[tareqak]

There was one idea that came to mind when I read The Second Half of Watergate Was Bigger, Worse, and Forgotten by the Public posted here 8 days ago [0][1]. The first part of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) requires corporations to keep accurate financial records in order to not be able to hide bribes [2]. If a corporation can be compelled to be truthful in their financial records, then why can't a news organization be compelled to be truthful when proclaiming to disseminate news? If the news organization still wanted to publish something inaccurate, then they could label it as satire, but at least they would have surrender the appearance of being truthful. I understand that there would be freedom-of-speech / first amendment implications, but isn't a public financial record a kind of speech and corporations are effectively being told how to say (be truthful) what they want to say (their finances)?

My idea definitely sounds a little far-fetched even to me, but I'd appreciate any input, additions, or criticism that anyone might have.

[0] https://longreads.com/2018/11/20/the-second-half-of-watergat...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18498796

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act

[matt4077]

Among other things, this would open the door to the government demand access to the identity of whistleblowers.

It also doesn't actually address the problem. The news media, when properly defined, doesn't actually lie.

Now that statement needs some qualifications: by "news media" I'm referring to Fox News and everything better. Fox, being the worst case here, actually takes great care to label their primetime 360-minutes-hate as opinion. It's just very easy to rephrase a lie: "Is Obama a muslim, or even a vegetarian? These are questions many people are asking!".

It's infowars and the like where actual lying happens. But those programs could just as easily add such caveats. And the sort of campaign this paper mentions simply happens on anonymously registered domains with no business (or any) presence in the US, or entirely on social media.

Ultimately, the problem is people that want to indulge their fantasies, and want to be lied to. No sane person would watch a red-faced lunatic alternatively sell herbal remedies for athlete's foot and accuse Hillary Clinton of running a ring of pedophiles from a pizza place and consider it a quality news source.

[r00fus]

Isn't the issue that sometimes Fox (and even the current Press secretary) will actually take Infowars content and rebadge it as news?

Just saying they can spout it as "opinion" is like allowing usurious click-wrap agreements - everyone will just click through because it's "all opinion all the time".

[JediWing]

Lots of risk to free speech, with little benefit. Who decides the truth? All the same problems with automatic/AI approaches to fact-checking are repeated but in the legal arena.

Also, I don't think it's really comparable to say "hey make sure what you say about the money receive is true", vs. "hey make sure everything you say is true"

[wahern]

> Who decides the truth?

A jury? In most Western societies the final arbiter of "truth" in a legal dispute is the court, usually the judge but (especially in the U.S.) the jury. If the court's fact finder says the sky isn't blue then the sky isn't blue, period, at least in the context of the dispute. This is one of the principle roles of the courts, and it's why the judiciary is supposed to be independent of the executive organs.

The U.S. is unique in holding journalists and politicians to a lower standard of truth. The U.K. has tough defamation laws that are arguably abused to quiet newspapers, but even so it's a stretch to equivocate the state of free speech in the U.K. to authoritarian societies. That is to say, few people would argue that U.K. citizens don't as a general matter enjoy free speech rights commensurate with American citizens.

A legal principle like defamation, however, requires a cognizable injury to a particular person. It's difficult to pin point the injuries caused by any particular piece of fakes news, so you may have to loosen that standard if you want to encompass fake news. Recognizing, e.g., injuries to the public can be dangerous. OTOH the requirement of intent can help to reign that in.

[humanrebar]

> ...why can't a news organization be compelled to be truthful when proclaiming to disseminate news?

In addition to the other free speech concerns already covered, it's worth noting that "freedom of the press" is not about The Media, but about written and disseminated speech. Everyone who tweets is exercising her freedom of the press.

It would be horrible and impossible for the government to make sure every blog post and tweet were truthful. And an incomplete attempt to ensure truthful speech would result in an arbitrary or corrupt result, which can easily be worse than not attempting the censorship in the first place.

[tareqak]

I definitely see what you are saying, but I think it would be similar to the FCAP in terms of who would be affected. The accounting provision of the FCAP applies to companies that list securities in the US. Similarly, news organizations (radio, TV, newspapers) could be held accountable depending on how big their audience is estimated to be.

One way to look at it could be like "Shouting fire in a crowded theater", which is not protected speech [0]. What if a newspaper persuaded people to do just that, but it itself did not do that? Basically, how far can someone stretch the imminent part of "imminent lawless action" such that it does not fall afoul of the law, but becomes operationally reliable to achieve some goal [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

[dragonwriter]

> One way to look at it could be like "Shouting fire in a crowded theater", which is not protected speech

Referring to Schenck v. US on the bounds of Constitutional free speech is like citing Plessy v. Ferguson on permissible racial segregation.

[tareqak]

I didn't mean to cause offense. If you could please show me where I went wrong here, then I'd appreciate it.

[humanrebar]

I'm saying anyone with a newsletter, blog, Twitter account, or Facebook feed is potentially "the press". As is any company that issues press releases, which is just about every company. To pick an example, President Trump reaches more people than your local paper. Do we think a Trump will have the same accountability in truthfulness?

[harimau777]

To play devil's advocate to some of the responses to this post: What if instead of requiring news organizations to report the truth, we instead forbid them from reporting facts that are untrue?