I cannot in strong enough terms recommend that everyone read Gordon Crovitz’s latest Wall Street Journal column, “Free Speech, Now that Speech is Free.”  It perfectly encapsulates everything we stand for here and makes the case that I have made again and again: Speech regulation — of all flavors — makes less and less sense in a world of information abundance and user empowerment, and it is a complete affront to our First Amendment rights.  As Crovitz argues:

The Constitution was drafted at a time when there were few media outlets, and few people could be heard. Since then, technology has made it possible for everyone to express their views. The cost of expressing opinions continues to fall. Now that speech is no longer expensive, it’s time to return to the Founders’ intention that speech be free and that Congress not abridge anyone’s right to speak.

Amen brother!  In his essay today, Crovitz specifically takes on America’s increasingly insane campaign finance laws, which make a mockery of the First Amendment.  In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court arguments in the Citizens United case, Crovitz points out the insulting stupidity and sheer futility of these analog era, scarcity-oriented laws:

In the era of YouTube and Facebook, the notion that anyone or any institution can dominate political debate is quaint at best. After last week’s Supreme Court argument, key parts of McCain-Feingold seem likely to be overturned. The justices are legal experts, not technologists, but in protecting constitutional rights, they know they are operating in a very different information environment than existed earlier in the decade. Lively political debate is supposed to benefit everyone—with the occasional exception of incumbent officeholders who are not re-elected. But McCain-Feingold banned the broadcast or transmission by cable or satellite of “electioneering communications” paid for by corporations in the 30 days before a presidential primary or 60 days before the general election. This always raised a First Amendment issue. The issue now goes deeper: How can any regulation based on an assumption of information scarcity be justified in an era of information abundance?

Absolutely, 100% right.  As I pointed out in my old City Journal essay, “The Media Cornucopia“:

Throughout most of history, humans lived in a state of extreme information poverty. News traveled slowly, field to field, village to village. Even with the printing press’s advent, information spread at a snail’s pace. Few knew how to find printed materials, assuming that they even knew how to read. Today, by contrast, we live in a world of unprecedented media abundance that once would have been the stuff of science-fiction novels. We can increasingly obtain and consume whatever media we want, wherever and whenever we want: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the bewildering variety of material available on the Internet.

And yet, despite these wonderful developments, we still have Washington policymakers and regulators conditioning speech rights on the supposed “scarcity” of viewpoints or soapboxes to stand on.  What utter rubbish.  Of course, that hasn’t stopped many regulatory activist groups from continuing to use such logic in favor of expanded media regulation.

Regardless, Crovitz suggests that, with any luck, we could get a replay of what happened to the Fairness Doctrine:

The likely demise of McCain-Feingold echoes the fate of the Fairness Doctrine. The Federal Communications Commission in 1949 required holders of broadcast licenses to present all sides of controversial topics. There were few broadcast outlets and at least arguably a risk of one-sided debates. The rule was abolished in 1987 as channels grew. With hundreds of cable channels and endless uploads of videos to the Web, it would be impossible to enforce “fairness” even if bureaucrats could track how much of which views were being expressed.

We can only hope that the course of human events follows that same trajectory and policymakers come around to once again realizing the error of their past ways.

I’m pleased to announce the publication of A Manifesto for Media Freedom, which I co-authored with Brian C. Anderson of the Manhattan Institute. Brian serves as editor of Manhattan Institute’s excellent City Journal and he is the author of best-selling books like South Park Conservatives and Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents.

In this little manifesto, we highlight one of the central ironies of the Information Age.  Namely, that despite “the breathtaking abundance of new and old media outlets for obtaining news, information, and entertainment…”

many people hate this profusion, and never more than when it involves political speech. The current media market, they charge, doesn’t represent true diversity, or isn’t fair, or is subject to manipulation by a small and shrinking group of media barons. They want the government to regulate it into better shape, which just happens to be a shape that benefits them. Doing so… would be a disaster, a kind of soft or not-so-soft tyranny that would wipe out whole sectors of media, curtailing free speech and impoverishing our democracy.

In other words, instead of celebrating the unprecedented cornucopia of media choices at our collective disposal, many policymakers and media critics are calling for just as much media regulation as ever. We itemize these threats in our chapters and they include: efforts to revive the “Fairness Doctrine”, media ownership regulations, “localism” requirements, Net neutrality mandates, a la carte regulations, cable and satellite censorship, video game censorship, regulation of social networking sites, campaign finance-related speech restrictions, and so on.

In each case, we advance a pro-freedom paradigm to counter the advocates of media control. What do we mean by the “media freedom” that we advocate as the alternative to these new regulatory crusades? Here’s how we put it in the book:

For media consumers, it’s the freedom to consume whatever information or entertainment we want from whatever sources we choose, without government restricting our choices. For media creators and distributors, it’s the freedom to structure their business affairs as they wish in seeking to offer the public an expanding array of media options, for both news and entertainment. And for both consumers and creators,media freedom is being able to speak one’s mind without restraint and without the threat of FCC or FEC bureaucrats telling us what is “fair.”

It doesn’t seem like much to ask until you realize how many people in Washington and academia today are calling for these various flavors of media regulation.  Of course, it doesn’t help that media-bashing has always been a bipartisan sport.  Indeed, depsite the fact that most of these efforts are lead by the Left, our book highlights how some folks on the Right are still guilty of joining some of these misguided regulatory crusades.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, for example, has sponsored “a la carte” mandates for cable and satellite operators and sponsored the draconian campaign finance law that will forever bear his name, McCain-Feingold. He has also proposed a follow-up law: McCain-Feingold II. Although it did not pass, McCain’s measure would have required broadcasters to run 12 hours of “candidate-centered and issue-centered programming” in the six weeks prior to primary and general elections — without giving broadcasters any control over those 12 hours (half of which would have had to run during prime time). The bill would have created a voucher system for the purchase of airtime for political advertisements, financed by an annual spectrum-use fee on all broadcast license holders. In sum, the legislation would have forced broadcast stations to pay a tax to the federal government that would in turn finance a pool of funds that politicians could turn around and spend to run ads on those very stations!

Others on the Right have favored the Fairness Doctrine in the past, and more recently, some have joined the Net neutrality effort. And many conservatives have long been in favor of various forms of media censorship.

That being said, the most serious threats to media freedom today arise from the Left and our book serves primarily as a response to the many Leftist efforts to regulate media today. As we argue in the introduction:

The left seems certain that a media problem ails our society; it just can’t decide what that problem is. Some contend that real media choices are as limited or biased as ever, while others argue that our democracy is imperiled by too many media choices, making it hard to share common thoughts or feelings. What unites these two types of critics is their elitist presumption that they know what’s best for the rest of us. They would love to rewrite regulations to tilt the media in the direction they prefer; and if they are allowed to do so, what is shaping up to be America’s Golden Age of media could come to a sudden end.

The Left’s obsession with reinstating the Fairness Doctrine is particularly telling in this regard. [You can read our history of the Fairness Doctrine here] But, as we go on to note:

Some liberals suggest that even a new Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t be enough to correct a “structural imbalance” in the media marketplace. They want tightened ownership regulations, mandates ensuring “greater local accountability” over radio and TV broadcasters, and a significant ramping up of subsidies for public radio and TV stations. One leading leftist proposal would even force private broadcasters to fund public broadcasters! These proposals expose the left’s true goal: to regulate private media outlets comprehensively and drive out those owners who dare to offer right-leaning alternatives.

This movement is being driven by a wide variety of Left-leaning think tanks and advocacy groups, especially Free Press, Media Access Project, and the New America Foundation. These organizations will likely have a strong voice in an Obama administration regarding media law and Internet policy issues. And we fear that means that new regulatory shackles will be placed on the media and free speech as a result. That’s why we penned this manifesto at this time. As we conclude in our book:

Motivated by the naked desire for political control, a reactionary fear of the new, or genuine if misguided views on equality and fairness in the media, [these liberal media activists] threaten to enact regulations that will strangle or at least cripple this social development before it can begin to reach its potential. Those on the right are not free from these impulses, either. But they, as the prime beneficiaries of media abundance — of all the conservative and libertarian talk shows and websites that would suffer in a media landscape remade by the Democratic Party and liberal activists — should embrace, defend, and expand the freedom that made it possible.

Anyway, if you care about free speech and media freedom, I do you hope you will consider giving the book a look. The main page for our book is here. And you can find it on Amazon here.

Writing at Slate, Tim Wu tries to make Obama out to be the real Big Government candidate on media policy, who will deliver “if not a chicken in every pot, a fiber-optic cable in every home.” By contrast, Wu implies that McCain is just another pro-big business lackey who doesn’t understand “that the media and information industries are special—that like the transportation, energy, or financial industries, they are deeply entwined with the public interest.” Wu goes on to say:

Ultimately, most of the difference in Obama’s and McCain’s media policies boils down to questions about whether the media is special and a dispute over how much to trust the private sector. Camp McCain would tend to leave the private sector alone, with faith that it will deliver to most Americans what they want and deserve. The Obama camp would probably administer a more frequent kick in the pants, in the belief that good behavior just isn’t always natural.

First, as a factual matter, Wu is just wrong about McCain being some sort of a radical hands-off, pro-market liberalizer on media policy issues. Oh, if only that were true! But for those of us who have been in DC covering telecom and media policy for many years, it is widely understood there is no nailing down John McCain on any tech, telecom or media policy issue. He’s been all over the board. While he has sponsored or supported some deregulatory initiatives on the telecom front in the past, he’s also been a supporter of other regulatory causes. His battles with broadcasters and cable, for example, are well-known. Most recently, McCain has been leading the effort to impose a la carte mandates on cable and satellite operators. And if you’re all about Big Government credentials, then don’t forget McCain-Feingold, a law that made it a felony for corporations, nonprofit advocacy groups, and labor unions to run ads that criticize–or even name or show–members of Congress within 60 days of a federal election. And then there was the far more troubling McCain-Feingold II. Although it did not pass, McCain’s measure would have required broadcasters to run 12 hours of “candidate-centered and issue-centered programming” in the six weeks prior to primary and general elections—without giving broadcasters any control over those 12 hours (half of which would have had to run during prime time). The bill would have created a voucher system for the purchase of airtime for political advertisements, financed by an annual spectrum-use fee on all broadcast license holders. In sum, the legislation would have forced broadcast stations to pay a tax to the federal government that would in turn finance a pool of funds that politicians could turn around and spend to run ads on those very stations!

This sounds like the sort of Big Government Media Agenda that should make Tim Wu happy, but he doesn’t mention any of it in his essay.

But let me address the more fundamental, and quite mistaken, premise that underlies Wu’s essay — namely, that increased government activism in the media and broadband marketplace will somehow lead us to techno-nirvana. When Wu states that “the difference in Obama’s and McCain’s media policies boils down to questions about whether the media is special and a dispute over how much to trust the private sector,” he conveniently ignores the flip-side of that statement. That is, shouldn’t the real question here be: “How much do we trust the public sector”? Wu apparently assumes that “public interest” regulation will be all wine and roses. Enlightened, benevolent lawmakers and regulators who understand that media is “special” will concoct just the right mix of regulatory policies that will be pro-consumer, pro-democracy, and pro-free speech.

Sorry, but I’m not buying it. One would need to ignore 100 years worth of experience to believe such fanciful notions, and Wu seemingly does. Somehow, all will be different now. Regulators won’t be captured by special interests. Command-and-control regulation will suddenly become far more efficient and not deter innovation. And policymakers will resist the urge to censor speech.

Do you believe that story? If you’ve read your economic history, you’re probably just as skeptical as I am. It is revisionist history to say that the era of regulated monopoly and “public interest” media regulation was some sort of pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-free speech paradise. In reality, a “chicken in every pot” means a regulator on every cyber-corner. And I just don’t understand how someone as smart as Tim Wu thinks the entire process won’t once again come to be captured by the very interests he hopes to “kick in the pants.” They will be wearing the pants before it is over!

I invite Tim Wu and all his activist-minded friends on the Left to take another look at the definitive 2-volume Economics of Regulation by a more enlightened and experienced Democrat, Professor Alfred E. Kahn. In that masterwork, they will find the following words of wisdom (and caution):

When a commission is responsible for the performance of an industry, it is under never completely escapable pressure to protect the health of the companies it regulates, to assure a desirable performance by relying on those monopolistic chosen instruments and its own controls rather than on the unplanned and unplannable forces of competition. […] Responsible for the continued provision and improvement of service, [the regulatory commission] comes increasingly and understandably to identify the interest of the public with that of the existing companies on whom it must rely to deliver goods.