In his July 4 ruling blocking the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies on issues of content, Louisiana Federal Judge Terry Doughty quickly showed himself to be a deeply unserious jurist, writing that the case “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” He apparently slept through high school history classes on the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jim Crow and McCarthyism.
If Doughty believes that the government engaging with social media platforms to encourage certain uniform policies and flag the spread of, for example, medical and election misinformation that could be destabilizing and harmful to public health and order is unconstitutional, then it seems like Doughty could benefit from engaging with a first-year law class.
The Constitution has enshrined, for very good reason, the principle that the government cannot compel or censor almost any type of speech. It certainly has not dictated that the government can never communicate preferences or express concern to companies whose size, scope and ability to shape public opinion and discourse were unfathomable to the First Amendment’s framers.
The Daily News routinely receives calls, emails and letters from government officials of every stripe taking issue with coverage and pushing us to reword things, shift coverage, change descriptions and even pull stories. Every journalist receives such pressure, and understands it to be simply part of the push-pull of public dialogue. Is it censorship? No, because we can, and often do, simply refuse, just as social media companies have always been at liberty to tell the government to take a hike when it comes to requests to remove speech.
If anything, the tech sector is under, not over, regulated by the federal government. That doesn’t mean the feds should suddenly gain veto power over speech (they certainly shouldn’t) but efforts to constrain the power of the tech monopolies is firmly in their wheelhouse and in the public interest. Hopefully this aberration and distraction of a ruling is quickly overturned on appeal, and Doughty can look into those remedial classes.
