We can't let politicians and officials decide what constitutes 'truth'

Reason’s JD Tucille writes, “It's no secret that governments worldwide are increasingly hostile to scrutiny of their conduct. But, at a moment when too many media outlets see their role as working with the state to reinforce official narratives, one advocate of press freedom reminds us that the struggle isn't over the 'disinformation' and 'misinformation' called out by opportunistic politicians, it's over control of information. Will people be free in the future to decide for themselves what's truth and what's BS? Or will we be spoon-fed whatever the powers-that-be endorse?

'Governments realize that they are in an existential battle over who controls information, who controls the narrative, and they are waging a frontal assault against independent journalism around the world,' Joel Simon, the exiting head of the Committee to Protects Journalists (CPJ), told CNN's Brian Stelter…

Governments are in no position to save us from bad information because they're a major source of the stuff themselves and, if allowed, can use force to impose their versions of reality on dissenters. https://t.co/KJtiWMOrHr via @reason

— J.D. Tuccille (@JD_Tuccille) January 10, 2022

Free societies recognize that it's a lot more dangerous to let government officials designate what constitutes capital-T Truth than it is to respect people's rights to decide for themselves. When officialdom makes the call, legitimate news outlets get called 'fake,' as former President Trump often smeared his critics, extremists get conflated with opponents of school policies, as the Justice Department did last fall, and claims that COVID-19 originated in a lab leak in China are suppressed as conspiracy theories before later earning respectful treatment.

Truthful information doesn't require a government seal of approval because government officials are as flawed and biased as anybody else.”

Read the entire column.