<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/7/1593729871227.png" alt="Gene Policinski is a senior fellow for the First Amendment at the Freedom Forum, and president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute. " />
 <figcaption>Gene Policinski is a senior fellow for the First Amendment at the Freedom Forum, and president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute. </figcaption>
 </figure>There’s a bit of an intellectual fistfight going on these days about free expression — and we all have a stake in the outcome.The early rounds have been going on for years: in essence, a theory 
that pops up periodically in history that some ideas simply are too 
dangerous to allow them to be voiced in public. The opponent to that 
theory: The longtime belief in the “marketplace of ideas,” where any 
person may advance any idea — however repugnant, vile or even evil — and
 be subject to the review, and perhaps revile, of all others.Critics of the marketplace approach have several arguments. American 
critics note the amendment was adopted in 1791, carrying forward ideas 
about free expression that even then were centuries old, and thus see it
 as out of place in a modern world.Another objection is that the internet, with its instant and global 
reach, makes ineffective the expected marketplace interplay of speaker 
and responder, through which the hope is bad ideas fail, good ideas 
improve and best ideas thrive.Yet another criticism of the marketplace concept is that money, 
technology and power have created an elite group (or groups) in control 
of most meaningful communication (and perhaps content) across the web, 
rendering criticism, counterviews, unpopular or unconventional ideas — 
and certainly revolutionary ones — unable to reach a mass audience.Critical race theorists believe that American jurisprudence 
essentially has elevated the liberty interests of the First Amendment 
over the equality interests of the 14th Amendment.And finally, there is the claim that some ideas simply are too 
dangerous or misleading or manipulative to be allowed into the 
marketplace at all — from race, ethnic and religious hatred to sexual 
exploitation and abuse to commercial messaging and political 
misinformation — now aided and abetted by hidden algorithms and those in
 charge of a handful of private tech companies more intent on profits 
than seeking truth.Whew. That’s a pretty strong set of arguments that some things need 
fixing when it comes to free expression in the early years of the 21st century. Most of us likely would agree with many, if not all of them — on first glance.Interestingly, the sides in this dispute don’t automatically align 
along our current political fractures. Some liberals and conservatives 
see the web as too wide open, allowing dangerous ideas and speakers 
access to audiences that can be influenced; while others view the web as
 a tightly controlled funnel of filtered information combined with 
manipulation that blocks voices (either too conservative or too liberal —
 take your pick) with a goal of shaping public opinion.The current battle is not just over the criticisms, but over the 
solutions as well. Twitter and other sites gain praise and scorn for 
blocking some users for alleged violations of those sites’ terms of 
service, ranging from foul language to misleading health claims to 
personal attacks and what the sites deem deliberate misinformation. Tech
 firms can block, tag and take down posted content, in a bit of irony to
 some, because they have their own First Amendment rights as private 
companies.So, some on either side of this dispute would bring government into 
the ring, where First Amendment freedoms would apply — one side seeking 
exceptions to free speech protections for things such as violent 
content, or racist views, or demeaning portrayals of women, or LGBTQ 
persons; and the other combatants asking government to oversee and 
override those private companies’ decisions, in the name of protecting 
conservative voices they see as all-too-often excluded from public 
discourse.Who are the combatants of late? In one corner, signatories to an open
 letter titled, “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” published July 7 
in Harper’s Magazine, include a number of the world’s best-known creative minds, such as J.K. Rowling, Wynton Marsalis, Gloria Steinem, Salman Rushdie and about 150 other authors, journalists, publishers and artists.In the other corner of this particular bout are those who signed this
 week onto another letter published on the online commentary site The 
Objective — which self-identifies as a place with information and views 
by and for “historically ignored communities” — another group of 
literary, media and artists. This missive entered the fray acknowledging
 the fight even reaches into its signatures area, noting some could be 
identified only generally, usually by professional occupation and place 
of work, because of fears of “workplace retaliation” by the established 
communication masters for whom some work.Their view of the Harper’s letter, in a piece titled, “A 
More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate” explains, “Nowhere in 
it do the signatories mention how marginalized voices have been silenced
 for generations in journalism, academia and publishing …” and “the 
letter does not deal with the problem of power: Who has it and who does 
not.”To be sure, many of latest blows in this intellectual boxing match 
have been struck via high-concept review of the theories of human 
communication and in well-founded critiques of who had and has access to
 tools of speaking out in public — news media, book publishers, 
broadcasters and now social media companies.But in the early rounds, the heavyweights punched the outmoded model 
of the marketplace of ideas for two reasons: One, that it never worked 
as intended because many minority groups, however defined, were denied 
access to speak and be heard — a stark truth that cannot be denied; and 
two, there is such a thing as truth, and to knowingly permit non-truth 
is counter-productive to society and should not be permitted.Boil it all down and it comes to a very simple First Amendment 
question: Is the response to speech you consider untruthful, disgusting 
or misleading more speech or less speech? If the former, what do you do 
as, with lightning speed and wide public acceptance by the unknowing, 
the web is flooded with true threats to public health, hate speech from 
white supremacists or deliberately misleading political ads and 
fraudulent electioneering from world adversaries?If the latter, who gets to be the national nanny, defining truth, 
excluding some voices while inviting in others and monitoring the 
billions of social media posts each day — all while remaining 
nonpartisan and apolitical in today’s hyper-divided nation?Wiser minds — including, with hope, most of us — will need to parse 
those questions and more as the First Amendment’s five freedoms 
(religion, speech, press, assembly and petition) are tested in court, on
 the street and occasionally on the pages of online magazines.As for me, I theorize the nation’s founders would chuckle at the idea
 that all of this is new. The mechanisms of communications were 
different, but the goals in 1791 were the same: The exchange of ideas 
for a better life for us all, many at the time deemed too dangerous for 
society to hear — ideas like “all men are created equal” and that 
democracy was favorable over monarchy.While this fistfight is mainly staged in the mind, there are real-world examples of the cost of the fight. New York Times op-ed editor Bari Weiss
 resigned the other day, saying in a letter she self-published that she 
was “hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise 
appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and 
others who would not naturally think of the Times as their home.”In leaving the paper after about three years, she said, “ … a new 
consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this 
paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an 
orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform 
everyone else.”Weiss concludes her resignation by noting founder Adolph Ochs’ 1896 statement “to make of the columns of The New York Times
 a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, 
and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of 
opinion.”“Ochs’s idea is one of the best I’ve encountered,” Weiss continues. 
“And I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas 
win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need
 a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by 
them.”More of us need to make our voices heard in this latest fight over 
the meaning of the First Amendment’s 45 words, lest we see them reshaped
 — or lost — without having ever set foot in the ring.Gene Policinski is a senior fellow for the First Amendment at the
 Freedom Forum, and president and chief operating officer of the Freedom
 Forum Institute. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:gpolicinski@freedomforum.org" target="_blank">gpolicinski@freedomforum.org</a>, or follow him on Twitter at&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/@genefac" target="_blank">@genefac</a>.

FIRST FIVE: Fighting over the meaning of First Amendment freedoms