Sunday, April 16, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Into the weeds of a free and responsible press is not where most people want to go.
I get it.
But it is the weeds that are choking our ability as a country to work from a common set of facts — facts that are facts, not fake, not opinion, not pretend and not virtual — which if not removed from public discourse will continue to destroy this democracy of ours.
Congress is grappling with TikTok as some kind of front for China and its ability to hoover up everything about Americans — mostly because we already tell the internet everything about ourselves, wittingly or not.
But that’s not the worst of it. And it’s not the same as what we are allowing the internet to do to us all by ourselves.
My case in point is the case against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems that is scheduled for trial soon. So far, according to reports about the judicial proceedings leading up to jury selection, the evidence appears to be simple.
Fox News knew what most Americans knew: The 2020 election was legit, Joe Biden won the election, Donald Trump lost. Bigly.
Every Fox “news host” (that’s in quotes because news and host are mutually exclusive in this context) knew the truth. And, yet, to keep the MAGA folks watching Fox News, they deliberately allowed guests who were spreading false information to pollute its airwaves without contradiction. In many cases it was with approval and approbation.
A jury will sort all that out in the coming weeks and, maybe, months.
In the meantime, we can all learn from this case as we consider the great harm an unrestrained internet continues to inflict on the body politic — that would be the potential voters in America who think they are relying on facts and not the false information that inundates our lives.
You see, Fox News is held to the same standard to which all news outlets must adhere in our country. We cannot knowingly or recklessly publish false information. If we do, we can be sued and we can lose millions and billions of dollars — a strong deterrent to lying to the public.
That same disincentive does not exist for the Facebooks, Instagrams, Googles, Twitters and all the others who make a living by pushing false information to people who for all kinds of reasons just don’t know any better but who are all too willing to accept the information as true.
And, then, they vote.
You see the danger? People vote, they make determinations about their and our futures, and they do it in many cases based on phony information. In some cases, the lies disguised as truth are pushed into our consciousness by the Russians, Chinese and other bad actors who wish our country harm.
And we do nothing about it.
Congress is considering holding the social media behemoths to a similar standard to which every legitimate news outlet must adhere, but there are billions in lobbyist fees aligned against those efforts.
The irony is these social media platforms claim to be advancing democracy — the free flow of ideas — while what they are doing just to make a buck, excuse me a billion or more bucks, is just the opposite.
When you pollute peoples’ minds with lies and falsities, is it no wonder that they act on that information in ways that hurt them and their families? They do that because they don’t know any better. Or in some cases don’t want to know.
And our country has no recourse because Congress will not require responsibility from those who push the lies — for money.
Weeds choke the grass, the flowers and the things that add beauty to our lives. We pull them out or otherwise kill their ability to do so because we know they are bad.
Allowing the irresponsible spreading of lies to permeate the American psyche without any accountability for the harm caused is akin to letting weeds destroy beauty in our lives. In this case, the beauty is what we refer to as our American democracy.
It’s time to pull the weeds out. It is time for Congress to stop doing nothing about this threat to democracy. It is time to allow our country to grow toward a more perfect and beautiful union: A country full of sunlight and awash in facts.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun
