Will an Open Marketplace of Ideas Foster the Truth?

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This paper was originally prepared on 6 November 1995 for Dr. Bruce Austin, Rochester Institute of Technology, College of Liberal Arts. It was written to satisfy a course requirement in Mass Media.

Milton argued that given an open marketplace of ideas, people will always reject what is false and embrace what is true in time. Given the number and diversity of information sources available to the average person today, I would tend to agree with Milton's statement, and will probably agree to a greater extent the more we evolve as a communicating society.

First, however, it is important to understand what Milton means when he uses the word truth. The meaning of this word has been pondered over by philosophers for thousands of years. For the sake of this paper, I will assume that when Milton says truth he means to say fact. Milton feels that the facts will be revealed in time, and all erroneous information will eventually fade away.

It is inconceivable that Milton, in his time, could have imagined the open marketplace of ideas we currently posses in the modern world, although our world seems to be exactly what he had in mind.

Technology has created a global community by way of electronic media such as radio, television, telephone, and computer networks. The media saturate our world, entertaining us, informing us, and most importantly, linking us to one another. It is important that we understand the distinction between these functions. Entertainment is probably one of the most common uses of the mass media. Most American homes have at least one television set (most have more) that is turned on and watched for several hours every day. Many of the shows we watch are fictional in nature, created primarily for their entertainment value.

It could be argued that entertainment serves the lowest common denominator of society. Most entertainment requires little involvement, and little intelligence on the part of the viewer. Many entertainment programs are created by corporate America, which strives to appeal to the largest share of the market. By creating entertainment which follows strict formulae, these corporations generate ratings which at the same time causing a large segment of the population to become misinformed.

Harry F. Waters points out that heavy watchers of prime-time television, those who watch more than four hours per day, are receiving a grossly distorted picture of the real world, and that they tend to accept these distortions more readily than the real world itself.

These distortions included a negative image of African-Americans, a disproportionate number of whites holding professional jobs while 60% of those in the real world hold blue-collar jobs, an increased fear of violent crime, and the perception that older people of today are generally less healthy than those of a generation ago.¹

Information dissemination is another use of the mass media. We catch up to the rest of the world by watching the morning news, listen to the radio while at work, and watch the evening news while eating dinner. When an important event occurs, all other programming is preempted so that the news can be presented. Dissemination of information is the most important function of the mass media.

While some news may, at times, be sensationalized, the news we receive from the media today can generally be regarded as being truthful. There are several reasons for this. One reason is the simple fact that several independent organizations will cover the same news story, giving their own individual perspectives. If the views of one particular organization donÕt quite match the others, it would be an instant indication that something might be amiss. In addition to this informal sort of verification of accuracy by redundancy, there are guidelines that professional news reporters follow. These are ethical guidelines that prohibit reporters from making up the news or reporting facts which may be of questionable authenticity.

In the event of unethical news reporting, government agencies or groups of concerned citizens will generally expose the truth or punish those responsible for the falsehoods. A recent occurrence of this was when NBC news rigged the explosion of a General Motors truck for a news story.

When independent scientists viewed the videotape on television, it was apparent that the explosion was triggered by an external control. These concerned people set the record straight with the public, hurting NBC News' reputation as a reliable news source. This is all independent of the disciplining which probably occurred within NBC News at the corporate level.

Personal communication is the last function of media. While it still may not be considered by many people to be a mass medium, the Internet is such a medium. Both the World Wide Web and Usenet Newsgroups fit the description of a mass medium, while retaining the qualities of personal communication. Both of these media outlets allow an individual to publish information which is then delivered to a large number of people using a technological device (and, by the way, the information on the Internet is not regulated in any manner by government agencies up to this point). Feedback is also an option, and generally happens quickly and effectively. The Internet could be the ultimate form of mass communication due to its versatility. It performs the function of personal communication, while also having the ability to encompass the other functions of media I have discussed.

On the Internet, people worldwide discuss what they've seen in other media. They also discuss their opinions of current events. Anyone who posts information which is not considered to be accurate will be flamed -- a term which means verbally abused on the Internet.

Those people who are flamed regularly will generally have a very poor reputation on the Internet, and their messages will most likely be filtered out of the incoming flow of information to regular readers. This is a form of censorship which the readers institute on their own accord. This sort of flexibility is not readily available in other forms of mass media.

If we consider the three functions of media I have discussed, it becomes apparent that the lower the function of media, the less likely the truth will become apparent. The higher the function of media, the closer to discovering the truth.

Unfortunately, at least today, that implies that the people with the means to connect to more sophistocated forms of media will be those who are able to become the most accurately informed, and the most likely to learn the truth. Those who do not have the means will have little hope in moving up to a higher level, eventually becoming equal with those who have achieved the highest level of personal communication.

When Milton said that given an open marketplace of ideas, people will always reject what is false and embrace what is true in time, he must have had something like the Internet in mind. Over the next decade or so, we will see if the Internet could evolve into a true, open marketplace of ideas.

¹ Harry F. Waters, "Life According to TV" Newsweek (December 6, 1982): 136-40.