Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Outsourcing Curation of Access to a Platform Is More Efficient than Crude Censorship
In 1975 Indira Gandhi declared a state of national emergency in India due to “internal disturbances caused by a Foreign Hand.” (She meant the CIA.)
It is widely believed that she actually declared The Emergency (ever since capitalized in India, like The War) because she had just been found guilty by the Supreme Court of using state machinery for electioneering, and she didn’t know what the personal or political consequences of that would be. Anyway, declare it she did and a wide range of civil liberties were suspended. More than 100,000 people were incarcerated as political prisoners over the next two years and there was a very murky forcible sterilization program implemented in parts of North India. In 1977, Indira Gandhi ended The Emergency, released all political prisoners, and called a general election in which her party (the Indian National Congress) was trounced and she lost her own seat.
The Janata Party, the coalition that won the election, managed to maintain their Parliamentary majority till 1980 when internal differences overcame them. They were forced to call an election, Indira Gandhi and the Congress were voted back into power, and the country slipped back into a stupor for the next few years.
My late father was a journalist who genuinely supported Indira Gandhi. During The Emergency, his star rose. He was a regular on Door Darshan (state-owned television) and the newspaper where he worked (privately owned by the Birlas, a very prominent family of industrialists) was happy to publish his political columns.
That changed rather sharply in 1977, when Door Darshan stopped calling, and the paper continued to employ him but stopped publishing his work (an increasingly pointed hint that he was, due to his circumstances, unable to take). The following two years were unpleasant for my family. Nobody arrested or tortured my father but he was harassed and bullied at work, and all of us were harassed at home by anonymous letters and threatening late-night phone calls. (I guess we were doxed before the internet.)
As we were listening to the results come in for the 1980 election, and it became apparent that Indira Gandhi would be baaaaack, the phone rang. It was, I guess predictably, Door Darshan. Would my father care to come in the next day to be a talking head? As it happened, he did not care to do so and slammed the phone down but that’s my abiding memory of the 1980 election.
Now there were plenty of Government orders to the media during The Emergency (cover this, don’t cover that, censor that story) but I’m pretty certain that nobody in the elected Government actually told the bureaucrats who ran Door Darshan when to call my father, when to stop calling him, and when to call him again. Similarly, nobody in Government told the Birlas to publish his work, or to stop publishing it, or to start publishing it again (which they did).
Nobody in Government had to make that call for these things to happen. They were done proactively to please the powers that be. It was the curating communication platform access equivalent of self-censorship. Like self-censorship, it was more efficient for the Government than crude censorship itself. And while censorship is an overt control of expression, proactively curating access to a communications platform is voluntary — in terms of the private sector, it’s hard to even argue that there’s a case to answer. It was the Birla’s own damn paper, after all. It was entirely up to them whom to publish and when and why. Right?
Arguably, it becomes murkier because of the role the media plays in forming national cultures and the national consensus. I absolutely believe that private companies have the right to do what they believe is in their own best interest (within the law), but I am not completely sure that this is always healthy for societies’ political cultures. In fact, I think that it can be profoundly bad for them.
Please take a moment, if you reside in the Blessed West, to congratulate yourself that you live in a country where overt censorship is largely limited to times of war. This is a Good Thing (even if times of war are increasingly vaguely defined: are we at war with Al Qaida and ISIS? Maybe? I don’t really know.)
But please also consider the role of self-censorship, and control of access to communications platforms, by privately owned media companies. With the move away from print media and even from network news, there are suddenly a whole lot more players involved — banning Milo Yiannopoulos or Laura Loomer from Twitter or Maffick Media from Facebook is more than irritating, hilarious, infuriating, or well-deserved (depending on who you are and what you think of them), it’s something that shapes the national conversation and therefore the national consensus.
As I said before, I really do believe that private companies have a right to take decisions which they believe are in their own best interests however they define them (advertising revenue, access to decision makers in the legislature, or just plain ideological beliefs). That is their absolute right and it strikes me as truly delusional when people act as if access to Twitter or Facebook (leave aside working at CNN) is a right rather than a commercial arrangement that involves two parties.
At the same time, access to these things has a huge impact on far more than private companies’ outcomes — it increasingly forms the culture and consensus of the country and (in these times) a linguistic sphere. I do find it problematic that this level of power resides in the hands of a few people who cannot be held to account for more than their companies’ bottom lines.
Any words of wisdom on how it can be resolved, Ricochet, or am I doomed to be tormented by this conundrum?
Published in Journalism
Its heartening to see people asking this question at the top level rather than just about the individual vs the company.
However, without a socially moral concensus, I see nothing changing here outside of law, and we don’t really want to legally enforce this.
But even the right disagrees on the importance of moral concensus. The left agrees, just their morality is an anchor-less moving target.
@zafar, thanks for this! If ‘journalistic objectivity’ is a convenient myth, then it seems we’re still in the days of media outlets – each and all – putting out a particular point of view for consumption. I, for one, would like to see the ‘myth’ I mentioned become reality; we deserve it: But how?…
I don’t think we can overcome human bias – it’s baked in the cake.
We can compensate for it by consuming a multiplicity of views – and that depends on one’s own diligence in compensating for confirmation bias – but it doesn’t address what viewpoints remain realistically available to consume and why/why not.
I’ve been thinking that the rights, e.g. the Freedom of Speech, also require of us a duty, that is to respect that right in others. This, by it’s nature, isn’t a duty which can be mandated legally, but one might accurately call out cowards who shirk that duty.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten.
I guess I’m looking for a sort of ‘Joe Friday’ journalism: “Just the facts, ma’am.”…The question then arises: “But, whose facts?” (Sigh)
Great post, Zafar. I hope this gets read–weekends can be slow on Ricochet. We’ve been having a rolling, roiling multi-thread discussion about media platforms, and this carries it deeper than most.
But I also admire the personal story, which I don’t recall you writing about before.
The solution to idealogical media, however imperfect, is alternative media. The left holds the high ground? We’ll have to win that back.
Zafar poses an undeniably tough problem; consider what makes it so. It’s not that the solution (participate in the society) or the anti-solution (regulate the society) are particularly hard to discern from conservative principles. It’s a hard problem because how to address information bias is, for most of us, the place where principle first meets practice, where it gets real. Our response to the first brush with reality mustn’t be to cry for mommy government to make it right.
It is not that straightforward.
Consider this Chomsky quote:
And consider that voices on the fringe of the national consensus, on the Right and on the Left are de-platformed. Essentially the boundaries of acceptable opinion for a whole society are being formed and policed more and more by [relatively few] private companies’ [often commercial] decisions rather than by its citizens as a whole.
From a CJR article on de-platforming:
That’s a lot of unaccountable power, even when I’m predisposed to be in sympathy with the outcome [Storm Front boohiss!], and power is (inevitably) corrupting.
I find that Conservatives are very switched on to this “power corrupts” thing with Governments, but perhaps a little blind to how power is power and it has the same tendency to corrupt private institutions. (Because: these both consist of imperfect people.) Governments are larger, but private institutions less accountable, and certainly not more intrinsically moral.
From the same article:
Which is okay re hate speech (wait, who defines this?) but what about if the same thing happened to a particular foreign or domestic policy agenda?
Great post. @zafar! The comment I pulled out really struck me. How we move forward will say a lot about our commitment to freedom of speech, on all sides. Thanks!
Great post, Zafar. Thanks!
No answers — I don’t know that there are aswers, and I certainly don’t have them — but some thoughts and observations:
Again, great post! Loved the historical and personal detail.
I was particularly fascinated by the idea that the government didn’t censor anyone, but, rather, the media anticipated what they believed the government would want, and fed the beast. Here our media pretty much does the same thing. However, a difference is that since our media is mostly leftwing it anticipates that the right will only hold power briefly, so it continues to feed the leftwing beast even when it is out of power, and works for its return to power.
Great post, very provocative.
The issue has become access to vehicles for self expression and it is a tough one.
Many on the Left want to shut down freedom of expression because they don’t want the ideas of freedom and free markets to counter the many years of leftist indoctrination so many have succumbed to in our schools and other institutions. The Left wants a controlled access to information where only political correct ideas are heard to maintain a pliant, political correct suppressed society they can control, not a free one. A free and open conversation is the last thing they want because they know given all the facts most will not choose their side of things.
The problem is that now certain Leftist controlled mega-corporations who control the vast majority of certain kinds of media have decided to deny access to those whom they disagree to those media platforms where conversations with the most reach and impact take place.
What is often lost in this debate is that under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, “publishers” of information provided by others on the internet were given liability protections not provided publishers of other media in the interest of keeping the internet free and open, and we now have those same internet providers given those protections abusing those protections to censor content. The simplest remedy that should be done at a minimum is to revoke those protections immediately, and rewrite that statute to protect the internet from censorship of the sort Google, Facebook, Twitter et al have been practicing.
Zaf,
First, totally amazing! I will never be able to imagine you the same again. What a wild roller coaster your family must have been on. They say Mrs. Ghandi came closest to truly ending Indian democracy. It says a great deal about the capacity of the Indian people to hold onto their integrity that Indian democracy is still healthy. Perhaps you have a special appreciation for the Churchill quote, “democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the others”.
As for your actual personal experience, as I listened to your description of Mrs. Ghandi I thought it sounded very objective. She became abusive to cover her own failings if I can sum it up a little. Yet, as massively as she was rejected, she and her party came back soon enough. I can’t help but ask questions.
During the worst of it what motivated your father to stay loyal to her?
Were you ever in disagreement with your father over Mrs. Ghandi or any other issue?
Did your father get a job working at another newspaper or get back on TV when his political misfortune returned to fortune?
If this is too personal then I’m sorry to bother you and don’t answer.
Regards,
Jim
Z, you ignored the part of my comment that calls for an answer and merely repeated your case for someone-with-authority-and-force (you avoid saying “government” explicitly) to take care of these troublesome things you find objectionable. I’ll answer again by repeating that 1) the answer is to participate not regulate, and 2) crying for mommy government to solve it for us is a totalitarian instinct.
So assume facebook & twitter will become irrelevant in five years or so. What will political communication look like?
Just so. How much principle are we willing to expend to try to make the fad of the day treat us “fairly”?
I don’t have an answer, hence my conundrum torment.
I agree that the answer is to participate, but my point was that we all participate de facto at the pleasure of a few individuals who decide what goes.
Sure they’re mostly hands off – and that’s the market place for sure – but it is (as per examples) dicey for both Left and the Right views outside the consensus.
So I don’t think you have an answer either?
@jamesgawron – I was about 11 so a lot of it was not on my radar. I grew more critical of IG’s impact as i grew older – but the most powerful argument in her favour remained the actual alternatives. She was the daughter of Ataturk to the Stream of Erdogans that followed. IMHO.
“As I said before, I really do believe that private companies have a right to take decisions which they believe are in their own best interests however they define them”
Well, we may have an instance of the Agency Problem here. Since companies aren’t conscious beings, they don’t make any decisions per se, but decisions are made for them by executives who have a responsibility to act in the best interests of the shareholders. It is really not clear to what degree the free-speech-related decisions being made by the top executives of Twitter (to take one example) are motivated by legitimate financial reasons versus pursuit of personal political beliefs.
Of course I do, I said it twice. It’s just not for you. Do you want so badly for someone to solve it for you that you’re willing to grant that someone explicit control?
Zaf,
OK, 11 is too early to critically evaluate politics. I don’t have much respect for any of my opinions until about 20. Even then they took a very long time to mature. However, I think you are too critical of modern India. After all Ataturk’s daughter wasn’t Ataturk. I think some of India’s moderns, Modi, have a lot going for them.
Strangely, India is one of the few countries that give me a feeling of a huge unknown potential that could be very good for the Indians and the rest of us. At least they still have a sense of humor.
Regards,
Jim
No idea, but the same tension between expression and control will remain, don’t you think?
Sorry, I missed it. What is the solution?
To use the tools in front of us to (in general) educate and persuade, and (specifically) in this case to go around the gatekeepers. I don’t use Google’s services or Facebook, and I don’t feel the lack.
And a part of the solution is to not perpetuate the very thing that’s at the root of the problem. The problem is not the fact that the lefties at Big Digital don’t play nice and fair. They’re just doing what people of the left do. The root of the problem is that weak people feel it’s ok to use force to get their way, which is to say they want to bring everything under the umbrella of government. That’s how we get overweening government and a docile people, suitable for shearing.
It’s funny – weak people are afraid of the strong, but it’s always the weak that initiate violence and wreck things.
Government is force. It is not the appropriate tool to address private sector censorship. As a moral matter, the use of force to get one’s viewpoint heard is not civilized behavior. Nobody owes us a platform.
Yes, government does represent the weak. It is how the individual asserts their rights against a stronger opponent. Our founding fathers recognized this by doing their best to set up a government for the people by the people.
Your words sound like principled libertarianism, but the bottom line is, government (while sorely abused) is the only way for individuals to secure their rights. Why? Because the individual has limited ability to defend himself against a larger, more powerful aggressor.
This is why small government only works among a people constrained by common morals and ethics – because the morals and ethics constrain our behavior so we dont seek a collective alliance to do it. If a large enough group of individuals sees their rights being trampled, they will collectively form to secure their way of life.
It’s why we (the people) have a right to determine who participates in our alliance, because different values and goals ultimately weaken the morals and ethics that constrain us.
This is why the extreme side of libertarianism ultimately leads to tyranny, because without constraint, you have tyrants seeking to control others.
Oh kayy.
I think it might get worse. We should try to figure out what’s likely to come.
We live in a time of unprecedented freedom – for better and for worse. (But I wouldn’t trade it, mind you.)
That includes the greatest diversity of political expression we have ever enjoyed, something that has exponentially grown with technology. Suddenly everybody can have their voice heard in a quasi public manner (be it an ever so humble blog), and so we find it problematic when this is limited in any way. It’s a worthy concern, and if it can happen to somebody it can happen to anybody, but I think we should keep it in perspective.
For every advance in this kind of freedom there’s a reaction to limit and control it. (De-platforming people is an inevitable iteration of this.) And every advance has been in part driven by trying to get around new limits and controls.
Governments and Churches used to control the information we got. (Governments still do, to some degree.) But that mattered less because, in addition to limiting their power legally, societies generated other translators and creators of political reality – newspapers. Whose control over the curation of information was in turn undermined by radio and television. Whence cable and online websites. Whence social media. And at the same time the locus of the production of information that made sense of the world became multipolar and diffuse.
To grossly simplify: the world understood the First Gulf War via CNN. There was CNN and Aljazeera for the Second Gulf War, when it comes to Syria there are more options than I can immediately think of, including individual blogs. All this growth driven at least in part to evade the irresistable urge to control what is presented (and known and therefore thought).
I have no idea what form it will take, but I believe that the next format of political communication that trends will be something that functionally evades the controls that large companies like Twitter or Facebook have over the most independent public voices today. As these do it will hide in the white noise of ordinary online (or whatever that evolves to) social and economic life. And without a doubt somebody will try and control and limit that too. Resulting in the next iteration.
And all of this has its down side. Communal violence in India now looks like Kishinev with mobile phones and computer generated lists of names and addresses. That is also political expression of a sort – and trying to control it is completely understandable and arguably noble, albeit frequently misguided. So there’s that as well. The consistent thread of physical reality – where the rubber hits the road.
I’m not sure this Whig theory of history of information even accounts for the rise of modern tyrannies, themselves children of the new freedoms. I’m not sure it could justify hope that things won’t get worse rather than better-