[NOTE: This is meant as a companion post to yesterday’s “Why Journalists Speak Out.”]
Roughly halfway through my career, a revolutionary technological development disrupted the entire journalism world in unprecedented ways. Until the early 1990s, print journalism had relied on essentially the same technology ever since the American Revolution.
Newspapers, broadsheets, magazines, and books had all existed when the Constitution was written and their co-dependence was critical to how democracy in North America evolved.
The Constitution with its First Amendment guaranteeing our rights as the press wasn’t broadcast and it wasn’t posted to the Web. It didn’t get tweeted or followed on Instagram. No one made a YouTube video about it. You couldn’t tell your friends on Facebook or TikTok about it. You also could not scroll through it on your cellphone, send a text about it, or “own” a copy as an NFT.
It’s true that an earlier technology, radio, had also disrupted the publishing industry, followed by a few decades its close cousin television, but the federal government regulated both types of broadcast media much more tightly than print to minimize the potential for authoritarian propaganda they clearly represented.
This regulatory structure for the airwaves was established in the 1920s and led by Herbert Hoover, who was the leading voice for how to preserve free speech while managing the airwaves. The Communications Act of 1934 codified these principles and extended them to telecommunications.
But by the time web browsers came along in the last decade of the century, the traditional regulatory structure could not be reasonably extended to the Internet without stifling the growth of a lucrative new industry.
Congress debated what to do and the result was Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. That regulation essentially guaranteed the freedom of the existing web-based companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple and (soon) Google, Facebook, and Twitter to host user-generated content without being liable for its accuracy or fairness.
This instantly put both print and broadcast media outlets at a major disadvantage, one from which they have never recovered. What it actually meant in practice is that anyone could now call himself or herself a journalist and attract an audience for their thoughts, however bizarre and undocumented they might be.
Millions of people quickly took advantage of that opportunity and new websites popped up everywhere. Among them were a handful, like Wired, Salon and Slate in the early years, that attempted to preserve the quality standards of traditional journalism during the transition to this new interactive digital world, with varying degrees of success.
But they were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new information sources as the existing world of media began to crumble into ruins.
A lot has happened between those days and now, much of it bad. But I will leave that part of the story for another day…
TODAY’s HEADLINES (37 stories from 24 sources):
Trump, other Republicans reject gun reforms at NRA convention that showcases nation's split (CNN)
At N.R.A. Convention, the Blame Is on ‘Evil,’ Not Guns (NYT)
AP FACT CHECK: NRA speakers distort gun and crime statistics (AP)
Texas school shooter Salvador Ramos was ‘violent towards women,’ classmates say (NY Post)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s school shooting response under scrutiny (WP)
Texas governor "livid" law enforcement gave him bad information on school gunman (CBS)
A Supreme Court justice’s suggestion on guns: Repeal Second Amendment (WP)
Children called for help from inside classrooms in Uvalde. The police waited. (NYT)
The U.S is uniquely terrible at protecting children from gun violence (NPR)
What school shootings do to the kids who survive them, from Sandy Hook to Uvalde (WP)
Fear & Loathing in San Francisco: How Chesa Boudin Got Blamed (The Nation)
$6M poured into Boudin recall (Mission Local)
Why efforts to enact comprehensive laws to reduce gun violence are failing. (Reveal)
Herbert Hoover, Issues of Free Speech, and Radio Regulation in the 1920s (Taylor & Francis Online)
What is section 230? — As critics of big tech multiply, a once obscure law governing the internet is getting a lot of attention (Economist)
Communications Act of 1934 (The First Amendment Encyclopedia)
Russia takes small cities, aims to widen east Ukraine battle (AP)
Russian gains in Ukraine's east indicate a shift in momentum in the war (Reuters)
Ferocious Russian Attacks Spur Accusations of Genocide in Ukraine (NYT)
Putin urged to hold 'serious negotiations' with Zelensky (BBC)
Putin Says Russia Is Open to More Talks With Ukraine — Ukraine’s troops could soon have to abandon key eastern stronghold to avoid encirclement, regional governor says (WSJ)
‘We can’t live with people who support Putin’s war’: the TV chief who fled Russia (Guardian)
Zelensky defiant despite Donbas setbacks, possible retreat from Severodonetsk (WP)
Zelensky Vows Donbas Will Be Ukrainian Again: 'We Will Rebuild Every Town' (Newsweek)
European leaders urge Putin to unblock Ukraine’s grain supplies (Financial Times)
Wall Street rallies, snaps longest weekly losing streak in decades (Reuters)
Gas prices are rising. So where are the electric cars? (Politico)
Ancient volcanoes may have created a rare resource for lunar explorers (CNN)
FBI records on search for fabled gold raise more questions (AP)
San Francisco has one of the largest population dips in the US, new census data shows (SFGate)
What does a black hole sound like? NASA has an answer (NPR)
Artificial intelligence helps in the identification of astronomical objects (Phys.org)
Forest Service says it started all of New Mexico's largest wildfire (Reuters)
Researchers say they found new type of Parkinson's disease (NHK)
Couple Never Dreamed They Would Be Able To Talk So Openly, Honestly About Cabinets (The Onion)
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