Common Misconceptions About the First Amendment

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business.

But today we're talking about common misconceptions about the First Amendment, and joining us is an expert on the subject. We're very pleased to have Gene Polissensky, Senior Fellow for the First Amendment at the Freedom Forum Institute, with us today so that we can talk about some of the issues we hear on social media and what people are talking about. So, Gene, if you can join us.

Be happy to.

Thank you so much. Hi.

Hi. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Sure. Glad to do it.

Well, you know, I, I think it's a great topic for right now because if you spend any time on social media like I do, you'll see arguments Happen all the time. And at some point in the, in the argument, someone says, I can say that because we have the First Amendment. So I want to talk to you a little bit about that, but let's go a little bit broad in the beginning. So from your perspective, since I know the Freedom Forum does a lot of surveys and you survey the American public on First Amendment, right?

All right.

So if you were to give the American public a grade, What would, what would the grade be on, on the topic of the First Amendment? How much do we understand it, do you feel?

You know, in all honesty, I'd probably, probably have to be a C-.

Okay.

And I say that because we have this sort of belief that we have the right to speak and the right to worship freely, but we don't really get, uh, what's involved in a free press. We tend to think of that as only belonging to journalists, which is not true. It Journalists have no more or no fewer rights than we do. And then assembly petition, it's been as low as 1%, even knowing that those petitions exist, a petition, the right of petition exists. So that's, again, why do we have that? Well, we don't teach much about it anymore. There's sort of a, on one hand, an assumption it's like air, you know, we don't need to talk about it.

Mm-hmm.

On the other hand, we've emphasized math and science and eliminated a lot of social studies education. You know, there's also a sense that it's sort of the First Amendment belongs to the, you know, 1791, you know, old white guys in powdered wigs and harpsichord music playing. And it doesn't really matter in our life today. And of course, as your show exists, as you pointed out with social media, particularly, even though that's outside the First Amendment, that idea of free speech is so prevalent and all the other freedoms really today.

All right. So let's talk about the freedom of speech to begin with. And then I think later on, we should definitely get to freedom of assembly. Because I know that's very topical today as well. So when it comes to freedom of speech, and when it comes to social media, especially on Twitter, people feel that they can say whatever they want, wherever they want to say it. Is that in fact true?

Well, you know, again, with Twitter, these are, you know, and Facebook and TikTok and all the rest, those are private companies. They have their First Amendment rights. But the First Amendment only restrains government. So you talked in the intro about misconceptions and the title of today. A common misconception is, you know, Facebook or Twitter or somebody bans me for saying something, you know, my First Amendment rights are— no, they're not. That's a contract between you and them on their terms of service.

Mm-hmm.

It only, you know, government's not involved, so it's not really a First Amendment issue. Now, on the other hand, in the spirit of free speech, of course, you know, our are— we have the right to speak freely. There are very few exceptions to that that we've enacted over time to protect us as a society, and that's true threats and fighting words. And we provide, if you're defamed, an opportunity to make yourself whole again, they call it in law. So the very narrow exceptions to really what we can and can't say, and it— there's nothing in the 45 words of the First Amendment that says we have to be polite or nice or civil. I think that helps, but it is not a requirement under the First Amendment.

Okay. All right. So I guess we can flip it also, though, because you did bring up when you have freedom of the press, or that people feel that the First Amendment only applies to the press.

Yeah.

But I think part of the issue is the general public doesn't get to see how many news stories are not published by the press.

That's a really good point, Jacqui. That's a really good point. I think I spent a lot of years as a journalist, both a reporter and then an editor, in helping to start USA Today. The hardest calls I ever had to make, but the ones I feel best about, were the stories we didn't publish, that weren't there, that didn't have enough backing, that we had a source that we could determine was reliable enough to pursue their, you know, whatever they had to say, but not enough to justify right when we got done running it. I also think that the debate today over free press is so often confined to, what is it, 130 or 150 people who work at— cover the White House or national politics?

Yeah.

And there's something 23,000 to 25,000 journalists in the country today, which is only about half of what we once had, by the way.

Okay.

But the vast majority of them, 99% of them are doing stories that, you know, is our water safe to drink? Or our kids' school lunch. They live in our communities, they go to the same stores. So I think that debate sometimes about a free press gets distorted, as if there's some so far-off elite, which is helpful for critics, and frankly could sometimes be true. But for the vast majority of the time, there are people who, again, like you, are concerned about the issues of our lives today and write about what, you know, the things that affect them as well.

Okay. All right. So if you were to explain the responsibilities within the First Amendment, because we go, we go back and forth, we say, yes, we have freedom. But then there are always people that are saying we have too much freedom. And they want to take that freedom away by saying people are being irresponsible. So what are the responsibilities inherent in freedom of speech and freedom of the press?

You know, I, again, they're not written into the 45 words, because I think the founders intentionally left those to be adjustable, so to speak. Although they've set values, they left them to be adjusted by our society. But, you know, that if you have a right to speak, I think you also have an implied responsibility to listen. I mean, you would want people to listen to you when you're speaking.

Mm-hmm.

Well, I think the responsibility is to do that, even if it's something you don't want to hear. Justice Jackson, who was on the court in the '40s, had this great phrase, I think, in a 1947 decision that we need to hear that which is repellent or repugnant, if only to be better prepared to argue against it. And I love that quote because that really means, you know, hearing something is not accepting it. It's not acknowledging it. It's not approving of it. It's just hearing it. And I think if the founders had this wonderful optimism that if we would just talk to each other and listen to each other—

Mm-hmm.

Right and responsibility, that over time, we would have, you know, the discussion involving the greatest number of people looking for the best possible solution for the largest number of our fellow citizens in what we hope is the shortest amount of time. And there was that profound optimism, but also a responsibility to make our republic work. And that doesn't work if we're either not participating or if we're shouting at each other so much or living in thought bubbles in today's world that we don't communicate.

Okay. So where would you place us at this moment in time now in terms of how free are we?

Well, I think we're very free, despite the, you know, the complaints about Facebook and TikTok and others, you know, blocking people significantly. People, you know, truthfully, we have more ways to communicate with each other than any other generation in the history of humanity. There are alternatives, you know, for those who say, well, you know, Facebook and these people are, you know, they're so essential and being banned from that is sort of the equivalent of government action. I remember MySpace, you know, which in 2005 was the thing.

Yeah.

And by 2008, Facebook had replaced it. So I think there are, you know, the options under private terms of service is use my service or find somewhere else. Well, we've seen those efforts being made.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that's going to happen. I think we saw that in radio where there was a sense that, you know, conservative voices weren't being heard in the '60s and '70s. And suddenly by the 1980s, it dominates talk radio and continues on today to do that. So there are other alternative ways to communicate. Again, the First Amendment says, talk and be heard, listen and respond. It's— again, I love the fact that you ask about responsibilities as well, because sometimes we're so concerned about protecting the right, we forget the responsibility that the founders placed on us as citizens to make self-governance work.

Okay. All right. Thank you. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your background and your interest in the First Amendment. How did that happen?

Well, early on as a, as a kid, I decided I'd like to go into journalism. I wasn't even really aware that that's what you would call it, I guess, when I was about 10 years old. I just liked people telling, telling people stuff. But I started out in college as a journalism major, worked while I was in school, which I think I recommend to anybody who wants to get into it because you can sort of take what you learn on the job or question on the job back to a place where you can talk about it.

Mm-hmm.

But then you can apply what you've learned in school on the job. And so it echo chambers nicely. I worked my way through some newspapers in Indiana covering the statehouse. Mid-'70s, late '70s rather, went to DC. A couple of years after I got there covering Congress, and agencies in the White House, went to USA Today to start— help start that as one of the founding entities, was there through '96. And you have this sort of growing appreciation, maybe as anybody does in a profession, for sort of where did you get the things, the tools that you use? And so I became very interested in First Amendment law. So I went to this foundation called the Freedom Forum, which may sound like a right-wing militia group. It isn't. It's a nonprofit entity that is actually ardently nonprofit. It sees its role as a convener, an educator, rather than— they don't lobby or litigate.

Mm-hmm.

And worked my way through that with various arms called the First Amendment Center and then the Freedom Forum Institute. Uh, so I retired last January as president and CEO and, uh, CFO, COO, and, uh, and now something called a senior fellow for the First Amendment for the Freedom Forum.

Okay. All right. So out of all of this, you know, what, what is it about the First Amendment itself, though, that, that really honed in for you that this was a topic you really wanted to focus on?

You know, I think it was the, the way we get to talk to each other. I've been fortunate to travel, and I've gone to other countries, and even other democracies where there's just not that emphasis on engagement, that ability to stand up in a meeting. And, you know, this goes in in my work all the way back to the Magna Carta, that the phrase speaking truth to power, you know, that's the beauty of the First Amendment. I think there are two. I get to speak truth to power, and it's sort of a self-correcting mechanism for our society that something goes off this way or that way. Something that a guy named Alexis de Tocqueville warned about in 1825, the tyranny of the majority, that is—

Mm-hmm.

He thought the great threat to governments. democratic governments was that a majority would get so entrenched that minority voices would never be heard. And thanks to the First Amendment, even those people who are not— were not considered fully citizens, African Americans during the period of slavery and abolition, and then on through segregation, had a voice guaranteed by law, which no other country really has.

Right.

And I, you know, sort of, again, being enamored of telling people stories, I loved listening to stories, but I also, covering government, saw the great ability to tell government what needs to be done and not have to worry about it. Not, you know, the famous, you know, 3 AM phone call— I mean, knock on your door from the secret police because you said something to somebody in your neighborhood.

Yeah.

You know, that's just not something— you know, we talk on our cell phone and presumably don't have to worry about some government agency listening in. And all of that just, to me, was really exciting. I mean, this ability to talk to each other and to talk to government and self-governance. And, you know, I've met a lot of politicians and I know there's great skepticism today. And frankly, most people I've seen in the legislative, executive, or judicial branch are a lot like you and me and just wanna do a good job. Now, there are jerks and there are crooks and there are people who, you know, ambitious and all the rest. Well, no kidding. There is in life. But by and large, these are good people. And what they value the most many times is hearing from us, is hearing what we're thinking. A friend of mine hosts a radio show on a little station in Indiana. And he interviewed a mayor of a town where the last news organization, daily news organization in their town, a radio station, just closed. And this guy, I assume, had a couple of months' experience. And he said, how do I hear from people? I mean, nobody goes to a government website just to read. I mean, it's information. And he said, you know, I used to hear from people through this radio station and through a newspaper that had existed in their town. And, you know, it's really interesting that it wasn't a journalist, it wasn't an academic, it was a politician saying, how do I hear from the people who I'm responsible for? So I think, you know, all of that has just combined to just just keep me going through the years to say, this is such an essential part of, of, you know, helping take care of our fellow citizens, which is ultimately, I think, what self-governance is all about.

Okay. Now, the flip side of this, though, is I have seen surveys that show there's a fairly large percentage of the American public that think we have too much freedom. Yeah. When it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Yeah.

Or even assembly, petition, and even religion at times, the 5 freedoms in the First Amendment. You know, the Freedom Forum surveys, we've done one every year called State of the First Amendment since 1997.

Okay.

And one of the questions is, does the First Amendment go too far in the rights it guarantees? Well, about 8 months after the 9/11 attacks, and the numbers usually ran somewhere at 15 to 20% of people, and they were mad at the press, or they'd seen a protest that, you know, there was something driving that feeling. 15, 20%.

Okay. Okay.

Um, that number jumped to half of Americans about 8 months after 9/11, because there just was a sense that we were too open and vulnerable to attack. Well, a year or two later, resets, gets down into the teens again.

Okay.

Along comes the Boston Marathon bombing. Now we went into the field, that was in the spring, we went into the field in May, late May. So we get that survey result back, it's back up to 39%. So I think fear that we are too free could be exploited by people who would like to take away those freedoms, as you said, for their own purposes.

Mm-hmm.

I don't think we're too free. I think if you look around the world, one of the great strengths of this country is that we can speak our mind. And as I said prior to 9/11, you don't have to set up a bomb in America to be heard. I won't say that.

Right.

It's wonderful. People feel— some people still feel the need to do that, but not as you would in many countries. You know, Freedom House used to do a survey. I think they did up until 2 years ago of the sort of freedom index based on a bunch of things. And the last one that I saw, 13% of the world's population lives in a country that was definably free. Think of how rare that is. And if you take out Western Europe, In the United States and Canada, that number plunges in the single digits. Most places on the planet, you can't say, not just, you know, I think the president ought to be replaced. You can't say the mayor's doing a bad job, or why did my street get paved or not get paved when somebody else's did? Aha, I know why, because they paid somebody off or whatever.

Yeah.

You can't do that. Again, you know, I think it is a freedom to be prized unlike any other. Now, that doesn't mean we don't have issues and problems. And, you know, we have a— you mentioned about the press. The most recent Freedom Forum survey said only 14% of us fully trust the press. Okay, I get that. I understand some reasons why. I'm not, you know, I— first of all, I don't think you ought to give 100% trust or near anything, including me. What was the old phrase? Trust but verify. If your mom tells you you're cute, you know, so, okay. But I think, again, you know, this accountability factor is there. I think shows like this that help inform and educate people to tell us what our freedoms are and what they aren't are so vital to preserving our freedoms.

Well, let's switch over now, though, to a Assembly and petition.

Yes.

Okay, so I know there's pushback now on assembly. Yes. Yeah. So if you can maybe encapsulate what's going on right now, the current thought and movement happening with that. Sure.

Assembly is the right to get together with people of like minds. Petition is not just the thing you sign. It's really to seek redress of grievances, to use the 1791 phrase. That's, again, go to government and You can say things are going well, but the point of it is you can say things aren't going well, and here's how I think you should fix it.

Yeah.

Again, I think fear comes into play a little bit in this. We live in a very polarized society right now. The survey shows that there's a substantial number of us who will not express an opinion either in person, let's say at a rally or to others, or online because we fear retaliation. It's a sad state of affairs. But I think the pushback comes from people who, in my assessment over the last few years, wrongly say, oh, these are violent protests and demonstrations. Yes, there are. And we have laws existing to prevent that. You know, you can't smash a window in the name of free speech. In fact, violent speech of any— violence, rather, as conduct, even if it's motivated by speech. You know, I have a good cause, my heart is pure, doesn't give you the right to throw a brick through a window or worse. And I think people who would oppose whatever the force of the protest is, and to be blunt, either that's either a COVID-19 anti-mask vaccine or anti-mask vaccine protest or Black Lives Matter, the people who would shut down those voices are using this bogus issue of widespread violence. I mean, if you look at somewhere around 95% of protests involve no violence whatsoever. They may be irritating, angering, and they may be harsh voices, message you don't want to hear. Yeah, I get that. We have a First Amendment right to assemble and petition in that name.

Mm-hmm.

And again, as Jackson said, if only to be better prepared to argue against it. Well, that's tough. It's tough hearing words that make your blood boil, or that insult you, and permitting it. But that is the majesty really of our system, that you get to speak, even if no one else agrees with you.

Now, if I'm at, say I'm out, you know, protesting something.

Yeah.

And the protest turns violent. Do I have any kind of responsibility or Am I in any way responsible for that violence just by being there?

Sure.

Well, there are some states now with new legislation that would try to make you responsible. You know, you're marching along, and let's just say you're in a demonstration in favor of sunny days. You know, you just, you feel like there's too many people who want cloudy days, and you're gonna be out there protesting. Okay. And 3 blocks away, and it's a large protest, there's 10,000 people who love sunny days.

Mm-hmm.

3 or 4 blocks away, there's a couple of people for whatever motivation, whether it's, you know, cloudy day supporters or sunny day supporters, or just somebody who wants to make trouble, they throw a brick through a window. There are some states now trying to criminalize that conduct and saying everybody in that 10,000 group is liable to be charged with what sort of— as a sort of accessory or participant, as if you had thrown that brick.

Okay.

You know, that makes no sense to me. I don't think that's going to withstand any kinds of constitutional challenge. Most of them are too new to have gone through, you know, adjudication. But that's just not going to stand. I mean, we, you know, there has to be a personal engagement. But there's an attempt to do that. Now, you know, again, it gets a little finer line if you're a speaker, and you encourage in the words of, you know, your words, you appear to encourage a violent act. But even there, we are such strong believers that it really has to be under the law proximate. That is right after you've said it. It has to be something that you could genuinely do. And if you don't mind me using an example, I'm up speaking and I'm— my family is Polish and Irish on the sides of the family. So I'm standing up giving a speech saying, you know, people who are Polish and Irish mix are terrible people and yada, yada, throw them out of the country. That's fully protected speech, even though it's maybe repellent, repugnant, and, you know, morally incorrect and all the rest.

Okay.

If I, if I say, you know, the next time you see one of those people, you should really give them what for, that I move a little bit farther away from full protection. If I say, you know, if you run into those people tomorrow or today when you leave here, sock them in the nose, I move further. If I say, I noticed somebody in the back of the room somehow identified that way, and I say, there's one now, go get them. I am outside First Amendment protection. So you sort of walk your way to that. You know, if I say, I, I hope that all people like that are struck by meteors, you know, and killed, their families and everybody, really horrible. You know what, that's protected speech because I don't have any ability to make that happen.

Okay.

So we, we are so strongly committed as a society through the years that we draw the very narrow lines of unprotected speech, and that concerns people. But again, I think it makes sense in that it doesn't allow for an abuse. It doesn't allow to say, I don't like your content or viewpoint. It has to do with conduct. You know, we don't punish or penalize or restrain ideas in this country. We look at conduct and motivation.

Ah, and you bring up my next segue, which is for people that say we have too much freedom, no matter what kind of freedom it is. If we start placing parameters on those freedoms, how does that impact me, the individual?

Well, that's the, that's the million-dollar question is, you know, who gets to be the national nanny? And, and, and how do they make that decision? You know, You know, fortunate parts of American history, if you're a blue-collar worker, if you had attempted to organize in the '20s and '30s, people might've said that that's a socialist, communist, anti-American effort, and therefore you're, you know, we're gonna shut you down. You can't speak, you can't hand out pamphlets, you can't organize. If you were a civil rights worker in the '50s and '60s, there were actually attempts to say that those kinds of speech were, you know, that's too far, that's not protected speech, that you're talking about challenging, you know, legal things like segregated, you know, washrooms. Well, that's a, you know, we've had those in our community for 100 years and passed by law and the majority wants it. And therefore, if you're, you know, protesting or whatever, you're wrong. Or sitting at a lunch counter. I mean, you can go through American history and say, you know, We had the right amount of freedom, I think, in those cases to say to society, no, no, working people should be able to organize. Women deserve the right to vote.

Thanks, Gene.

Listen, I'm with you. And also, by the way, also to have contracts and control of their own money and all the things that went with that decision people forget. But also, you know, argue that, you know, integrated society would be more just. And then, you know, again, you can just carry on all of those things. You know, we— if we, I think, start making those viewpoint and content restrictions on a broad basis of just stuff we don't like or that upsets the majority, we've lost what the founders gave us if we get too deep into that. Freedom is messy. Freedom can be irritating. Freedom can give you a headache. Freedom can scare you. But freedom is— the alternative is so much worse. And I think we acknowledge those things. There was a court decision, a Supreme Court decision in 2011, I think, or 2012, involving a group called the Westboro Baptist Church.

Mm-hmm.

These were folks who showed up at funerals, largely of military, but they showed up at paramedics who had died in a helicopter crash, I think in Wisconsin. Anyway, their message was essentially, you're all doomed. There actually is no hope to save you. We're just here to sort of celebrate the fact that you're doomed. But they had messages that were deemed very offensive. And I hope I don't offend people watching by saying some of them were, you know, God hates fags. And just— and they— it's much easier, I guess, to pick the one or two things they approved of then, because they pretty much didn't like anything. Well, they showed up at the funeral of a young man who had died in the Middle East, and they were protesting along on a sidewalk as the funeral procession went by. And they were sued by the family for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The family sort of realized there was a First Amendment right. But the Supreme Court came out with a great supreme— with a freedom of expression or freedom of speech defense. Justice Roberts said essentially, you know, our commitment is so strong to free speech on matters of public interest that we even have to tolerate speech that is hurtful. And I just imagine all 9 justices, I said, frankly, holding their nose when they voted 9-0. But because they, in the opinions you read, well, we have no sympathy for what they're saying or how they said it, you know, the law says, First Amendment requires, our commitment to speech says that we will tolerate even that speech that is offensive and repugnant, because it's part of the broad debate. They always call it vigorous debate on First Amendment or on our society's values. And so I, I understand when people say we have too much freedom. I know that they're talking about things that they see as dangerous and what have you.

Mm-hmm.

But, you know, we, we restrict it at our peril. And I, again, who gets to be the national nanny and make those decisions in any given era or any given time? The lessons we've learned is stay, stay as broadly based as you can, restrict only that which is an immediate threat, proximate. Again, fighting words, true threats, that kind of thing.

Okay, okay. We actually have a question from the audience. Yes. What if a protester has hate symbols on their sign while they're marching? But not saying anything disrespectful.

Right. And speech does cover something called expressive speech. So that's an armband or a poster or a sign. And I, you know, I can think of, you know, the swastika, of course, or, or Ku Klux Klan emblem. Again, permitted speech. You know, there was a famous case in Skokie, Illinois, which the American Civil Liberties Union protected the right of, of these ridiculous people who called themselves American Nazis to march through a predominantly Jewish community. I can only imagine the hurt. And this is a number of years ago, there were probably, frankly, Holocaust survivors and certainly family members of Holocaust survivors.

Yeah.

But the antidote to speech we don't like is more speech, not less. Counter-protests, programs, writings, other kinds of speech which point out how ridiculously and ludicrous some of these things are. Again, that's, that's part of being a responsible citizen. You can't let somebody else counter the speech you don't like. There's an obligation. We talked about responsibilities. I think I— you feel a responsibility to correct. Now, that doesn't mean going rip it the sign out of their hands. That, no, you've stepped over the bounds. But it does mean, as people have done with this Westboro Baptist group, for example, standing on the other side of the street with signs that say just the opposite and making that point. So again, that I think is under the First Amendment. That responsiveness is the antidote to that kind of speech that is, frankly, I would guess, offensive. Hate symbols are offensive.

Okay. All right. So where we are right now with our society, you know, and the ability, like you had mentioned in the beginning, that we have more ways to be heard than ever before.

Yeah.

But yet it doesn't seem like we have much in the way of education to teach people how to go about this, or what their rights actually are.

No. And that is one of the great reasons for the Freedom Forum to be there. is that we are engaged in trying to help educators, citizens, public officials. I think we're going to be working with a Texas school district, for example, to talk about those 5 freedoms. You know, it's not an entirely new phenomenon. We found a book, a civics book in 1952 that mentioned the 4 freedoms of the First Amendment.

And they—

2 of those were from Roosevelt's speech about the 4 freedoms that generally he thought humanity should enjoy. There was like a right to do business and a right to be happy, which, you know, it's not there. Trust me, it's religion, speech, assembly, press, assembly, and petition. We found on one of the immigration tests for the United States to become a citizen, I think under the Bush admin— George Bush, the second George Bush administration, that there were 4 freedoms in the First Amendment and they left out press.

Really?

Yeah, which— oops, you know. But again, you know, sometimes we think that they sort of will always exist, that they're just, again, like air, we have them, you know, and you sort of sum them up with, I'm an American, I could say what I want. The problem with that is when there's a challenge, when the rights conflict, people can use that— forgive me using the word ignorance or lack of knowledge— to an advantage to scare people into saying, well, a little bit freedom, you know, why don't we have a law banning hate speech? Of course, that begs the question again of who gets to define what is hate speech. You know, these laws that are designed to chill, in my view, chill the right of assembly and petition and speech by making misdemeanors into felonies, by all kinds of little changes, little changes in wording that make big changes in law. They sound appealing for the moment. You know, my great fear is not that it'll be the dictator riding down the street on, you know, an Abrams battle tank that is a threat to the First Amendment, but it is even the well-meaning person. Let's set aside some nefarious. It's the well-meaning person who says, wouldn't we be better off if just we— and then, you know, take away protection for faiths that are not mainstream or that even seem unusual or bizarre. Uh, you know, uh, I, when I hear that sometimes that the First Amendment shouldn't protect these fringe and extreme faiths, I like to point out that in 1791, the 2 most fringe and extreme faiths in America were Baptists and Roman Catholics. Baptists, because they had this radical idea you could talk to God without going through a state-approved minister.

Okay.

And Roman Catholics with the usual canard about, you know, their allegiance to the Vatican and the Pope. Well, I don't think those 2 would have risen to become the 2 largest denominations in America had there not been a First Amendment protection. But people made a case in those days. These are fringe and extreme faiths. Oh my God. So we, you know, again, I think we have to think about that when we talk about limiting our freedoms or being fearful of people using them. The system works really well right now, despite the problems we have in the new technology, which does pose some new challenges. We have to, we have to, but, you know, we've, we spend a lot of time devolving or evolving in laws that protect our privacy, for example, which is not a First Amendment right, but First Amendment rights can intrude on that.

Right.

And 1891, Justice, would-be then, or future Justice Brandeis and his law partner did this great treatise on privacy. And they cited 2 great threats to privacy in their mind. One was mass circulation newspapers, because they could print your picture in it. And, you know, think about it, up until that time, only really your family and friends. And if you were rich enough to have maybe a portrait made, Right. Your image wasn't seen by anybody outside that circle. Suddenly, you know, a million people could see it. And the other one, I love this, was a telephone. Because as I think, as I believe Brandeis wrote in that or later, a gentleman knocks, and forgive me, a gentleman knocks upon the door and introduces themselves. And this device rings unbidden into the very bowels of your household. I mean, this was the great threat to privacy. We managed to deal with this, I think, you know. And I think we'll deal with these questions of new technology. We, you know, they're, they're 10 or 15 years old, if we really think about it.

Right.

That's a short amount of time for a whole society to adjust and set up new polite parameters. And, you know, adjust to this challenge for long-held values.

Okay. All right. We are already out of time. But I want to wrap up by just asking, is there anything we should have mentioned that we didn't? What do you want people to take away?

I, I, the First Amendment will survive if we protect it, and to protect it, we need to understand it. And to do that, I think we need to educate— I don't want to give up on adults, but we need to educate the younger generation as best we possibly can. So, um, I hope that people will champion that. And again, to keep in mind what— I love the point you made— we have rights, but we also have, I think, responsibilities that flow out of those rights.

And The Fair Media Council is a 501 nonprofit organization advocating for quality news and working to create a media-savvy society. For more information about the Fair Media Council and upcoming Fast Chat shows, check out fairmediacouncil.org.

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