The Marketplace of Fake News
Ari Ezra Waldman · Penn Carey Law Legal Scholarship Repository (University of Pennsylvania) · 2018
We are often told that fake news is the price we pay for a free society, or that fake news is part of the "marketplace of ideas."Indeed, most arguments against any kind of regulation of fake news-and even some arguments in favor-rest on the presumption that lies, distortions, and fabrications are part of the marketplace metaphor.This Article challenges that presumption.Since the phrase was coined, the "marketplace of ideas" was always about ideas, not facts, and the law has always treated facts and feelings or opinions about those facts differently.Current interpretations that expand the First Amendment from ideas to facts are not only ahistorical and wrong.They are also complicit in the erosion of the body politic brought on by fake news.