How Freedom of the Press Works

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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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,

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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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? 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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, 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,

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 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 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 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,

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 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 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

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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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

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, 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 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?

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

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 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 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

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

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,

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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.

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 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. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.