Disappointment

This week, both the L.A. Times and the Washington Post, owned respectively by billionaires Patrick Soon-Shiong (a biotech magnate ranked 204 on the Forbes 400 list of billionaires) and Jeff Bezos (Mr. Amazon is #2 on that Forbes 400 list, second only to Elon Musk and probably well above Musk had he not bifurcated his estate and given MacKenzie Scott, his first wife $38 billion in the settlement) shocked the liberal democratic side of the country…including me. I am a WAPO subscriber, but I will join the thousands who have already cancelled their subscriptions to the paper as a message of extreme protest. When I first thought to do that I remember my reaction when hearing that my friend Mike cancelled his subscription to the L.A. Times because he thought the extreme liberal bias was unappealing to him and instead subscribed to the Orange County Register, which is a considerably more right-leaning newspaper. To Mike’s credit, I see that the Orange County Register, while endorsing more local conservative/libertarian candidates, has not endorsed a presidential candidate. So why does it impress me that they are staying neutral and the Washington Post and L.A. Times are upsetting me that they are changing course and going neutral from being vociferously anti-Trump up until now?

Actually, the Washington Post surprised me a few days ago when they published an editorial by Marc Thiessen, its highly conservative columnist. That editorial declaring that “Harris’s Closing Argument is Dishonest, Desperate and Hypocritical” struck me as particularly abrasive and biased. In fact, I began to wonder if Thiessen, who’s work I have seen before, but I thought wrote for the Wall Street Journal and not the Washington Post, was someone worth reading anymore. I am a great defender of the First Amendment and I believe we have to have free speech when it comes to the various points of view of our diverse constituent of citizens, but I must admit to being rankled by the current landscape. What is confusing the free speech issue so much in America (and the rest of the world for that matter) is that the multilateral communications technology has greatly outpaced our understanding of how to discern truth from disinformation. Everyone, everywhere (mostly) now can and does know everything. In fact, they have the ability in the palm of their hand to know all the true things as well as all the fake news things. I was watching a Save The Children ad the other day and one of the finishing shots is of a young smudged-faced child in some miserable war-torn hovel of a place playing with some bit of detritus he has picked up. When you looked closely you could see that what he had in his hand was an old discarded iPhone case much like an old brown leather one I used to use. There was something startling about that just as there is when you see a waif in Ethiopia wearing an old “Just Do It” Nike t-shirt. It is said that 7 billion of the world’s 8.2 billion people have a smartphone. Given that there are only 6.2 billion people in the world that are age 15 and older, I think its fair to say that EVERYONE in the world now has a smartphone in their hands. That means everyone, everywhere knows everything whether its right or wrong, factual or fictitious.

Facts and “Alternative Facts”, Electors and “Alternative Electors” have all made free speech a far more challenging concept to navigate for the good of society. How do ethicists parse that relative sanctity of free speech against the harm of using the free speech megaphone to spew disinformation into the world? This is particularly so in the realm of politics, which is generally known to be the province of hyperbole, lying, and making false promises. The best way to defeat this problem would seem to be to have well-understood labels for authenticity. What I mean by that is that perhaps we need a system (yes, and regulation to fairly and honestly administer that system) that begins by defining news sources. The first delineation would be whether they were mere reporters of facts or arbiters of opinion. What would then be needed is a rating scale for reliability (not unlike the Pinocchio Fact Checker…strangely enough, a fabrication of the Washington Past for some fifteen years now). So, people could learn their facts from whomever they wished, but would at least know how authentic that source likely is based on its overall veracity rating. Furthermore, whenever someone quotes a publication as a source in a debate or opinion piece, that source would need to be properly tagged as bearing that rating, whatever it is. That would at least allow consumers of information to judge for themselves some degree of reliability. The other form of labeling would be on the opinion side of the information flow. I feel that any author needs to have a bias rating (that is not good or bad, but rather something like a scale that indicates where they are on the political spectrum). That assigned rating would change based on everything that was published by that person. Furthermore, the actual published piece could also be given a bias rating so that the reader could understand what he or she is consuming. This is not unlike open and fair food labeling. You don’t stop people from consuming junk, but you give them the tools to understand what brand of junk they are consuming.

When you think about it, this would be a marvelous use of AI and I almost think this could all be done commercially although I suppose a non-proprietary AI system would have to likely check and rate the unbiased and accurate ratings of the underlying AI bot. For those who distrust government, but are willing to favor trusting the objectivity of AI, this would work. Of course, we could also have a dual system of a government-sponsored rating system and commercial validation system to check the checker, or vice versa. I myself would prefer a dual system because for the majority of people, a government regulated and supplied system would be sufficient, but those who distrusted the government or wanted added assurance, they could pay for a private commercial system. One of the biggest concerns is that many people just don’t want to know about what they are consuming and a democracy demands that you allow them to feel and act as such. No one forces you to read food labels. Extreme danger in food is cause for government regulatory intervention, but simple distortion, which some people probably want, needs to be allowed to a degree.

None of this makes me less disappointed in the L.A. Times and The Washington Post for their “anticipatory compliance” syndrome of staying on safe ground as we approach a highly contested and incredibly close election. I think I will cancel my WAPO subscription after all.