POLL: Is Censorship a Partisan Issue?

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POLL: Is Censorship a Partisan Issue?

By Carl M. Cannon - RCP Staff September 22, 2023

 

The concept of free speech dates to the 5^th century B.C. in ancient Greece and was codified in America’s founding documents on Dec. 15, 1791, with the ratification of the Bill of Rights. The 45-word First Amendment prohibited Congress from “abridging freedom of speech, or of the press,” and has been long understood to include any branch of government.

James Madison, the drafter of the first 10 constitutional amendments, originally drafted a more fiery version of the First Amendment, one that included its underlying rationale: “The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.”

“Inviolable” is a powerful word, notwithstanding the fact that the right to speak and write freely has always come with various limitations. They range from libel and slander laws to national security secrets, obscenity statutes, and the notorious analogy popularized by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. of “falsely shouting ‘fire!’ in a theater and causing panic.”

Most citizens accept some of these caveats; others do not. But by overwhelming majorities, Americans generally still cherish their rights to free expression — at least in theory. A new poll on censorship by RealClear Opinion Research shows that 90% of voters in the United States express support for the Founders’ curbs on government power.

Topline findings: The full polling breakdown

“Overall, 9 in 10 voters in the U.S. think First Amendment protections for freedom of speech is a good thing, while only 9% think it is a bad thing,” said pollster Spencer Kimball, who directed the RCP survey. “This is agreed upon across the demographics, like party affiliation, age, and race.”

For those who oppose censorship and put a premium on the free flow of ideas, that’s the good news. But there is bad news, too. Inevitably in our nation’s current hyper-partisan political environment, when one bores down on this subject, deeply divergent perspectives emerge — partisan differences.

Painting with a broad brush, Democrats grant significantly more deference to government than do Republicans when it comes to regulating free speech. This wasn’t the only fault line revealed by the RCP survey.

Some of what is dividing these differences is generational, as Millennials and Gen-Z have come of age in a digital age environment in which reasonable expectations of privacy seem a relic of the past. “Those under 30 are most open to censorship by the government,” Kimball noted, adding that 42% of this cohort deem it “more important” to them that the government protect national security than guard the right to free expression. Among those over 65 years old, the corresponding percentage was 26%.

 

Also, a gender gap reveals itself, one that dovetails with the discrepancy in party registration between men and women — but which is more pronounced. Asked whether they support free speech even if it’s “deeply offensive,” 78% of men answered affirmatively, compared to 66% of women.

But the most glaring gap is between conservatives and liberals, i.e., between Republicans and Democrats. On the issue of free expression, at least, Republicans are not the authoritarian party. That distinction belongs to the Democrats, the party launched by Thomas Jefferson — the Founding Father who famously said that if he were forced to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

This is a relatively new development. Traditionally, opposing censorship — whether imposed by government or corporations — was a bedrock principle of liberalism in this country. The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 to promote and defend free expression. And this ideal was at the heart of liberal thought, liberal lawmaking, and liberal jurisprudence during most of the 20^th century.

But times change. And notwithstanding the controversial current push by social conservatives to denude public school libraries of content they dislike, the new RealClear Opinion Research poll is the latest to document the gradual change that has taken place on the left when it comes to this free expression. Here are some of its findings:

• Republican voters (74%) and independents (61%) believe speech should be legal “under any circumstances, while Democrats are almost evenly divided. A bare majority of Democrats (53%) say speech should be legal under any circumstances, while 47% say it should be legal “only under certain circumstances.”
   
• Nearly one-third of Democratic voters (34%) say Americans have “too much freedom.” This compared to 14.6% of Republicans. Republicans were most likely to say Americans have too little freedom (46%), while only 22% of Democrats feel that way. Independents were in the middle in both categories.
   
• Although majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents agree the news media should be able to report stories they believe are in the national interest, this consensus shifts when it comes to social media censorship. A majority of Democrats (52%) approve of the government censoring social media content under the rubric of protecting national security. Among Republicans and independents, this percentage is only one-third.
   
• Poll respondents were read this statement: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Only 31% of Democratic voters “strongly agreed” with that sentiment, compared to 51% of Republicans.
   
• Fully three-fourths of Democrats believe government has a responsibility to limit “hateful” social media posts, while Republicans are more split, with 50% believing the government has a responsibility to restrict hateful posts. (Independents, once again, are in the middle.)
   
• Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to favor stifling the free speech rights of political extremists. Also, Republicans don’t vary by the group: Only about half of GOP voters favor censorship — whether asked about the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, or the Communist Party.
   

This last finding, which is perhaps counterintuitive, dovetails with groundbreaking research released earlier this year on free speech by three California college professors, Ruth E. Appel and Jennifer Pan of Stanford and Margaret E. Roberts of the University of California, San Diego. Their study, “Partisan Conflict Over Content Moderation Is More Than Disagreement about Facts,” examined liberals’ greater willingness to embrace censorship of online content.

The study posited three likely explanations: (1) Liberals are convinced of the presence of a “fact gap” in the current political environment, which is to say that liberals’ desire to clamp down on misinformation stems from a certainty that conservative content is, objectively speaking, less factual than liberal media content. (2) Instead, conservatives’ reluctance to censor was based on a “values gap,” i.e., a genuine belief in the free marketplace of ideas, regardless of the media content. (3) What’s really at play are “party promotion incentives,” which the authors defined as “a desire to leave misinformation online that promotes one's own party by flattering it or denigrating the other party.”

To try and assess what is going on with censorship, the authors showed the 1,120 people in their study fake news headlines, such as “Hours after signing an executive order on Jan. 20, 2021, President Joe Biden violated his own mask mandate” or “In Sept. 2016, Ted Cruz tweeted, ‘I’ll believe in climate change when Texas freezes over.’”

 

The poll respondents were then told the headlines were invented and solicited the respondents’ views as to whether they should be censored. The results were stark. “Even when Republicans agree that content is false, they are half as likely as Democrats to say that the content should be removed and more than twice as likely to consider removal as censorship,” the authors wrote.

You can see what happened here: For purposes of this study, the authors took Door No. 1 (the notion that liberal news is more reliable) off the table. So that left Door No. 2 (values gap) and Door No. 3 (partisan advantage) still in play. If Republicans’ aversion to censorship was transactional, they would have identified Democratic-friendly misinformation for removal. But they didn’t. “Regardless of the partisan slant of the content, Democrats are more likely to support the removal of content, while Republicans are more likely to oppose removing content,” the study noted.

It was Democrats who more often employed situational ethics, giving a pass to misinformation that helped their side. Most Republicans didn’t differentiate based on which way the false headline cut.

A comprehensive Cato Institute poll done in 2017 documented a similar phenomenon. Asked a series of questions about what kind of speakers should be barred from college campuses, Democrats more often based their decision on the political slant of the speaker (canceling conservatives, but not liberals) while Republicans were chary of the whole censorship enterprise.

“Even on issues in which one might expect Republicans to be more offended, they were less likely than Democrats to support cancelling the speaker,” the Cato study found.

Some of this is the normal give-and-take of partisan politics. Vigorous support for the First Amendment has waxed and waned between the nation’s two dominant political parties for the better part of two centuries, and they have often reversed roles.

What’s different in the 21^st century is the zeal with which mainstream media luminaries have excused, and in some cases, pursued the censoring of politicians and even fellow journalists with whom they disagree. Libertarian writer John Tierney wrote about this phenomenon in 2019. Four years later, there’s little evidence the fever has broken.

 

Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics and executive editor of RealClearMedia Group. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/real_clear_opinion_research/poll_is_censorship_a_partisan_issue_149790.html

[CoffeeTiger 5,305]

I like how in the middle of that article they just casually throw in " notwithstanding the controversial current push by social conservatives to denude public school libraries of content they dislike" . then launched into how it's Democrats and liberals are Clearly against freedom of expression and free speech based on some polling they did. 

 

If you ask me, the group that is lobbying nationally to remove books from libraries and even close down libraries for having books they don't like or agree with, says more about their values and intentions than how they may respond to online polls does. 

I think these polls show Conservatives are very likely to SAY they value freedom of ideas and expressions regardless of the content of that speech, but in reality do they actually follow what they say they believe when they encounter speech they don't like? I don't know....a lot of librarians,  school boards, lgbtq groups, ect  might say from experience that they do not. 

 

Edited September 25, 2023 by CoffeeTiger