The PR Field Could Not Exist Without a Robust First Amendment
The field's First Amendment illiteracy will astonish you
One thing that continues to amaze me is how few current-day public relations practitioners understand the importance of the First Amendment to their work, their careers and their livelihoods. Further, I’m often disappointed at how few PR professionals have even given a serious read to the Amendment itself, so let’s start there. Here it is:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
What does this mean to the PR profession?
Well, let’s talk about what it doesn’t mean first. It does not mean that private citizens in private environments or in their own private lives can’t live out their religions as they see fit. Its only intent is to restrict government’s role in establishment of an official state religion. The courts have been busy for many decades adjudicating the boundaries here.
Second, the government should not “abridge” free speech. By definition, to abridge something is to shorten or reduce in scope. So, what the First Amendment says is free speech is free speech with no limits, no restrictions, no reductions in scope, and it applies to all American citizens, not just the press. It didn’t need to define venue. It didn’t qualify by saying, ‘Your speech is free in this place or on that paper, but not here.’ No, it clearly provided a blanket statement with regard to the natural human right to free speech that is not bestowed by government and cannot be taken away by government.
The Amendment also clearly distinguishes between the people and the press, while ensuring that both are acknowledged as having the same rights to free speech. The point of this distinction is a reminder that the press does not have exclusive right to free speech.
Assembly was mass communication at the time the First Amendment was crafted. That and the printed newspaper. To “peaceably assemble” is to protest without harming others or property or the entities of society. A peaceable assembly is non-violent. Stopping traffic and hindering emergency vehicles from transit is not peaceable. Burning and destroying property and blocking other humans from going about their own daily lives is not peaceable. Physical intimidation is not peaceable.
“To petition the government,” is to use every legal and public governing tool at your disposal to give voice to the people before the government itself.
What’s Not in the First Amendment
There is nothing in the First Amendment that makes allowances for the censorship of concepts and terms that weren’t even in the common vernacular until roughly the past ten years. “Hate speech,” “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “fake news.” These are common 21st century terms that mean different things to different people, but the things they describe are not new.
People have lied, deceived, exaggerated, promoted, advertised, and campaigned for both popular and unpopular ideas since the dawn of creation, and most certainly for as long as the United States of America has been a nation. If you need an example, being a used car salesman or a politician is not illegal, yet both professions are known for what you might call “misinformation.” And just about any form of dissent, when it starts, can easily be labeled as “hate speech” by those in power. If you can squelch dissent in its cradle by labeling it hate speech and suppressing it, you can retain power indefinitely.
But the First Amendment has protected all of that. It recognized that it’s not the government’s job to be the source of all truth, not because that’s too much work, but rather, because the founders recognized you should never entrust that much power to the government.
Once you do, there is no end, and the government will use its power and control over speech to control every aspect of your life. If you think such thoughts are the stuff of conspiracy theorists, then count all of the nation’s founding fathers as conspiracy theorists. They did not trust an all-powerful government, including the one they created.
Of course, there are few exceptions to unrestricted speech, but they must be mentioned. If you feel you’ve been smeared through libel, slander or defamation, you can sue. You have recourse. But that’s a civil offense, not a criminal offense. In other words, there are legal penalties for defamation, but they don’t involve police coming to your house in the middle of the night and arresting you.
You can violate rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) or even the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), by disclosing certain information that is regulated. The common thread for all of this sort of regulation is that it is not designed to regulate opinion, but rather confidential data or information that could lead to tangible harm to private citizens. In no case are these regulations designed to protect the hearer from exposure to another’s information or opinion.
Incitement to violence is one other area. Citizens are not free to incite violence. Still, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken a very narrow view on this. All too often, PR professionals and others will say, “You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” to justify all sorts of censorship of speech they deem as harmful. But in the courts, most inflammatory speech is protected by the First Amendment. What is not protected is when the speaker clearly instructs the public to target a specific person or entity and they immediately go and act on the incitement. Many “fire in a crowded theater” cases lose because they don’t meet this rigid standard.
The one thing that none of these regulations restrict is opinion. Your opinion is not restricted by the First Amendment, no matter how hateful or unpopular that opinion is.
The First Amendment and the PR Profession
When I transitioned into the PR field from the news media, I was one of many journalism alumni who populated the profession. No one had to tell us the importance of the First Amendment. That was ingrained in us since journalism school. We did not want any government telling us which speech is correct or acceptable and which is not. We wouldn’t have stood for anyone telling us that just because you disagree with me, my words are “hate” or “misinformation” or “disinformation.”
This more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the First Amendment has been lost within the public relations profession as fewer and fewer PR professionals have any news media experience, and as the news media itself has largely lost its own reverence for the First Amendment as the sacred foundation for all that we do.
As a result, you have an increasing number of PR professionals who are gladly willing to surrender free speech rights to the government, or to an algorithm, trusting that if we all agree on the same things, everything will get better. Unknowingly, they have surrendered the mission of entire profession on the naïve assumption that a society made up of millions of people can or should universally agree on anything.
But if you work in public relations, the very field exists to allow at least two different entities to have polar-opposite points of view, and trust that in a free communications environment, protected by the First Amendment, all will be permitted to make their best case, and let the public decide. This is the essence of democracy.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald recently made the point that anyone can have free speech in totalitarian states like China or North Korea, so long as you agree with and support everything the government says and does. That is what all too many public relations professionals feel these days. We should have free speech so long as we concur with government sources or directives, or other authorities, or in accordance with some trending social code.
Greenwald added that the First Amendment’s very existence is designed to allow the citizens to dissent, to disagree with the government or some other authority, to offer opposing views, opposing data, to capture the imagination and the attention of the masses. And through your dissent you should not have to worry that you will be censored and silenced.
To do that, you need a message, and you need access to those masses with no restrictions.
None of this can happen if the PR professional rolls over and submits to the kinds of controls over speech that before the past ten years was the kind of thing most Americans would never have dreamed could happen here.