COMM 337: Journalists, students and the "marketplace of ideas"

In class Thursday, I tried to ad lib an explanation of the "marketplace of ideas," and the only thing I made clear was why I need to do a little class prep before opening my mouth! So here is something I wrote for another class in 2007, revised, updated and expanded for COMM 337 a couple of years later.

One of the important premises of public discourse in America is that we participate in a "marketplace of ideas." It's more of an analogy or a metaphor than a rigorous philosophy, and it isn't usually spelled out. According to Wat Hopkins of Virginia Tech, that may be because the U.S. Supreme Court justices who talk about it accept the idea so implicitly, they don't feel like they have to spell it out. "Indeed," Hopbins says, "they seem to have accepted without question that the metaphor is effective because the rationale upon which it is built - that the best way to discover truth is though a robust competition of a multitude of voices - is sound."

Hopkins says the underlying comparison, of public debate to a market, "has few friends among nonjurists," but we also find it in the newspaper business. And its premise, that we best arrive at the truth by exploring alternatives, is basic to Western scholarship as well.

It's basic critical thinking, too. The kind of thing we learn in freshman English and never ought to forget. Arguing issues, in the sense of staking out a position and citing evidence to back it up, is how scholarship works. So a university can be described as a marketplace where ideas are exchanged, and buyers have the freedom to choose the best among competing ideas.

In modern America, the concept is usually traced back to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said in his dissenting (minority) opinion in Abrams v. United States, a First Amendment case decided in 1919:

If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition...But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas ... that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

Holmes' stated the idea in The idea and its application in the classroom are explained further in the Wikipedia article on the "Marketplace of Ideas." The Wikipedia article adds, "The Socratic Method can be seen as the pedagogical embodiment of the 'marketplace of ideas'." I think that's true, and I would add that the scientific method is based on the same basic line of reasoning. New hypotheses are tested, and confirmed or modified as other scholars try to replicate them.

In political thought, the underlying concept is also associated with Thomas Jefferson, who wanted the University of Virginia which he helped establish, to be "be based upon the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." In this, Jefferson was clearly influenced by English poet John Milton, who in 1644 wrote a tract called Areopagitica: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England.

... though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play on the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

On the continent of Europe, the 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire added a very important wrinkle: We don't have to agree with everybody else in the marketplace. If fact, if we did the marketplace couldn't function.

Famously, Voltaire wrote another philosopher, (an abbot), saying, "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." (The quote is usually given as, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. The exact quote is threshed out by educator Bill Chapman on his website Classroom Tools. Chapman also quotes Voltaire's "Essay on Tolerance" published in 1755: Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too. That's what I want us to strive for in COMM 337.

One of the best things I've seen on the marketplace concept in journalism is an article that ran Jan. 8, 2011, in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Headline: "Our job: Keep the marketplace of ideas stocked." In it, editorial page editor David D. Haynes quoted Holmes' dissent in Abrams v. U.S. and added:

When you read these [editorial and op-ed] pages, you're browsing in that market.

You're here because you're interested in ideas and want to engage in a thoughtful conversation about them.

This simple act - that of reading opinion - is essential to representative democracy. Citizens must be informed and, once informed, must decide what they think about the policy questions of their day. Reading the opinions of others helps them to decide.

Haynes explained the Journal Sentinel's policy like this:

We do not dictate to readers and, in any case, could not do so even if we desired. What we do is help fill the marketplace so that readers can sample a variety of ideas and decide for themselves what they think.

The late [editor] Harry J. Grant once summed up a philosophy that I firmly embrace. Grant, who died in 1963, was for many years the top executive of this company. He was famous for his unbridled independence. On his watch, The Milwaukee Journal peeled the paint off politicians ranging from the notorious Sen. Joseph McCarthy to the progressive La Follettes.

Grant had this to say:

"Go to the truth, wherever you find it, and to hell with right and left."

My promise: We will be fiercely independent. And we will offer a marketplace of ideas from which you can choose as you like.

Like mission statements, editorial policies can sound a little too good to be true - they tend to reflect goals we aspire to rather than the day-to-day realities we have to deal with. But The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is considered one of the top 10 newspapers in the United States, and repeatedly wins Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2008, 2010 and 2011. So there is something of substance behind the rhetoric.

Further reading:

Wat W. Hopkins, "The Supreme Court Defines the Market Place of Ideas. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73.1 (Spring 1996). http://www.comm.umd.edu/faculty/tpg/HopkinsWeekSeven.pdf

John Kearnes. Democratic Theory and the Disadvantages of Truth in the Contemporary Market Place of Ideas: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Freedom of Expression. Paper prepared for delivery at annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Sept. 1-4, 1994. http://www.cjsocpols.armstrong.edu/kearnes/democratictheoryandthedisadvantages.pdf