EP 976 Does America Have Too Many Free Speech Pessimists?

 America’s First Amendment is a model of free speech protection unparalleled across the globe.  Yet, the United States saw the third largest decline in free speech between 2021 and 2024.  And 2024 marked the 19th consecutive year in which civil and political rights declined globally.  While it may seem paradoxical that while the new voices who are speaking out on unregulated platforms seem to proliferate daily so are attempts to monitor, filter and block content. Or at least encouraging people with large platforms to give their audiences over to purveyors to speech which is objectionable to many.  Our guest, Jeff Kosseff, and his co-author, Jacob Mchangama, in their new book “The Future of Free Speech,” call on us to become better informed consumers of what we read and watch but to avoid the desire to have the government censor content.  More speech is the antidote to what is a growing public sentiment about our public discourse.  As one who grew up in an era of fewer choices and more gatekeepers, who curated our news, I am torn between the benefits of our ‘say anything’ culture and the perils of out and out censorship.  Clearly, I do not want government limiting speech, but I do wish that those who platform certain speech, and we as consumers, were able to develop policies and make decisions that do not further inflame our fragile democracy at this moment.  Civil discourse anyone?  We try here.

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