Privately Owned broadcasting and Freedom of the Press

In regards to the Question of the week: "What are the constraints on free speech & the First Amendment for the news industry?", My research lead me to see how little free speech is actually constrained in the United States, and how that lack of direct regulation can lead to unforeseen influence by commercial speech such as fake news and advertisements. Specifically referring to fake news as commercial speech was from one of my primary sources by John Riggins in his academic law review, which he published last year. He pointed out how fake news was quite difficult to regulate as commercial speech because to do so might be seen as trying to censor free-speech. He also said that even though the supreme court was currently looking into how it could be regulated as commercial speech, there is no clear method because the current definitions for fake news are too vague. A recent study by Bartosz Wojdynski and Hyejin Bang in 2016 came to the conclusion that user-curated advertisement can inadvertently decrease critical judgement in viewers, which makes the spread of fake or heavily biased news considerably easier. Reading these papers with the First Amendment in mind gave me the impression that the system was perhaps too lax and would benefit from being re-evaluation. Not to completely censor or a re-work of the the United States news industry, only to take a deeper look into what federal regulations are currently in place—with comparisons to international public news broadcasts—and be aware of how players in the news industry might take advantage of that in the Information Age.

Riggins, J. A. (2017). LAW STUDENT UNLEASHES BOMBSHELL ALLEGATION YOU WON'T BELIEVE!: "FAKE NEWS" AS COMMERCIAL SPEECH. Wake Forest Law Review, 52(5), 1311-1334.

Wojdynski, B. W., & Bang, H. (2016). Distraction effects of contextual advertising on online news processing: an eye-tracking study. Behaviour & Information Technology, 35(8), 654-664.