Stuff You Should Know - How Freedom of the Press Works

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

Countries around the world – capitalist democracies to communist unitary states – guarantee a free press in their constitutions. It turns out, though, that there is a galaxy of methods for subverting a free press. Find out why that matters in this episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know, Constitutional Professors Edition.

All right. Yeah, that's the best I could come up with on such short notice. I only had a couple days to think of it. Yeah, this one was sort of depressing for me. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Because we're talking about freedom of the press and while we have that in the United States, I mean, I guess we can go ahead and spoil a little bit. If you look at rankings of freedoms of the presses worldwide, we're not near the top of that list, my friend. No, the Reporters Without Borders is a French organization. They basically rate the press freedoms, I guess, in 180 different countries. Yeah, the freedom. As either hot or not. Yeah, who wore it best. Yeah, right. So that's basically the

state of the press anyway. So the United States is number 44 in 2021. Yeah. It's actually down two slots. It used to be 42 for a few years before that. So if you want to know more about that, check out the World Press Freedom Index because it goes into a lot more detail. And who's number one, of course? Number one is Finland, right? Yeah. I mean, the top five is riddled with countries in that area, as always. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Costa Rica. They get it all right. Costa Rica, that was a wild card, but good for them. Yeah, but it's nice to see. Yeah, hats off, Costa Rica. But yeah, it's like you said, in the United States, we absolutely,

without question, have guaranteed freedom of the press. But in practice, it's a much, much different thing altogether. There's a lot of different ways that the press can be limited in what it says for good or bad. I mean, there are definitely times where it's like, yeah, that's not really anything that anyone needs to know about necessarily, especially like, say, reporting on the failings of a private citizen or something like that. But overall, the idea of a press reporting of journalism that is just able to really get to the heart of a matter and explain it without restriction on what it says or how it explains it or what it talks about, it's really, really important. And we definitely equate it with

democracy. It's like one of the pillars of a free society is a free press. And we also kind of trace it, Chuck, back to the First Amendment. And it definitely was enshrined there. But even after the First Amendment was created in the Bill of Rights in what, 1787, America was like, okay, we put that in there. Let's just forget about it for a century or so. Yeah. I mean, it's been what Paul McCartney would call a long and winding road. Okay. That's a song by the Beatles, by the way. I got you. I figured that from context. They've never heard it.

I also figured from context that I probably wouldn't like that song. Oh, it's a great song. So should we go back in time and sort of poke around in the beginnings? Yeah, because it's not like America came up with that, right? No, of course not. What I love, like kind of one of my favorite things every time we talk about the beginnings of the printed word is the fact that, and this was starting in the 15th century, when the printing press became a big thing, like, and one of the reasons for creating the printing press, like some of the very first things were people writing about, and writers were usually also printers, but people writing about criticisms of either the church or the government,

a lot of times those were kind of one in the same. And it's kind of cool to look back and think all the way back then, one of the big reasons the printed word existed and became so widespread was so people could talk to one another when they had sometimes despotic government looming over them. Yeah. So if you were the head of a despotic government with a suddenly printing press in your country, you wanted to try to limit that as much as you can. You wanted to destroy that printing press probably. Right, right, exactly. So you would have laws that basically said no one can release a book until the government has read it and signed off on it, laws like that. There were also criminal

laws. I believe in England there was seditious libel and blasphemous libel, and libel was basically not exactly libel as we understand it today. It was, if you say anything mean or bad or critical of either the government or the church, even if it's true, you can go to jail for that. Even if it's true. Yeah, factual, printing factual things. Yeah, which is so contrary to the concept of any kind of freedom, especially freedom of speech or freedom of the press as we understand it today, but that was just kind of how things were for a good century or so after the printing press was created. Yeah, and one of the big turning points, and these guys really, it's amazing how hard they nailed it so long ago, but there were these

SAS named John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon who wrote for in the American colonies, Britain's American colonies, between the 17, early 1720s, or I guess it was all in the early 1720s, and they wrote under a pseudonym what was called the Kato's letters and named after, obviously, the Roman statesmen, but they really nailed the fact right out of the gate that free speech is an essential thing and citizens being able to communicate with one another. Of course, back then it was like a letter that you would print up and nail up on a wall or you would have chain letters that people would forward to one another. It was sort of like they're forwarding an email back then, but people, the citizenry of the world needed to be able to

speak to one another about their grievances and not have their voices squashed. I think they even, they talked about libel, they said it's wrong to criticize private and personal failings, even of public figures, and citizens must be free to discuss officials' actions when they affect people. This wasn't a notion like, I think you sent me that extra thing that said, prior to this, the notion of free speech wasn't even like a political rallying cry. No, it just wasn't a thing. You can basically say that Trenchard and Gordon essentially made it up or put better, they discovered it, the importance of it. The importance that they placed on it was twofold. One, they said, people need information because the more information you give the general

public, the better the decisions that they're going to make are. In a democracy, if you're letting the general public vote on stuff, they need to be informed. You just can't keep a lid on facts. The other thing that they said too that was really, really important is they said, free speech is so important that even the person whose opinions you disagree with should have freedom of speech. That was a mind-blowing new concept because in the colonies, prior to that, it was a lot like it is today. I should have free speech, but if I don't agree with you, you shouldn't. Yeah. I feel like this stuff really hits home for me and for us as a show because even though we're not journalists and we never claim to be, we're not a new show,

I feel like we've always championed the idea of knowledge as power, or kind of going back to the kids. What was that? Was that? Kids in the hall? Negunis? No. Scooby-Doo. No, I feel like it was a kid's educational knowledge as power. Was it? Saved by the Bell. Yeah, Saved by the Bell. That's what it was. Screech said that at the end of every episode. Oh, you're talking about the more you know?

No, I'm talking about the literally knowledge as power. It might have been in schoolhouse rock. It might have been one of their things. But anyway, this just hit home for me because I feel like we've always tried to be a show that we get stuff wrong here and there, but we try to spread facts about things and it's not newsy related always. Sometimes it is, but just about the world, like the more you know, the better off you are as a human. Yeah, like I said, the more you know with a star overhead. A big early victory legally speaking came in 1735. There was a, again, a journalist who was also a printer name, John Peter Zinger. He's really good with a joke at a cocktail party.

That's where that comes from. Hey yo, that was his catchphrase. So he was printing attacks on, believe it or not, William Cosby was the guy's name. Those Cosby's are always up to something. Yeah, I don't think he went by Bill, but this was the colonies governor, New York's governor at the time, and he was arrested, jailed for libel for about 10 months and managed to beat the rap at the trial. Even though he was acquitted, it's kind of confusing because he was acquitted on the grounds that he was printing factual things. But as we said before, like even if you were printing factual

things that didn't matter, this particular jury just chose to ignore that. Yeah, as jury notification, they said, we think this law is wrong. They were convinced of it by a guy named Andrew Hamilton, who became Zinger's lawyer after his first two lawyers were disbarred by the judge in the case for questioning the judge's conflict of interest. And it was like quite a conflict of interest. Chuck, the whole thing was over the removal of a judge that Governor Cosby found troublesome. And his replacement was the judge that was hearing this case, trying the guy who printed stuff about how corrupt that removal of the judge was. That's how screwed up this case was. And Andrew Hamilton still managed to get the

jury to ignore the law and to quit Zinger, which was a huge deal. It didn't immediately open the floodgates. And now all of a sudden there was just press freedom everywhere. But it definitely laid a foundation or helped build on the foundation that Trenchard and Gordon had first elucidated just a few decades before. And there's just a few years after that, Chuck. Sweden, I guess, heard about all of the hubbub going on in the American colonies and said, we want to be first. First, Sweden likes to do that and comments on the internet. They just write first everywhere. Yeah. They said, yeah, sure. That's not wrong to say. Surely the Swedes have a good sense of humor about that, right? We'll find out.

Maybe. Do we have listeners there? Sure. All right. I don't know that we've ever, I don't remember any emails from Sweden. We call them the dozen. Yeah, the dozen, the dirty dozen. Although they're very clean people. That's right. The fastidious dozen. So yeah, this was in December 1766. They were the first country to pass the Freedom of Press Act, but it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. They still censor things. They basically put the onus on the publishers instead of the government to censor things. So, you know, good for you in a way, Sweden, but this is just part of that long and winding road. But one thing that that act also did was say, if you're a citizen of Sweden,

you have a right to access government documents to see what your government's doing. So, in one way, it was not at all helpful. In another way, it was pretty sweeping, you know? Yeah, sure. And then Virginia said, all right, well, Sweden was first in the world. We want to be first in the colonies. I guess the states because they, no, I guess it would have been the colonies still because they came up with part of their charter or they made an amendment to their charter that said, we really like what Trenchard and Gordon came up with. We like what Zinger stood for. And we're going to include the idea that, quote, freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks for liberty. And that can never be restrained, but by despotic governments.

So, they're saying like, if you have freedom of the press, freedom of speech, like that will actually defend liberty by holding despotism at bay. Because if people know, and this is the basis of all this, Chuck, if people know what's going on, they will hold people to account. If people don't know what's going on, people who are attracted to power tend to go toward the dark side. Yeah. I mean, that's really it. It's, again, knowledge is power. Well, we'll get to all that because there are certain nations of the world that don't do that and we see it playing out all the time. Right. The USA, you know, you think when we got the First Amendment going on that, hey, it's all, it's all great now. But as you hinted at earlier, it would be 100 plus years

until there were truly sort of like protections for the press seven years after the First Amendment was born. It was just a little baby in first or second grade. Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1798 and, you know, said, we can deport you, we can find you, we can imprison you. If you publish false scandalous or malicious writing, and, you know, scandalous and malicious are very broad terms to use when you're saying like, if you print that against the federal government, then that's, you know, something we can do bad things to you for. Right. And it just lasted a few years, that particular act, but it would come up again later on in a different form. Right. And also just a little tidbit on that, that act was passed by the federalists who were in

power. They had the White House and Congress, and they passed that act in part to hold that power, to maintain that power, to keep from being criticized in the press. And apparently the early Americans found out about this, what was going on, and they disliked that law so much that they actually voted the federalists out of office, and that's how Jefferson became president. That's right. That's a nice little anecdote. Yeah, and it backfired. That's what happens when you try to put a stranglehold on the power. People say nay. People say nay, and I say, let's take a break. Okay. Let's get those dinner party invitations going and get Zinger on the list. And we'll be right back.

You've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to

father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We need to talk a little bit about the Supreme Court of the United States. Because here's where it all really begins. Yeah. They factor in, obviously, pretty large here. Well, I mentioned the Sedition Act. There was another Sedition Act that came along in 1918, which, again, criminalized a lot of political speech. And this is pretty broad as well. It was a crime to willfully utter, print, write, or publish disloyal, very vague, profane, not as vague, scurrilous, super vague, or abusive language,

a little bit vague, about the form of government of the United States or to speak out against war. And they went after people. They prosecuted close to 2,000 people under the Sedition Act and the Espionage Act. And the Supreme Court upheld some of these, but it at least got them talking. Yeah. So that's a really critical thing, is the Supreme Court at the time was like, we generally agree with that law. But all of this, all these cases that were reaching the Supreme Court at the time about freedom of speech. Yeah. Like you said, it got them talking and in particular, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Lewis Brandeis kind of banded together and brought their rather considerable juristic minds to bear on the idea of free speech and

freedom of the press and like what that meant and what protections it should have. And they used their tenure on the Supreme Court to basically establish precedent in the United States that said everything you understand about freedom of speech and freedom of the press, we're going to basically enshrine together through some, basically opinions, not even necessarily like descending opinions. Sometimes they appended their support for upholding somebody being convicted under the Sedition Act or Espionage Act. But they would say things like, if you put people out there and let them talk, you're going to have like an exchange of ideas and the best ideas are going to bubble to the top. And so this whole idea of freedom of speech

that led up to Oliver Wendell Holmes, that it was a personal liberty that you were guaranteed in an hypocrisy, they said, yeah, true. In addition to that, it's actually a common good if you have free speech because the best idea can be compared and compete against rival ideas and the one that suits society best can win the day because it's been debated and hashed out in the marketplace of ideas. Right. And Holmes championed the marketplace of ideas idea, but that was originally uttered by another justice, right? Yeah, William O. Douglas in the 50s, so about 40 years after that, but a lot of people credit Oliver Wendell Holmes for coming up with that. Yeah, he just liked to wear it on his robe,

on the back of his robe. In rhinestones. Oh man, that'd be nice. So 1964 comes another big milestone. Supreme Court heard New York Times v. Sullivan and this was pretty interesting and this was, boy, this was a big one because this is where we finally got the idea that libel isn't just a word that means you said something mean libel means that you had actual malice behind it and that is still the standard by which we judge libel. This was an ad in 1960 in the New York Times. It was run by the, it was, or I guess, paid for by civil rights advocates and it was criticizing officials in the South for violating civil rights, but it had a few factual inaccuracies inaccuracies in there, one of which was how many times Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested.

So they didn't take kindly to that down there. There was a police commissioner in Alabama that filed the defamation lawsuit. Alabama Supreme Court agreed with them, but then the U.S. Supreme Court went on to overturn that ruling with just a milestone majority opinion, which was, you know, actual malice has to be proven and it's on you to prove that they meant to have malice and that is, was a huge, huge, and continues to be a huge deal. Yeah, because prior to that, it was, you know, up to this, this decision, if you said anything wrong and there was any kind of factual error in it, you were at fault and that would have an enormous chilling effect on the press.

Sure, yeah. And that's a huge deal. That's like part and parcel with protecting press freedom is to also guard against a chilling effect that can happen where that kind of comes about when things are unclear, when you're not quite certain of where the line is or anything like that, people start to kind of COA, you know? Yeah. And so they prevented that by saying, no, now it's on the person who has supposedly been defamed to prove that that person willfully reported facts that they knew were wrong.

Then you've got slander, then you've got libel, but up to that point, if you can't prove that, then you're, you're in the clear press. Yeah. And here's the thing, like this was a big deal because humans make mistakes. Right. I think there's been, not I think, it's pretty clear over the past, oh, I don't know, five years or so, there's been this notion that the press purposefully gets things wrong to back up whatever opinion they have on something. And by and large, journalists in the United States do have integrity and they want true journalists, not, you know, entertainment journalism, but true journalists want to get things right because their reputation is at stake.

And the publications they work for, their reputation is at stake. And you were a journalist for a while. I was a journalist for a while. You want to get this stuff right. And if you don't, you can't have a law hanging above you. What you do is you make it right and you print retractions and say, I goofed up, but it's just, it's, yeah, I can't stay on this soapbox because it was like onion juice will start squirting out of my pores. Yeah. I'm not sure what that means. Wow. That was really grody. I was trying to just think of something disgusting. Yeah. Well, you nailed it on the head, Charles. That was really good work. Yeah. The problem with that though, the last part that you hit upon is the retraction

and seeing you goofed up. Those are a few and far between and when they are done, they're, yeah. So there's not enough effort to restore someone's good name if it's been besmirched to get all 19th century on you through retractions, through things like that and making an effort to say, hey, we actually really got this wrong. I think it's gotten better with the internet because it's printed below the article that got it wrong initially. They'll say this was incorrect. Yeah, totally. So it's gotten way better, but back in the days of print only or even network TV, like those retractions were just so far separated from the actual error that they might as well just not connected them at all. So what, let's talk a little bit about

the Pentagon papers because that was another, I feel like I had an extra P in there. I didn't say pinupon, did I? No. Okay. I can't get past onion juice. Why did that come out of my mouth? That was so weird. It came out of your mouth, your pores, your ears. Oh my God. Your anus. Oh boy. Yeah, let's talk about the Pentagon papers in 71. What was that all about? Well, so what was his name? The Ford exec who was William McNamara. Yeah. He was the fog of war guy, right? Yeah. Yeah. He ordered like basically a 47 volume exhaustive investigation in history of the United States involvement in Vietnam from World War II onward. I think this was the 60s, up to the late 60s, early 70s. And there was this researcher who

worked on it for the Pentagon. His name was Daniel Ellsberg. He was super into the idea that the United States was fighting the good fight in Vietnam. But the more he helped compile this and the more like of the horrors and the atrocities that he saw, he became really, he became a conscientious objector in a way and turned into a whistleblower and handed over this super secret classified 47 volume document to the New York Times who started publishing articles on it. That's right. And the U.S. Department of Justice originally got a temporary restraining order saying you can't do this. It boils down to national security basically. And then we get the case, the New York Times company, the United States, quite a foe. And the Supreme Court said in a

6-3 ruling, United States, you didn't prove that these articles harm national security. And these are in fact protected under the First Amendment. And not only that, Justice Potter Stewart wrote these very wise words, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in, again, an enlightened citizenry and an informed and critical public opinion which alone can hear protective eyes of democratic government. Right. And so you can see from Justice Potter Stewart's like little note basically is opinion when the government brings cases like these, it really opens itself up for the Supreme Court to tee off on free speech and freedom of

the press. And there's a good example of the government not doing that to not set itself up so that it can keep that line blurry so that it can create a chilling effect with journalists. And that's with the fact that they've never prosecuted a journalist for publishing leaked information. Yeah. By not doing that, they've never set themselves up for the Supreme Court to say irrefutably, yes, journalists can do this, journalists don't worry about that anymore, you can't be prosecuted for that. Right. The fact that no one ever has means that there's still a possibility that with the right case, the government could get you, you could go to prison even though, generally, the way that things go is you're not even

prosecuted, it's not viewed as illegal, but there's no precedent. So by not setting a precedent, either way, the government has that thread of prosecuting you hanging over journalists' heads and it makes some journalists think twice before accepting leaked and classified materials. Right. I guess we kind of teased earlier that some nations are, I guess you could say, a bit more threatening than others or controlling. China, obviously, is a country that, in their constitution, they technically include the right to freedom of the press, but it is a country that is so highly regulated under the thumb of their Communist Party that they just squash reports, they stop things from running, everything to them, it seems like falls

under the banner that it would harm the country. And the Great Firewall, while we've talked about before, I don't even think our podcast is available there if I'm not mistaken, right? I don't know. For one point it wasn't. I don't know. Probably won't be after today. And some have argued that there is now a nation of young people, not all of them, but a lot of them that have bought into this and that this has had the exact effect that China wants to have and that they believe the Communist Party's propaganda machine and they'll report their professors, they'll report on their friends or family if they deviate from that party line. And it's scary, man.

Yeah. And there's, Olivia helps us with this. And she cited a researcher from China, Yaqui Wang, who just a good decade before today was studying in China and was free on the internet and social media to criticize the government to trade ideas, that kind of thing. And because of activities like hers, the Communist Party said, no, we cannot allow that. And in just a decade, they've managed to completely transform the minds of the younger generation in China from what our media tells us. Yeah. And then obviously the same thing has gone on and is currently going on in Russia, notably with the invasion of Ukraine. If you ask the Russian state run media is basically saying, this is just a limited military operation. We're trying to get

the Nazis out of Ukraine. And a lot of people buy that they're, you know, we're a handful of independent news sources. But you know, because of murder, and which, which happens, I think the UN says between 2006 and 2020, more than 1200 journalists all over the world have been killed and murdered for their reporting. 90% of those crimes went unpunished. So with that threat hanging over Russia, the same effect has happened over there. There are a lot of young people in Russia that, that believe that what's going on Ukraine is no big deal and fully justified. Well, it's that's what happens when you have a government that has a stranglehold on media and can just control what you see or hear. There's just no other ideas that can make their

way in. It's, it's really staggering. It also makes you wonder like, gosh, you know, what all don't we know? Yeah, for sure. And you know, this is not me just going off on an opinion I have. But in 2019, we had a president of these United States that publicly announced and floated the idea of a state-run media here. So the thing is, Chuck, if you go, if you look at the Chinese constitution, you'll see that there is a right to a free press that it's in there. Yeah. But they use the Great Firewall of China called the Golden Shield there. They use propaganda. They use lawsuits, things like that, I think you said, to basically reverse that, not on paper, just in practice, right? Yeah. In the United States, we have a very robust guarantee that's been supported time and

time and time and time again by the Supreme Court, by laws that protect people for, in their right to speak. And we're still hashing it out. But generally, we have a very free press in the United States. The thing is, that's not to say that we have a truly opaque and impartial press in the United States. The press can still be limited in a number of different ways, even without direct government intervention in their activities and what they report on. All right. I think it's a great cliffhanger. People are probably wondering, what in the heck is going on here? And we'll let you know right after this. If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was

born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. So that was a pretty big cliffhanger. The horse went over the cliff with us on it. How will we land, Chuck? How will we land? Hopefully safely. All right. Well, how about this? Parachutes for both. So really, what about the horse? Yeah, for both. The horse and us. Oh, we're sharing a parachute? No. You and I are on a horse. Right. We have two parachutes. The horse. The horse has one. Okay. So parachutes for all. Yeah. All three of us are landing safely.

Originally, in my mind's eye, we were each on our own horse, but then I thought it'd be fun to share a horse. Yeah. Yeah. It's like an oversized horse. Yeah. And I get to ride in the back. I want to hug you around the waist. No, that's totally fine. The parachute, though, for the horse has to be much larger than either of our parachutes. Is it larger size? It's larger and it obviously is attached between us because we don't want to tip off, even though we have our own parachute. We want to go down as a nice little threesome. So the horse's parachute is what connected around like maybe like a girdle or something like that. And then our parachutes are connected to the horse's parachute?

No, no, no. I think how it works is, I've seen this before, the horse's parachute is integrated into the saddle. Okay. Sort of between you and I. It's a two-person saddle. And then you and I have just regular parachutes, but we are then also strapped to the horse and saddle. So we're being supported by the horse's parachute in addition to our own parachutes? Yeah, we're kind of like the backup. Okay, I got you. So now that we've landed safely in the horses trotting us along again, a really good example of indirect government intervention and self-censorship of the press comes at times when there's like a war or something. And a good example of that came after 9-11,

where basically the entire United States media said, just tell us what to do. What do you want from us as a government? We're going to completely just listen because we're feeling particularly patriotic right now. Yeah, it's sort of easy to forget that. But there was a, from University of Pittsburgh, there was a scholar there named Gordon R. Mitchell who described that reporting as the spiral of self-censorship. And I guess, you know, I just didn't remember it that way. But when you look back at things like Dan Rather being on David Letterman, Dan Rather, and saying George Bush is the president, wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where and

he'll make the call. We'll do whatever is our patriotic duty. It's easy to kind of forget that was a sentiment at the time. And everybody was lining up to say, hey, you got it. What do you want us to say? Yeah, I remember there was like a benefit concert in a few days of 9-11 for like the first responders. And Richard Geer came out on stage and he asked everyone to please. He knows that we're hurting and he knows that we're angry, but he's asking us to channel all this into love, into a peace rather than hatred. And he got booed off the stage by everybody in New York at the time. And that was totally a sentiment. Like people like Richard Geer didn't say things like that or nobody else after Richard Geer did, except for apparently Bill Marr,

who said something about, he said that, call it, say what you will about it. But if you're on the plane still when it hits the building, that's not cowardly. And he had compared, you know, shooting cruise missiles into another country as cowardly. And that was basically it for Bill Marr's politically incorrect show after that. And it wasn't like the government was saying, Bill Marr, you're off the air. Richard Geer, go make some terrible, a terrible string of movies for a while as your punishment. Like that's not what happened. Instead, it was like people saw that and they were kind of repelled by it. It was so far against like the groupthink at the time. Yes. So outside of the general mood of like vengeance and hurt that America was going

through in the immediate wake of 9-11 that people just kind of were compelled to fall in line by themselves. Like that's just how you were at the time. Yeah. I mean, and you know, of course, when companies pull ad dollars, something like politically incorrect can go away very fast or at least give a TV network another reason to say, oh, we canceled them because, you know, we couldn't get any ads on it. Right. Right. So that was, that's one example. But then also, there's a really good chiller, I guess, something that has a chilling effect. Because remember, it's a really important aspect in a country that has a nominally free press, but the press is still controlled and you hit

upon it, advertisers and ad dollars. They really have a genuine impact on what reporters and journalists feel free to say, either directly, like they're muzzled by like their editors or their publishers, or they just know, if I report this fact about, you know, my parent company, it's going to look bad for the parent company. I'm just going to leave this fact out in the article. That's self-censoring and that's something that the American press does. Yeah. There was a survey in 2000 and Olivia does point out it's an old survey, but it's probably no different and maybe even worse 20 years on. But 31% of journalists avoided stories that could hurt their news organization or its parent company and 29% said the same if it could hurt the

advertisers. So, you know, it's just this notion that, you know, I get a paycheck from someone and I know that ultimately that paycheck comes from either selling newspapers or selling ads in those newspapers. And of course, that was a long time ago when the newspaper was still like in print. Like a big deal. But this all comes down to the fact that these are for-profit businesses and it's pretty easy to lose your objectivity when you're keeping that in mind. Yeah. And also it bears pointing out that a very small group of people, either individual wealthy billionaires in the case of Jeff Bezos with the Washington Post or, you know, giant conglomerate companies like GE owning, I think NBC maybe. And all of them have like a lot of interest in common,

which is protecting the bottom line. So, it's really easy to get everybody to kind of report generally the same thing and not report on generally the same thing. And there's a, we talked about it before, but that Robert Smigel, Must See TV Funhouse, Conspiracy Theory Rock. Yeah. Does a really great job of explaining how the whole thing works. And it's a good 15 years old by now, but it's just as correct as ever. Boy Smigel, what a genius. He really was a genius. And there's one other thing I would advise people to do at this point when you're thinking about, you know, just how free the American press is and how constrained it is by dollars. Quora is a really good place to go like read, you know, intelligent people's opinions

on things presented as opinions, not as fact or anything. Yeah. If you look up, does America have a free press? I found the answers on that question really enlightening. I mean, nothing new. I didn't hear anything new, but it was just to see over and over again, like, yes, there's a free press. Not really though, because it's all constrained by dollars and it's all owned by corporations. It really kind of makes you understand where our place is in the world and why we're number 44 in the way of free press around the world. Yeah. And, you know, we have to talk about social media too, because that is in the scope of the history of the press, a very new kind of media. And it is not figured out yet, I guess is the kindest way to say it,

because what you have with social media, I mean, it really give it and it take it away. On one hand, you have more access than ever for someone to be able to truly get out reporting or something like that that's factual and would be maybe squashed by a parent company or by a traditional media company. But you've also got a situation where, you know, you can kind of say whatever you want under the guise of like, this is just my opinion. And people in today's America, a lot of people take things that are completely made up and completely false as true and factual. And it's scary. Yeah, it's super scary. It's a really uncomfortable time to be living, because we're like, when are we going to figure this out? How are we going to figure this out? Are we ever going

to figure this out? Or is it going to be one of the things where things are going to get a lot worse before they get better? Who knows? We just don't know, because we're living in the midst of it right now. Yeah. And, you know, as Olivia points out, it's a situation where they are like traditional media companies in some ways, because they can juice an algorithm to get something more seen than something else. Right. But then it's not like they don't like a company like Facebook doesn't have or any social media company doesn't have the same or at least legally right now, they don't have the same ethical standards of a traditional media company. Right, right. So it's like this new animal that kind of looks a lot like the old animal,

but is like, no, no, no, you can't treat me like the old animal. I'm something different. And that's kind of what we're figuring out is, it's like you said, they have different ethical standards. And that's really found in the case of Gawker, which was a gossipy news site that saw fit to publish Hulk Hogan sex tape that got leaked to them, where Hulk Hogan, yes, everything about this case is gross. Yeah. Hulk Hogan was cheating on his wife with his best friend's wife, made a sex tape of it. Gawker saw fit to publish it. Like that's just news that people need to know about and got sued by Hulk Hogan, sued out of existence by Hulk Hogan. And that's another aspect of this case that was gross. Peter Thiel, a billionaire who was one of the founders

of PayPal secretly financed the case because he hated Gawker because Gawker had outed him as gay back in 2007. So he financed Hulk Hogan's case and basically drove Gawker into bankruptcy. And that's not supposed to be okay. Like even if you hate somebody's free speech, a billionaire shouldn't be able to decide who says what or who doesn't say what. So that's another gross part. Hulk Hogan won because he managed to position himself as like an everyday guy who was up against this elite snobby New York media. Right. That's pretty gross too. And then ultimately, the worst part of it is that this dumb move by Gawker to publish Hulk Hogan's sex tape opened up a really terrible can of worms that just did not need to be opened, which basically says,

hey, you remember that idea that truth can never be considered liable? That has been a foundation of American law of free speech and free press? Let's turn that on its head. Let's test that by publishing this Hulk Hogan sex tape. And so they lost their lawsuit. Like they, even though it was true, this Hulk Hogan didn't dispute that that was him. That was his sex tape and Gawker published it and that was it. He still won $140 million lawsuit against them and Gawker went out of business. And whatever you think of Gawker, they were still technically media. They were still technically the press. And so now you've got billionaires who can run press out of existence if they don't like what they have to say. That's where we're still, we are right now,

we're still figuring this out. And it's a scary time. Yeah, because most companies of that size don't have the money and that's what happened to Gawker. They don't have the money to hang in there unless another billionaire is then financing theirs. And then we're in real trouble when it's just billionaires secretly suing one another behind the guys of another case. Right. That would not be fun. It would not be fun. So like we said, the United States press is number 44 out of 180. It's a, that's a solid B, I would say, but you would expect really the first country to truly enshrine free speech into its constitutional amendments to be a lot higher than 44, but it's not. So if you want to know more about that,

you can go check out Reporters Without Borders 2021 World Press Freedom Index. But basically the upshot of it is that there is a tremendous amount of mistrust in journalists in the United States and in media in general and a lot of false information that's easily passed around. And that's kind of setting the stage for a really disrupted press or purpose of the press, which is, again, to tell people like you and me what the people running the show are doing so we can decide whether we want them to continue running the show or not. That's right. We should mention, if you're wondering what the bottom of that list looks like, the bottom five, there are a couple of African nations, Djibouti and Eritrea. And then, of course,

China, Turkmenistan, and then obviously North Korea. Yes, obviously. Sorry, Kim Jong-un. Well, now you're going to get us off the air there. Yeah, there's no way we're on the air there. We're too free, baby. Well, since Chuck said that's right, of course, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this rhinoplasty follow up. Very nice. This is from, well, I'll save that part. Hey, guys, keep doing the great work. Really enjoy the lighthearted approach to presenting information from the interesting minutiae of unimportant topics to the deeply important,

even politically charged topics like today. As a person who has had to have three separate rhinoplasty surgeries, and he says, parenthetically, I've got some ridiculously troublesome sinuses, septum, and other miscellaneous issues. I had one other point to add, something I had never heard of was the turbinates. Mine were apparently huge. These are little finger-like folds of skin that run along the interior of your nostrils. They swell and de-swell alternately and are the reason when you have a bad cold, one side is totally plugged, but you can breathe through the other one. Anyway, part of my surgeries was trimming those down because they were causing me breathing problems. The med student who was helping me mentioned after the surgery

in horror that he had no idea so much stuff could come out of a person's head. Oh, wow. It's always fun when you hear something like that in post-stop. I've never seen a blank that big, sir. Yeah, you got a picture? Right. That is from John B. Parks, husband, father, nerdfighter, Hufflepuff, let's go Royals, Chiefs, SKC, and Coys. And then he has a Gandhi quote. This is all in his email signature, so I always like to read that stuff. Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever, Mahatma Gandhi. Very nice. And then below that, it says that he might get revenue from any link you click that take you to Amazon. I never had an email signature that said things like quotes and stuff.

I kind of like that. Yeah, okay. Chuck, today is your day to start. All right. That was John. That was John. Thanks a lot, John. I appreciate that. I may actually be getting that done too. They mentioned that for me and I was like, I don't know, this sounds like an upsell, so maybe not. John might have convinced me. If you want to get in touch with us like John did, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us an email and send it to specifically stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips

with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on

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