Democracy’s Epistemic Crisis: Fake News and the Civic Duties of the Press

• In Event: Democracy in the Post-Truth, Post-Knowledge Era

Abstract

The disaffection of democratic citizens has multiple sources, but one of them clearly involves the press. This is plain from a cursory inspection of the grievances held by both those on the right, who excoriate the so-called mainstream media for its alleged liberal bias, and those on the left, who increasingly condemn entities like Fox News and Breitbart as state propaganda. That the press contributes to political polarization by facilitating epistemic echo chambers—as citizens tend mainly to be exposed to information and viewpoints they already believe and affirm—is widely discussed. So, too, is the claim that this provides a fertile environment for the dissemination and acceptance of deliberately false or unverified news stories—so-called “fake news”. What is less discussed is the normative question of what ought to be done about it.

The motivating claim of this paper is that normative political theory is desperately in need of a new research program, aimed at specifying the civic duties of the press. While moral and political philosophers have lavished attention on the moral obligations of lawmakers, jurists, and voters, as well as soldiers, civil servants, and educators, they have neglected the heart of the Fourth Estate. That is true even of democratic theorists, despite the widely affirmed contention that democracy suffers—even dies—without a free media.

One U.S.-focused explanation of this gap appeals to the First Amendment. If we believe that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”, then we might think that the most significant normative question of all in this area—may the government use its coercive power to suppress news stories it judges to be false, misguided, or dangerous?—is settled. Thus while law professors continue to debate doctrinal specifics about what regulation could be consistent with the Constitution, the central question seems to have been answered.

This paper will argue that this neglect of journalism in normative political theory is a mistake, for two reasons. First, it argues that there is, contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy, a powerful moral case for banning “fake news”—to protect the atmosphere of informed debate by preventing its deliberate disfigurement by malicious, false news stories. Second, it argues that even if we err on the side of caution, and refuse to grant the state such a power, there remains significant questions about how members of the media ought to use their sweeping press freedom. And while these questions have received some attention from those working in professional schools of communication and journalism, it is vital that the press becomes a political theory topic in its own right.

Part I of the paper begins by exploring the absence of attention to the press in normative political theory, explaining why it is no longer acceptable. Part II sketches what I will call “the democratic conception” of the proper role of the press: to support the deliberations of democratic citizens by serving as a forum for disseminating and analyzing important factual claims on matters of public concern. Implicit in this conception, I argue, is a “demand-side” account of the duties of citizens, who should be educated to insist upon quality journalism, and the “supply-side” account of the duties of honesty, objectivity and accessibility assigned to journalists themselves.

Focusing on the duty of journalists to report only duly verified news stories, Part III asks whether this duty should or should not be enforced by law. What objection might a journalist have to a state policy that prevented her from publishing either patently false or unverified stories? And what objection might a citizen have to a state policy that denied her access to patently false or unverified stories masquerading as truthful or verified? I canvass the standard arguments for the moral right to freedom of expression, of which press freedom is taken to be a constituent element. I argue that none of these explains why fake news ought to be protected. The presumptive case for banning it, then, is stronger than many suppose.

Of course, we may still appeal to the familiar classical liberal anxiety about granting the state powers it might abuse. But then that is why fake news should be legally permitted, not because journalists or citizens have any moral right to spread or access it. Assuming, then, that the legal permissibility of fake news will remain a fixture of our constitutional landscape, Part IV sets the stage for future research by asking how the democratic conception of the press can be upheld without state coercion. I close by sketching the duties of media corporations to combat the effects of the epistemic echo chambers they create, and I suggest the ways in which informal social norms can indirectly push corporations to fulfil these duties through altering what kind of journalism is profitable.

Author

• Jeffrey Howard, University College London