This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s
decision in New York
Times v. Sullivan, a landmark First Amendment ruling in
favor of “the principle that debate on public issues should be
uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” Indeed, the Court argued, to
take free speech seriously means to accept that free speech will
not always be polite. “Vehement, caustic, and sometimes
unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials,” the
Court said, are an indispensable part of the deal.
At Bloomberg View, Harvard law professor and former
Obama administration official Cass Sunstein says the Court
basically got it right. But he still wishes more people would
“pay close attention to the dark side of New York Times v.
Sullivan.” Here’s his description of that dark side:
When it comes to public figures, all sorts of false allegations
are permissible, whether they involve birth certificates, drug
abuse, sexual misconduct or income tax fraud. One result is that
those who seek public office put their reputation at immediate
risk.
One of the goals of the court’s ruling was to protect
self-government, but the effects on self-government are not all
good. Talk show hosts, bloggers and users of social media can
spread ugly falsehoods in an instant—exposing citizens to lies that
may well cause them to look on their leaders with unjustified
suspicion.
False accusations are hardly new. But New York Times v.
Sullivan can claim at least some responsibility for adding to
a climate of distrust and political polarization in the U.S.
It’s true, ugly talk about politics is certainly nothing new.
But is it getting worse, as Sunstein seems to think? Are we living
in a hellish new “climate of distrust and political polarization?”
To help you ponder that question, I leave you with Reason TV’s
hilarious “Attack Ads, Circa 1800,” which harkens back to the good
old days before “talk show hosts, bloggers and users of social
media” arrived on the scene.
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