Proposal #1: Bust Open the Silos

This piece is the fourth installment of a biweekly series written by David A. Foster (Center bias), based on his new book, Moderates of the World, Unite! Read the first post in the series. 

“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1927

With the advent of radio and television in the 20th century, the goal of fair, reasoned, constructive discourse about public matters was at risk because of the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum. So the Fairness Doctrine was instituted to ensure that contrasting views were aired.

Later, arguments for the rule’s abolition centered around the new proliferation of media outlets, referred to at the time as “narrowcasting.” Though never ruled unconstitutional, the Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987.

Ironically, though, this profusion of outlets serving specialized audiences helped lead us to today’s “echo chambers”: rival partisan media ecosystems in which the opposing side is rarely heard. Inside of echo chambers, unrestrained and even extreme statements can be uttered without consequence. The gradual effect of an echo chamber often is acceptance of more extreme beliefs by its audience members. 

Also in echo chambers, the opposing party’s beliefs, actions, and agendas are frequently—or even exclusively—depicted in straw man terms. The straw men are invoked and are blithely knocked down or mocked. Members of the echo chamber become highly resistant to external sources; outside voices are heard, but dismissed. It occurs in both conservative media and in the so-called mainstream media.

Today, with new technologies and platforms, new possibilities for counterspeech have been unlocked. As one example, social media platforms allow every citizen to debate with others and to publicly comment on national media stories. Nevertheless, the most consequential national conversations are still led by media platforms broadcasting to large audiences.

Yet, there is a technically feasible opportunity that has not yet been exploited: bringing counterspeech right into the echo chamber. In this article I’ll briefly describe a proposal, which is described in more detail in my book. It can work equally well for political content in television programs, online articles, and social media. The key is to compel popular media platforms to allow authorized counterspeech right at the point of speech issuance.

But it cannot place any burden on the media outlet, and it must pass constitutional muster.

The Proposal: Bust Open the Silos

In this approach, all established media platforms with political content are required by law to support a standardized link, right at the point of content issuance. The link, whenever selected by a viewer/user, displays in-context response commentary text by the political opposition. The link appears as a small, unobtrusive button labeled as “OPPO”. No viewer is ever required or encouraged to select it.

The political opposition person writing the response content, called the Designated Opposition (DO), is anonymous to the audience. The DO for each show or content issuer is registered with an administrative agency as its sole official responder. Responses have mandatory constraints that are enforced, including word count limits, civility, and direct relevance to the issued content. 

The law is structured to avoid any operational or cost burden on media companies and platforms. A back-end system is developed and operated with public funding and made available for all media companies to use without charge. The technical system for executing this scheme supports: secure logins for producers, DOs, and administrators; automated notifications; text editing screens; click statistics; and software interfaces for retrieving response content upon individual viewer demand. Outlets with small, private audiences are exempt.

In the case of live television, the viewer can select OPPO content via the TV remote control, and DO responses are written and posted in real time.

When this new opportunity is made available, you might presume that partisans will start salivating, “Oh boy, are we ever going to let them have it! Our DOs are going to decimate them! humiliate them!” Think again. Designated Opposition response writers will be smarter than that. 

Yes, it’s a potential opportunity to ridicule or to highlight the foolishness of the speaker’s ideology. But after an audience member clicks on the OPPO button a couple of times, and sees disrespect or scorn, what happens? They won’t like it. (Duh.) They’ll stop clicking on it, and the button will soon become invisible to them. No, the smart DOs will instead provide information that the audience can be interested in seeing: respectful, informative, plainspoken, often surprising, fair-minded, good-humored. An enjoyable “guest.”

This presence changes the psychology, not only for producers and for viewers who click on OPPO, but even for viewers who rarely or never click. Because they are all aware that there is someone “in the room.”

Assigning Designated Opposition Persons to Outlets

The matter of assigning anonymous DOs to shows and online publishers could be difficult, as there would be many applicants vying for each slot—particularly for those producers with the largest audiences. Inevitably, a national coordinator would be required to adjudicate and manage each side. National political party organizations would be the most natural fit for such a task. They would register DO assignments and monitor DO performance, principally on the basis of click rates from the unfriendly audiences.

DO responses are thus a type of legitimated counterspeech that has been missing since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. Obviously, the internet has given us “more speech”: in fact, we are now drowning in speech from citizens and influencers. But what we have lacked, and what is most essential, is rational, quasi-official counterspeech that will be heard and listened to on the biggest political media platforms. Again, that is where the most consequential national conversations are still conducted.

A Counterspeech Revolution

The net effect of this system would be to reduce national political polarization. (Or at least to slow its growth.) Producers and publishers, wary of looking foolish or delirious to their audiences, would tend to moderate their content.

The most partisan media platforms, which make their profits from outrage, will undoubtedly fight against the enactment of such legislation. “We don’t want more counterspeech, and we’ll censor it if we have to.”

Unlike the old Fairness Doctrine, however, this approach never co-opts or interferes with the “main channel” of a media company’s publishing/broadcasting. Broadcast outlets do not have to give airtime for contrasting viewpoints; online newspapers do not need to provide space for editorials or articles. Viewers do not have to look. The aging Tornillo precedent (see earlier article in this series) would not be an impediment.

Also, unlike the old Fairness Doctrine, there is no need nor role for government to police whether an outlet is being “fair” or not, much less to evaluate its published content. The only government evaluation is whether or not the DO is following some simple rules: responses are on-topic, no character assassination, no obscenity, etc. A DO’s rule-breaking on a platform is punished by eliminating the OPPO privilege for a specified period.

This system will be complementary to the work of fact checking organizations such as PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. One difference is that our new system will provide counterspeech right at the point of speech issuance, rather than on an independent website.

Another is that DOs will also be pointing out rhetorical excesses, false narratives, and fallacies. Just as Justice Brandeis recommended.