Credit.Getty Images
This has not been a great period for free expression. The range of socially acceptable opinion has shrunk, as independent-minded journalists and experts have been eased out of their jobs at places ranging from New York magazine to Boeing and Civis Analytics for saying unorthodox things. The esteemed scholar James R. Flynn wrote a book called “In Defense of Free Speech” which was in turn canceled by his publisher for being too controversial.
Fortunately, a range of people from across the political spectrum have arisen to defend free inquiry, including Noam Chomsky, Cathy Young, the University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer, Caitlin Flanagan, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Jonathan Haidt, John McWhorter, Yascha Mounk, Jonathan Rauch and magazines like Quillette and Tablet.
The Atlantic
The outgoing president leaves behind a tribalistic, distrustful, and sometimes delusional political culture.
December 7, 2020
Damon Winter / The New York Times / Redux
“We are entering into an epistemological crisis,” Barack Obama recently told my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg.
The crisis didn’t begin with the Trump presidency, but it rapidly accelerated over the course of its term and the situation has, if anything, grown worse in the aftermath of the presidential election.
According to one poll, 70 percent of Republicans say they don’t believe that the 2020 election was free and fair. According to another, 77 percent of Trump backers say President-elect Joe Biden won because of fraud. And a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 68 percent of Republicans said they were concerned that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and that only 29 percent believed that Biden had “rightfully won.” More than half of Republicans said Trump “rightfully won” but the electi
Trump has consolidated the GOP behind a government incompatible with democracy : Columnist – Raw Story rawstory.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from rawstory.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
How Do We Get to Herd Immunity for Fake News?
We need to match our focus on the supply of misinformation with a focus on the demand for it.
By Greg Weiner
Mr. Weiner is a political scientist and was a senior Senate aide to Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska.
Dec. 14, 2020
Pro-Trump protestors reacting to a speech by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones at a rally on Saturday.Credit.Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Last week, veto-proof majorities of the House and Senate rejected President Trump’s demand that they use a defense-spending bill to repeal liability protections for social media companies. The demand arose from Mr. Trump’s frustration with platforms like Twitter for taking more assertive measures against misinformation and disinformation, including his own.
How Trump is trying to confuse the public about the election outcome cnn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cnn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.