. Yeah,
And there's um um. Olivia helps us with this, and
she cited a researcher from China, ya Qui Wang, who
um just you know, a good decade before today, was

(28:02):
you know, studying in China and was free on the
internet and social media to criticize the government, to to
trade ideas, that kind of thing, and because of activities
like hers, the Communist Party said no, we cannot allow that,
And in just a decade they've managed to completely transform
the minds of the younger generation in China from what

(28:23):
what from what our media tells us. Yeah, and then
you know, obviously the same thing has gone on and
is currently going on in Russia. Uh, notably with the
invasion of Ukraine. If you ask, you know, the Russian
state run medias is basically saying this is just a
limited military operation. We're trying to get the Nazis out

(28:43):
of Ukraine. And a lot of people buy that there.
You know, we're a handful of independent news sources. But
you know, because of uh murder and which which happens.
I think the UN says between two thousand and six
and more than twelve d journalists all over the world
have been killed and murdered for their reporting. Uh. Those

(29:05):
crimes went unpunished. So with that threat hanging over Russia,
the same effect has happened over there. There are a
lot of young people in Russia that that believe that
what's going on Ukraine is no big deal and fully justified. Well,
it's that's what happens when you have a government that
has a strangle hold on media and can just control

(29:26):
what you see or hear. There's just no other ideas
that can make their way in. It's it's really staggering.
It also makes you wonder like, gosh, you know what
all don't we know? Yeah? For sure? Uh? And you
know this is not me just going off on a
on an opinion I have. But in twenty nine we
had a president of these United States that publicly announced

(29:50):
and floated the idea of a state run media here
m hm hm. So the thing is, chuck, Um. If
you go if you look at the Chinese Constitution, you
will see that there is a right to um a
free press that it's in there. But they use the
Great Firewall of China called the Golden Shield there. Um.

(30:11):
The they use propaganda, UM, they use lawsuits things like
that I think you said, um to basically reverse that,
not on paper, just in practice. Right in the United States,
we have a very robust guarantee that's been supported time
and time and time and time again by the Supreme

(30:32):
Court by laws that protect people um in their right
to speak um. And we're still hashing it out. But generally,
we have a very free press in the United States.
The thing is, that's not to say that we have
a truly opaque and impartial press in the United States.
The press can still be limited in a number of

(30:54):
different ways, even without direct government intervention in their activities
and what they report on. All right, I think it's
a great cliffhanger. People are probably wondering what in the
heck is going on here, and we'll let you know
right after this. Okay, So um, that was a pretty

(31:30):
big cliffhanger. The horse went over the cliff with us
on it. How will we land, Chuck, how will we
land hopefully safely? All right? Well, how about this? Parachutes
for both? So really? Well what about the horse? Yeah,
for both the horse and nuts. Oh, we're sharing a parachute. No,
you and I are run a horse, right, we have

(31:54):
two parachutes the horse. The horse has one. Okay, so
parachutes for all all three of us are landing safely. Originally,
in my mind's eye, we were each on our own horse.
But then I thought it'd be fun to share horse. Yeah. Yeah,
it's like an oversized horse and I get to ride
them back. That means I want to hug you around
the waist like, that's totally fine. Um. The parachute, though,

(32:18):
for the horse, has to be much larger than easily
either of our parachutes. Is it larger size? It's larger
in it, and it obviously is attached between us because
we don't want to tip off, even though we have
our own parachute. We want to go down as a
nice little threesome. So the horses parachutes what connected around
like maybe like a girdle or something like that. And
then are our parachutes are connected to the horse's parachute? No, no, no,

(32:42):
I think how it works is I've seen this before.
The horse's parachute is integrated into the saddle. Okay, uh,
sort of between you and I. It's a two person saddle.
And then you and I have just regular parachutes, but
we are then also strapped to the horse and saddle,
so we're being supported by the horses parachute in addition

(33:02):
to our own parachutes. Yeah, we're kind of like the
backup okay, gotcha. Okay, So now that we've landed safely
and the horses trotting us along again. Um, A really
good example of indirect government intervention um and self censorship
of the press comes at times when there's like a

(33:23):
war or something, and a good example of that came
after nine eleven, where basically the entire United States media said,
what just tell us what to do? What do you
want from us government? We're going to completely just listen
because we're feeling particularly patriotic right now. Yeah, it's sort
of easy to forget that. But there was a from

(33:46):
University of Pittsburgh. There was a scholar there named Gordon
Or Mitchell who described that reporting as the a spiral
of self censorship. And I guess, you know, I just
didn't remember it that way. But when you look back
at things like Dan rather being on David Letterman, Dan
Rather uh and saying, George Bush is the president. Wherever

(34:06):
he wants me to line up, just tell me where
and he'll make the call. Will do whatever is our
patriotic duty, It's it's easy to kind of forget that
was a sentiment at the time, and everybody was was
lining up to say, hey, you got it? What what
do he want us to say? Yeah? I remember, um,
there was like a benefit concert with in a few
days of nine eleven for like the first responders, and

(34:29):
Richard Gear came out on stage and he he asked
everyone to please he knows that we're hurting, and he
knows that we're angry, but he's asking us to channel
all of this into into love, into a peace rather
than hatred. And he got booed off the stage by
everybody in New York at the time. And that was

(34:51):
totally sentiment, like people like Richard Gear didn't say things
like that, or nobody else after Richard Gear did, except
for apparently Bill Maher um who said something about He
said that, uh, um, you call it, say, well, say
what you will about it, but if you're on the
plane still when it hits the building, that's not cowardly.
And he had compared, you know, shooting cruise missiles into

(35:12):
another country as cowardly. And that was basically it for
Bill Maher's politically incorrect show after that. And it wasn't
like the government was saying Bill Maher, you're off the air, um,
Richer Gear, go make some terrible, a terrible string of
movies for a while as your punishment, Like that's not
what happened. Instead, it was like people saw that and

(35:34):
they were kind of repelled by it. It was so
far against like the group think at the time, so
outside of the general mood of like vengeance and hurt
that America was going through in the immediate wake of
nine eleven. That um that people just kind of were
compelled to fall in line by themselves. Like that's just
how how you were at the time. Yeah, I mean,

(35:57):
and you know, of course, when companies pull ad dollar
something like politically incorrect and go away very fast or
or at least give a TV network another reason to say, oh,
we canceled them because you know, we couldn't get any
ads on it right, right, So that was that's one example.
But then also, um, there's a really good um chiller,

(36:23):
I guess something that has a chilling effect because remember
it's really important aspect in a country that has a
nominally free press, but the press is still controlled and
you hit upon it. Advertisers and ad dollars, they really
have a genuine impact on what reporters and journalists feel
free to say, either directly like they're muzzled by like

(36:45):
their editors or their publishers, or they just know if
I report this fact about you know, my parent company,
it's gonna look bad. For the parent company. I'm just
gonna leave this fact out in the article. That's self censoring,
and that's something that the American press does. Yeah, there
was a survey in two thousand and Olivia does point
out it's an old survey, but it's probably um no

(37:09):
different and maybe even worse twenty years on. But uh,
thirty one of journalists avoided stories that could hurt their
news organization or its parent company and said the same
if it could hurt the advertisers. So you know, it's
just this notion that you know, I get a paycheck
from someone, and I know that ultimately that paycheck comes

(37:29):
from either selling newspapers or selling ads in those newspapers. Uh.
And of course that was a long time ago when
the the newspaper was still like in print, right, like
a big deal. But uh, this this all comes down
to the fact that these are for profit businesses, and
it's pretty easy to lose your objectivity when you're keeping

(37:52):
that in mind. Yeah, and also it's all bears pointing
out that a very small group of people, um either
individual wealthy billionaires in the case of Jeff Bezos with
the Washington Post, or you know, giant conglomerate companies like
GE owning I think NBC maybe, UM, and all of

(38:15):
them have like a lot of interest in common, which
is protecting the bottom line. So it's really easy to
get everybody to kind of report generally the same thing
and not report on generally the same thing. UM. And
there's a we talked about it before, but that Robert
Smigel um Musty TV funhouse conspiracy theory rock does a

(38:37):
really great job of explaining how the whole thing works.
And it's a good fifteen years old by now, but
it's just as as correct as ever. A genius, he
really was a genius. And there's one other thing I
would advise people to do at this point when you're
thinking about, you know, just how free the American press
is and how constrained it is by dollars, Cora is

(38:58):
a really good place to go, like re um, you know,
intelligent people's opinions on things presented as opinions, not as
fact or anything. Yeah. Yes, And if you look up
does America have a free press? I found the answers
on that UM question really UM enlightening. I mean, nothing new,

(39:18):
I didn't hear anything new, but it was UM just
just to see over and over again, like, yes, there's
a free press, not really though, because it's all constrained
by dollars and it's all owned by corporations. Uh. It
really kind of makes you understand where you're where our
places in the world and why we're number forty four
in in the in the way of free press around

(39:39):
the world. Yeah, and you know, we have to talk
about social media too, because that is, in the scope
of the history of the press, a very new kind
of media and it is, uh, it is not figured
out yet. I guess it's the kindest way to say it,
because what you have with social media, I mean, it
really giveth in it take it the way. On one hand,

(40:00):
you have more access than ever for someone to be
able to truly get out um reporting or something like
that that's factual and would be maybe squashed by a
parent company or by a traditional media company. But you've
also got a situation where you know, you can kind
of say whatever you want under the guise of like

(40:21):
this is just my opinion. And people in today's America,
a lot of people take things that are completely made
up and completely false as true and factual. And it's scary. Yeah,
it's super scary. It's a really uncomfortable time to be
living because we're like, when, when are we going to
figure this out? How are we going to figure this out?

(40:43):
Are we ever going to figure this out? Or things
going to Is it going to be one of those
things where things are going to get a lot worse
before they get better. Who knows. We just don't know
because we're living in the midst of it right now. Yeah,
And you know, as Olivia points out, it's a situation
where they are like traditional media companies in some ways
because they can juice an algorithm to get something more

(41:05):
seen than something else. But then it's not like they
don't like a company like Facebook doesn't have or any
social media company doesn't have the same um or at
least legally right now, they don't have the same ethical
standards of a traditional media company right right. So it's

(41:26):
like this new animal that kind of looks a lot
like the old animal, but is like, no, no, no,
you can't treat me like the old animal. I'm something different.
Um And and that's kind of what we're figuring out
is it's, like you said, they have different ethical standards,
and that's really found in the case of Gawker UM,
which was a gossipy news site UM that saw fit

(41:47):
to publish Whole Cogan's sex tape that got leaked to
them UM where Whole Cogan. Yes, So everything about this
case is gross. Whole Cogan was cheating on his wife
with his best friend's wife, made a sex tape of it,
Gawker saw fit to publish it like that's just news

(42:07):
that people need to know about. And UM got sued
by Hulk Hogan, sued out of existence by Hulk Cogan.
And that's another aspect of this case that was gross.
Peter Thiel, a billionaire who was one of the founders
of PayPal, secretly financed the case because he hated Gawker
because Gawker had outed him as gay back in two
thousand seven. So he financed Whole Cogan's case and basically

(42:29):
drove Gawker into bankruptcy. And that's not supposed to be okay, Like,
even if you hate somebody's free speech, a billionaire shouldn't
be able to decide who says what or who doesn't
say what. So that's another gross part Whole Cogan one,
because he managed to position himself as like an everyday
guy who was up against this elite, snobby New York media. Um,

(42:52):
that's pretty gross too. And then ultimately the worst part
of it is that this this dumb move by Gawker
to publish Whole Cogan's sex tape opened up a really
terrible can of worms that just did not need to
be opened. Um, which which basically says, hey, you remember
that idea that truth can never be considered liabel. That

(43:16):
has been a foundation of American law of free speech
and free press. Let's turn that on its head. Let's
test that by publishing this whole Cogan sex tape. And
so they lost their lawsuit, like they even though it
was true this whole Cogan didn't dispute that that was
him and that was his sex tape. Uh, And Gawker
published it and that was it. He's still won a

(43:37):
hundred and forty million dollar lawsuit against him, and Gawker
went out of business. And whatever you think of Gawker,
they were still technically media. They were still technically the press.
And so now you've got billionaires who can who can
run press out of existence if they don't like what
they have to say. That's where we're still we are
right now, we're still figuring this out, and it's a

(43:59):
it's a scary time, yeah, because you know, most companies
of that size don't have the money, and that's what
happened to Gawker. They don't have the money to hang
in there unless another billionaires and financing theirs, and then
we're in real trouble when it's just billionaires secretly, you know,
suing one another behind, you know, the guys of another case, right,

(44:22):
that would not be fun. It would not be fun. So,
like we said, the United States press is number forty
four out of a hundred and eighty. It's a that's
a solid b, I would say, But you would expect,
really the first country to truly enshrine free speech into
its um constitutional amendments to have to be a lot

(44:42):
higher than forty four. But it's not. So. If you
want to know more about that, you can go check
out Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. But basically,
the upshot of it is that there is a tremendous
amount of mistrust in journalists in the United States and
in media in general, and a lot of false information

(45:05):
that's easily passed around, and that's kind of setting the
stage for a really um a disrupted press or purpose
of the press, which is again to tell people like
you and me what the people running the show are
doing so we can decide whether we want them to
continue running the show or not. That's right, and we

(45:25):
should mention that if you're wondering what the bottom of
that list looks like. The bottom five there are a
couple of African nations Djibouti and Eritrea, and then of
course China, Turkmenistan, and then obviously North Korea. Yes, obviously obvious. Sorry, sorry,

(45:47):
Kim Jong un. Well, now you're gonna get us off
the air there, Yeah, there's no way we're on the
air there. We're too free. Baby. Uh Well, since Chuck
said that's right, of course, everybody. That means it's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this rhinoplasty follow up

(46:14):
this from well, I'll save that part, hey, guys, keep
doing the great work. Really enjoy the lighthearted approach presenting
information from the interesting minutia about important topics to the
deeply important, even politically charged topics like today, as a
person who has had to have three separate rhino plastic surgeries, uh,
and he says parenthetically, I've got some ridiculously troublesome sinuses,

(46:37):
septum and other miscellaneous issues. I had one other point
to add, something I had never heard of was the urbinates. Uh.
Mine were apparently huge. Uh. These are little fingerlike folds
of skin that run along the interior of your nostrils.
They swell in the swell alternately and are the reason
when you have a bad cold one side is totally plugged,

(46:59):
but you can breathe to the other one. Anyway. Part
of my surgeries was trimming those down because they were
causing me breathing problems. The med student it was helping
me mentioned after the surgery and horror that he had
new idea so much stuff could come out of a
person's head. It's always fun when you hear something like
that in post, stuff like I've never seen a blank
that big, sir, You got a picture right? That is

(47:24):
from John B. Parks, husband, father, nerd fighter, Hufflepuff, Let's
Go Royals, Chiefs, s K C and COI's and then
that he has a Gandhi quote. This is all in
his email signature. So I'd always like to read that stuff. Uh,
Liz live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn
as if you were to live forever Mahatma Gandhi. Very nice.

(47:46):
And then below that it says that he might get
revenue from any links you click that take you to Amazon.
I never had an email signature that said things like
quotes and stuff. I kind of like that, Yeah, okay, well, Chuck,
today is your day to start, all right? That was John?
That was John. Thanks a lot, John. I appreciate that

(48:09):
I may actually be getting that done too. They mentioned
that for me, and I was like, I don't know,
this sounds like an up cell, so maybe not. John
might have convinced me. If you want to get in
touch with this like John did, we'd love to hear
from you. You can send us an email and send
it to specifically Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.

(48:31):
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