But Lizzie, Brianna's point - in my understanding - is less that journalists today are more prone to misinformation than journalists of the past, and more that the impact of misinformation on the public imagination is much greater in a society built around a free and instantaneous system of communications. There is actually some empirical evidence supporting this argument and, although it is not a convenient one for those of us who believe in the inherent goodness of a free and open internet, I do believe it is one we must address. True, politicians have always lied and journalists have always reported those lies, but there is merit to the contention that today's politicians have a much easier time stating factual inaccuracies and being rewarded for it - a reality largely tied to the rapid pace with which the digital media alters the political and media landscape. None of this bears any relationship to secret algorithms - the Internet itself is the source of the underlying problem.

Our response to this argument, as I understand it, is that, if the internet is made fully free and fully open, democracy will dilute objectionable content and thereby lower its impact. So this argument might proceed, the closed internet is dominated by profit-driven media outlets who report disproportionately on what produces "shock value," and - to the extent that volume of media exposure, positive or negative, is directly correlated with poll standing - there is a strong incentive for politicians to make statements that are ridiculous and dishonest. As your Wikileaks example shows, one can imagine that in a fully free and fully open internet, where the goal of profit is decoupled from the practice of journalism, the proportion of media coverage directed toward deceptive behavior would be lower, and mendacious candidates would not succeed as they do now.

That's all well and good - and I do not think Brianna disagrees with us on any of the above points - but the reality on the ground is that we do not have a fully free and fully open Internet, and there is little reason to believe that it will arrive before the November elections. I think this is where the discussion of hate speech law in the original piece comes from. We can fight for an open internet all we want, but in the meantime we should not have to accept as inevitable that politicians will be bigoted and hateful to win media coverage. It is difficult not to sympathize with this concern, even if one disagrees with the proposed solution on social libertarian grounds. As the articles I linked to indicate, simply attaching "fact-checking" disclaimers to shocking statements made by politicians does not appear to affect political outcomes, so something more drastic is needed. Based on this discussion, what I am now interested in is whether there is revolutionary potential in morally-driven journalists employed by profit-driven outlets to simply refuse to print content that is dishonest and objectionable.

-Shay