Fake News, Hate Speech, and the First Amendment

I launched this blog as a place to keep all of my notes and thoughts on the professional regulation of attorney speech, a topic largely (but not entirely) informed by the commercial speech doctrine. The doctrine – which permits the government to limit or compel speech under a laxer set of standards than would apply to “core” expression – labors under an unfortunate name. Too many people, including far too many lawyers, think that the doctrine applies to ALL speech by businesses.

This is, of course, demonstrably wrong. The vast majority of media outlets in the U.S. are “commercial,” insofar as they are owned by for-profit entities. In fact, many of these entities are the corporations that people (many of whom surely know better) inveigh against when gnashing their teeth over the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. As the Supreme Court has held, time and again, the fact that something is published for commercial reasons (i.e., to make money) does not make it commercial speech. Because if it did, we couldn’t have an independent media.[ref]For additional context and background on this, check out Avvo’s 2016 federal court win, which turned on this very question.[/ref]

And it seems to me that right about now is when we really, really should see the benefits of an independent media. We’ve got a new administration that has explicitly called out the media as the “opposition party,” that traffics in falsehoods, lies, and gaslighting, and which seeks to punish those outlets that aren’t deemed sufficiently obsequious to its agenda.

This is why it’s particularly galling that people on the left continue to be some of the loudest voices for chipping away at media independence – or free expression rights in general. We’ve seen in recent days an MSNBC journalist suggesting that the federal government should regulate to prevent “fake news,” and even my neighborhood college campus is now up in arms over “hate speech.”

While I could fall back on my lofty exhortations about the value of a robust First Amendment, I would ask all of these would-be censors a simpler and more pragmatic question:

Is this the government you want to let decide what you can and cannot say?