A Truth-Seeking Justification for Press Freedom?^†

Abstract

The relationship between press freedom and representative democracy has captured the interest of philosophers and constitutional law scholars for centuries. John Charney’s The Illusion of the Free Press argues that the truth-seeking justification for expressive freedoms can alone explain the continuing importance of a free press to contemporary democracies. This review essay examines two rebuttals to this argument. First, adopting a more modern ‘process-relational’ philosophy reveals that Charney’s epistemological ‘illusion’ is itself based on misconceptions. Secondly, the author’s incomplete use of democratic theory precludes a more convincing explanation based on marginalised notions of horizontal accountability and the checking function of the press.

1. Introduction

Despite its constitutional importance for democratic governance,¹ the institutional press has undergone radical transformation in recent years. Starting with the now decades-old ‘crisis of journalism’,² which has caused a precipitous global decline in the generation and reporting of ‘accountability news’,³ legal regulation of the press has proceeded without particular concern for safeguarding its capacity to hold power to account.⁴ Add to this the disruptive impact of digital technologies on media consumption patterns and the public sphere,⁵ and we have every reason to be concerned with how well our judges and legislators understand the press’s various roles and theoretical justifications.

One of the many virtues of John Charney’s thought-provoking book The Illusion of the Free Press is that it does not shy away from these harsh realities.⁶ Citing threats to the public sphere attributable to digital technologies and disruptive social media business models, Charney also details the institutional press’s growing inability to ‘check’ the exercise and abuse of political power. The author convincingly describes a radically altered media setting that is ‘showing alarming signs of deterioration’, where ‘investigative journalism has become moribund’ and ‘[p]owerful corporations and government agencies can see their views easily bypass the media’s filters’.⁷ Charney’s principal objective in this ambitious adaptation of his doctoral thesis is ‘to assess and to explore why the press remains such a central institution … in liberal democracies’.⁸ Yet curiously, rather than endorsing its institutional ‘watchdog’ role,⁹ he answers this important question by focusing solely upon the press’s capacity for discovering ‘truth’.

A central theme developed throughout The Illusion of the Free Press is the purportedly thorny relationship between truth and freedom. Charney argues that their association is problematic because a free press implies competition between ideas, whereas ‘truth’ is univocal. Due to this incongruity, the author insists that our understanding of press freedom must ultimately be premised upon an ‘epistemological illusion’,¹⁰ namely, even though we cannot access the world ‘as it actually is’, we must think as though we can. This ‘illusion’ is necessary for Charney because it enables one to maintain that the world we perceive through the press corresponds to the world itself.¹¹ Without it, our perception arguably degenerates into disarray, bringing to mind William James’s famed description of conscious mental life as ‘one great blooming, buzzing confusion’.¹² Charney argues that this ‘epistemological illusion’ single-handedly explains society’s reputed reliance on the ‘truth-seeking’ justification when economic conditions and technology continue to weaken the press’s basic competencies. This is a unique and bold hypothesis. But it is also abstracted from contextual influences, and overlooks significant advances in epistemology and democratic theory that challenge the underlying bases of his argument.

This review essay explores two alternatives to Charney’s major premises. The first challenges his core epistemology by embracing an up-to-date ‘process-relational’ philosophy. By replacing the ‘correspondence’ theory of truth with a model based upon similarity-of-structure and mapping multi-ordinal relationships as the sole substance of human knowledge, we arguably reduce or eliminate the ‘epistemological anxiety’ fueling Charney’s conviction to grasp the world ‘as it actually is’. At its most commanding, ‘process-relational’ thought effectively undercuts the author’s argument that the ‘truth-seeking’ rationale is the principal justification for press freedom.

The second alternative involves questioning Charney’s undertheorising of ‘democratic’ models. As with previous scholars, his characterisation of the ‘checking function’ of the press consists of little more than conflating it with Meiklejohnian theory, effectively eliminating the checking function as an independent free expression rationale.¹³ Aptly, these concerns can be remedied by distinguishing both theories and exploring the checking function’s resonance with recent advances in public accountability scholarship, especially notions of ‘horizontal’ accountability. Doing so provides a stronger theoretical base for safeguarding the press’s increasingly diminished ‘watchdog’ role. Equally importantly, this expanded analysis avoids shoehorning concerns with democratic accountability and political corruption into less relevant free expression justifications, or ignoring them altogether.

At last, these rebuttals help us not only to clarify the characteristically uneasy relationship between ‘truth-discovery’ and press freedom documented in The Illusion of the Free Press, but also to re-establish the checking function’s significance for liberal democracy, particularly in today’s destabilised media environment.

2. Truth and Freedom

A. ‘Necessary’ Illusions

Charney’s first concern in The Illusion of the Free Press is establishing the structure of his main argument.¹⁴ Chapter 1 examines the concept of an ‘illusion’ through various critical lenses, including Noam Chomsky and the Frankfurt School, postmodernism, and Kant’s model of ‘transcendental idealism’. Each perspective presents different epistemological challenges to his argument.

Charney begins by observing that the Marxist-inspired ‘critique of the political economy of the press’ (CPEP) is ‘mainly a critique of ideology’.¹⁵ Whether quoting Chomsky, Marcuse or more contemporary media critics such as Robert McChesney, Ben Bagdikian and Nick Davies, all share a view of the press’s ‘ability to select, produce, censor and spread information that contributes to reproducing existing social practices and aligning public opinion with the tenets of prevailing ideologies’.¹⁶ Press freedom is an ‘illusion’ for the CPEP due to false consciousness—that is, the belief that the institutional press is ‘free and independent’, when in fact it is ‘subject to a series of economic, political and financial constraints that severely limit its freedom and hence its capacity to provide adequate depictions of reality’.¹⁷ These constraints also raise the issue of whether the press performs more as a ‘guard dog’ for entrenched interests than as a ‘watchdog’ for the people.¹⁸

Another model of ‘truth’ and press freedom is what Charney terms the ‘cultural critique of the press’.¹⁹ Unlike the CPEP, the cultural critique ‘is sceptical about the very possibility of a truth-seeking press’.²⁰ According to this postmodernist view, mass media ‘promotes political disengagement and favours the status quo by forming audiences alienated from their political and social reality’.²¹ The epistemological concern is that when reality becomes a ‘social construct’, it also purportedly ‘disappears as a referent by which media communications can be assessed as true or false, or as expressing an underlying meaning beyond the realm of appearances’.²² The ‘illusion’, then, is that there exists ‘a reality beyond the sphere of appearances that can be captured by the press’.²³ Due to its epistemological scepticism, the ‘cultural critique’ abandons the possibility of a truth-seeking press altogether.

Both schools of thought carefully critique the ‘truth-seeking’ justification and its relationship to press freedom, not only questioning the press’s capacity for ‘truth’ discovery by exposing its institutional biases but, in postmodernist accounts, raising epistemology to the forefront of analysis. Interestingly, neither critique is openly disavowed by the author. But instead of claiming that the ‘illusion’ is a false idea of what the press ‘really is’, or an ontological misapprehension of social reality, Charney posits it as a structural problem—an ‘epistemological necessity’—insisting that ‘[w]e need the illusion that a free press is able to mediate a world that exists in itself, because otherwise the very reality principle is under threat’.²⁴ Charney’s understanding and use of the ‘correspondence’ theory of truth is thereby made central to his argument.

Appealing as well to Kant’s ‘transcendental idealism’, which distinguishes between things as they appear and things in themselves,²⁵ Charney contends that the ‘illusion’ that ideas refer to things that exist in themselves is inseparable from human reason. As he explains, we need illusions ‘to understand our world as a consistent whole, that is, as a world which is not just limited to our perception of objects of experience’.²⁶ Since Kant shows that there is no cognitive access to the thing in itself, Charney insists that we need ‘to think that … events exist in themselves, independently of how the press describes them’.²⁷

By corollary, Charney warns that when we renounce the ‘illusion’ of the free press, ‘we immediately lose connection to a fundamental aspect of our social reality that is mainly sourced by the press’.²⁸ That is, renouncing this ‘illusion’ reduces ‘reality’ to ‘an incoherent, inconsistent and meaningless mess’.²⁹ The implication is that without a ‘correspondence’ theory of truth, we cannot comprehend our existence. In effect, ‘we lose our sense of reality’ altogether.³⁰ This explains both the necessity of the author’s ‘illusion’ and his desire to maintain it. At last, cautioning that truth and freedom ‘are … two forces pushing in opposite directions … that exclude one another’, Charney rhetorically asks: ‘Is there a way out of this riddle? Could we think of the relationship between truth and freedom in different ways?’³¹

The answer, I propose, is a resounding ‘yes’. Despite the established pedigree of Charney’s epistemological sources, the last century has witnessed significant developments in our scientific understanding of human knowledge acquisition. Known as ‘process-relational’ philosophy, eminent twentieth-century scholars such as Bertrand Russell,³² Alfred North Whitehead³³ and (more popularly) Alfred Korzybski have maintained that epistemological approaches like the ‘correspondence’ theory of truth were founded on significant fallacies that modern science has convincingly exposed.³⁴

B. ‘Process-Relational’ Philosophy

‘Process-relational’ philosophy advances two basic claims: (i) the ubiquity of change and interconnectedness at both macroscopic and sub-microscopic levels; and (ii) the limitations of human abstraction. Both have radical implications not only for knowledge acquisition, but—as was certainly the case for Whitehead and Korzybski—for the broader organisation of human languages and affairs.³⁵

(i) Change and ‘events’

Originating in ancient Greece,³⁶ ‘process-relational’ thought began with what twentieth-century science had to say about the ‘scientific object’. Considering an item as inconspicuous as a ‘pencil’, the Polish mathematician and engineer Alfred Korzybski enlisted support from the then ‘new’ quantum mechanics and theories of relativity to describe it, reporting that:

We find that the ‘scientific object’ represents an ‘event’, a mad dance of ‘electrons’, which is different every instant, which never repeats itself, which is known to consist of extremely complex dynamic processes of very fine structure, acted upon by, and reacting upon, the rest of the universe, inextricably connected with everything else and dependent on everything else.³⁷

So ubiquitous is this ‘mad dance’ of electrons that not only can you not step into the same river twice—you cannot even step into the same river once.³⁸ Since no process is ever complete, and events have infinite characteristics, it appears impossible to get ‘a “complete” acquaintance with even so simple an object’ as a pencil.³⁹

Still, reality is no ‘illusion’. Unlike some postmodernists who conceive of an unreproducible ‘reality’, ‘process-relational’ thought reassures us of a basic structure connecting the ‘scientific object’ with its constituting forces. Korzybski relates:

(1) Macroscopically, we have a structure in levels, stratified, so to say, with complexities arising from the general colloidal physico-chemical structure of the organism-as-a-whole. (2) The general sub-microscopic, atomic, and sub-atomic structure of all materials simply gives us the persistence of the macroscopic characteristics as the relative invariance of function, due to dynamic equilibrium, and ultimately reflected and conditioned by this sub-microscopic structure of all materials.⁴⁰

As Whitehead formulated in more poetic terms:

In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence. Those who would disjoin the two elements can find no interpretation of patent facts.⁴¹

We are therefore not experiencing permanent ‘things’, but passing events. As explained further below, we experience during our lifetimes only an arbitrary and minute sample from infinite processes of change ‘thing-ing’.

(ii) On abstracting

The second tenet of ‘process-relational’ philosophy is its theory of abstraction. Namely, human beings process information at biological and verbal levels by leaving particulars out. Since our realities are always partial, we obtain incomplete information about the world. At the risk of exaggeration, we acquire knowledge ‘by a process of forgetting’.⁴² While Charney considers Kant’s ‘transcendental idealism’ and Mill’s ‘correspondence’ and ‘perspectival’ theories of truth—all of which acknowledge barriers to knowledge—what distinguishes the process of abstraction in ‘process-relational’ philosophy is that, rooted in human physiology, it is inevitable, inescapable and necessary.

This can be best grasped by considering Korzybski’s ‘Structural Differential of Reality’. The ‘Structural Differential’ depicts three levels of ‘reality’ involved in human abstraction, organised from top to bottom in a circular fashion.⁴³ Although different, all levels are equally real. The first is called the Event or Process Level: that of the unspeakable ‘event’, the ‘scientific object’ or the unseen physico-chemical processes that constitute stimuli registered by our nervous system as ‘objects’.⁴⁴ Due to the circularity of human knowledge,⁴⁵ the Event Level is both the lowest and highest level of human abstraction. Revealed by modern science as a realm of infinite difference, the Event Level includes our best knowledge about the world—one of endless change, interconnectedness, and multidimensional order and relations.⁴⁶ This world of inescapable flux reveals ‘substance’ to be strictly relational, with sweeping implications for knowledge acquisition. All is relational. Everything is the result of all of its causes. As observed by Whitehead, ‘[t]he demarcation of events, the splitting of nature up into parts is effected by the objects which we recognise as their ingredients. The discrimination of nature is the recognition of objects amid passing events.’⁴⁷ Importantly, while we can recognise objects, without science and extra-neural means, we have no direct access to the Event Level.⁴⁸ In this minor respect, Charney’s endorsement of Kant’s ‘transcendental idealism’ overlaps with ‘process-relational’ thought.

The second level is the Object Level, which parallels Charney’s notion of ‘appearances’ and our own sensory experience,⁴⁹ where we hear, smell, see, taste and touch. Korzybski labels these non-verbal experiences ‘lower-order abstractions’, which involve ‘a nervous abstraction of a low order’ involving a radical transformation in quality.⁵⁰ More precisely, a transduction of energy occurs at the organism–environment interface such that our senses are only a result mirroring interactions between ‘it’ and our nervous system.⁵¹ The Object Level is also a silent realm without meaning. Korzybski defines an ‘object’ as ‘a first abstraction with a finite number of m.o. [multi-ordinal] characteristics from the infinite numbers of m.o. characteristics an event has’.⁵² For example, ‘[w]hat we see is structurally only a specific statistical mass-effect of happenings on a much finer grained level. We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.’⁵³ As a result, an essential condition of ‘knowing’ is to explore objects ‘from all possible points of view and put them in contact with as many nerve centres as we can’.⁵⁴ These ‘different, partial, abstracted, specific pictures’ must then be summarised to become the empirical basis for subsequent descriptions and theorising.⁵⁵

The third and final levels are the Label Levels, whereby we attach ‘labels’ to objects and ascribe to them certain characteristics. According to Korzybski, ‘[t]he label, the importance of which lies in its meanings to us, represents a still higher abstraction from the event’.⁵⁶ As a result, ‘the object is not the event but an abstraction from it, and … the label is not the object nor the event, but a still further abstraction’.⁵⁷ In contrast to Charney’s ‘correspondence’ theory, labels also leave out particulars, especially as we continue abstracting in higher orders. This theoretically limitless process concludes only when the highest Label Level reflects our most advanced scientific knowledge. Feeding back into the Event Level in a circular fashion, science accordingly becomes an extra-neural extension of the human nervous system.⁵⁸

In the end, the significance of abstracting is reflected not so much in what we say about the world, but in what we invariably leave out despite our best efforts.

(iii) Non-allness; non-identity

‘Process-relational’ philosophy also prompts two linguistic repercussions that Charney does not address. First, since we leave information out at both the biological and verbal levels of abstraction, we cannot say or know all about anything. What’s more, as Korzybski advised, ‘[o]nce we abstract, we eliminate “allness”, the semantic foundation for identification’.⁵⁹

The second repercussion therefore involves the irreconcilability of identity with ‘process-relational’ thought. In a world typified by infinite change, difference and interconnectedness, the ‘is’ of identity provides only a ‘snapshot’ of reality, which confuses orders of abstraction and results in false-to-facts formulations. Recall that we cannot step into the same river once. The map is not the territory. The word is not the thing. These same concerns also preclude reliance on traditional laws of logic, including: ‘(1) The Law of Identity: whatever is, is; (2) The Law of Contradiction: nothing can both be and not be; and (3) The Law of Excluded Middle: everything must either be, or not be’.⁶⁰ Without the ‘is’ of identity, these laws cannot reliably produce structurally sound knowledge claims about the empirical world.⁶¹

(iv) Similarity-of-structure versus ‘correspondence’

Perhaps the most significant difference between Charney’s ‘correspondence’ model of truth and ‘process-oriented’ epistemology involves the nature of the link between each model’s verbal formulations and the outside world. Even though we can never say what anything ‘is’, our ability to abstract in progressively higher orders allows us to produce symbolic formulations similar-in-structure to ‘what is going on’. In fact, similarity-of-structure is the goal of all higher-order abstracting under ‘process-relational’ thought:

If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone … If the structure is not similar, then the traveller or speaker is led astray, which, in serious human life-problems, must become always eminently harmful. If the structures are similar, then the empirical world becomes ‘rational’ to a potentially rational being, which means no more than that verbal, or map-predicted characteristics, which follow up the linguistic or map-structure, are applicable to the empirical world.⁶²

Unlike Charney’s ‘correspondence’ theory, which identifies verbal formulations with the world they purport to represent, ‘process-relational’ philosophers insist that the ‘whole content of knowledge is exclusively structural’.⁶³ That is to say, ‘[i]f we want to be rational and to understand anything at all, we must look for structure, relations, and, ultimately, multi-dimensional order’.⁶⁴

C. Implications for ‘Truth’ and the Press

‘Process-relational’ philosophy presents significant problems for Charney’s argument that the ‘illusion’ of the free press is based on ‘epistemological necessity’.

First and foremost, it forces radical adjustments to Charney’s concept of ‘truth’. Instead of maintaining that truth is ‘univocal’, we have learned that it is relational and multi-ordinal. In short, there is no one truth. Due to the inescapable flux and interconnectedness of our world, knowledge claims must be based on relational propositions that are ‘true’ or ‘false’ depending only on their level of abstraction. As Korzybski explains: ‘[truth] has a definite meaning, or one value, only and exclusively in a given context, when the order of abstraction can be definitely indicated’.⁶⁵ Moreover, as explored further in section 2D below, these considerations raise difficulties for ‘autonomy’ theorists, who believe in one ‘true’ self. Since all is relational, the ‘self’ is arguably constantly changing, and is affected by compositional alterations to dyadic relationships and broader contexts.

Secondly, by replacing the ‘correspondence’ theory of truth with an alternative premised upon non-identity and similarity-of-structure, Charney’s principal argument is significantly weakened. According to the author, due to the ‘severe’ but unquestioned impact of the CPEP and postmodernist critiques on the ‘truth-seeking’ rationale, the ‘illusion’ of the free press is deemed necessary because it preserves the ‘order of things’.⁶⁶ More precisely, in the face of the CPEP and postmodernist critiques, Charney insists that his ‘illusion of the free press is what keeps alive the connection between the realm of appearances and reality itself’.⁶⁷ The ‘illusion’ is the author’s prescription for preventing a fractured reality.

But, as our brief review of ‘process-relational’ philosophy has revealed, Charney’s retreat from the ‘Kantian dilemma’ (ie that we must think that we can access the ‘thing in itself’) is best explained by his mischaracterisation of the Event Level’s inescapable flux and our inability to grasp ‘what is going on’. Once clear about this unavoidable structural limitation, we are less influenced by Charney’s ‘epistemological anxiety’, consisting of the belief that, should we renounce his ‘illusion’, ‘our world [will] fall apart’⁶⁸ and ‘one of our fundamental connections to social reality [will] be lost forever’.⁶⁹ In short, ‘process-oriented’ epistemology effectively turns Charney’s argument on its head, providing an up-to-date alternative to effectively hoodwinking ourselves with an untenable model of knowledge acquisition. All told, once its epistemological shortcomings are exposed, there is no need to reproduce Charney’s ‘illusion’, whether out of fear or from the faint hope that ‘if there is a better truth [ie “correspondence”], it might be advanced by the liberty of the press and discussion’.⁷⁰

But that is not all. Recall that two prior critiques (ie CPEP and postmodernism) question the press’s ability to deliver on its ‘truth-seeking’ assurances. Among its merits, ‘process-oriented’ epistemology shows that these critiques cannot be avoided by simply describing them, as Charney does, as ‘tools relevant to the understanding of the limitations of the truth argument’.⁷¹ In the case of postmodernism, its critique now strikes at the very core of the ‘truth-seeking’ rationale. That is, by presenting an epistemological ‘middle-ground’ flanked by correspondence and postmodernist scepticism, ‘process-relational’ philosophy softens postmodernism’s most implausible claims of an unreproducible ‘reality’, whilst leaving intact its penetrating criticisms of the press’s increasing inability to deliver the ‘truth’.

Finally, the fact that we cannot faithfully reproduce ‘reality’ does not mean that the press cannot fulfil otherwise important, but secondary, ‘truth’-related roles. For instance, although a press premised on a ‘process-oriented’ epistemology does not require (nor invite) mirror-like accuracy in its reporting, it can still aspire to ‘balanced’ reporting reminiscent of the height of twentieth-century professional journalism.⁷² As John Stuart Mill likewise reasoned, the press can also facilitate ‘truth’ discovery by providing an open forum for debating contested ideas and theories. While this does not guarantee outright veracity, it does at least clarify the relationship between truth and press freedom, and what ultimately is and is not at stake.

D. Truth and ‘Democracy’/‘Autonomy’

After introducing his argument in chapters 1 and 2, Charney sets out to demonstrate the ‘resilience’ of the ‘truth-seeking’ rationale, arguing that ‘whenever truth has been denied access through the front door, it has entered through the back’.⁷³ For instance, Charney contends in chapter 3 that no sooner were Milton and Mill’s ‘truth-seeking’ models rejected by democratic theorists than a substitute model of truth as ‘coherence’ quickly emerged.⁷⁴

Charney begins by distinguishing ‘political’ and ‘objective’ truths, the latter rejected for its ‘incompatibility’ with more common modes of political communication. Contrary to ‘correspondence’ models of truth, Charney argues that ‘political truth’ represents ‘a particular conception of democracy, and it has a constitutive effect because this conception defines and shapes the institutions that are subordinated to it’.⁷⁵ As he explains, while the model of ‘objective truth’ presupposes ‘the possibility of a correspondence, a symmetry between the world, as an object of knowledge, and our knowledge about it’,⁷⁶ ‘political’ truth is based on ‘the coherence between a prevalent “political truth” and a number of practices, institutions and judgements that are shaped in accordance to it’.⁷⁷ Moreover, notions of accountability and what the public is entitled to know through its free press are ultimately defined by the prevailing conception of democracy. Specific norms are, according to Charney, ‘[c]ontained in the central plan of a constitution’, where ‘truth is the fundamental normative framework that defines what a community is supposed to be and how it is supposed to behave’.⁷⁸ Essentially, by reformulating ‘truth’ in this manner, Charney attempts to bolster the significance of the ‘truth-seeking’ rationale for press freedom in response to having lost significant exegetical ground to democratic theories and earlier CPEP and postmodernist critiques.

Similarly, we learn in Charney’s chapter 4 that defences of expressive freedom on ‘autonomy’ grounds are also committed to ‘truth’ discovery. In contrast to ‘political’ truth, ‘truth’ in autonomy theories ‘is located within the subject himself and takes the form of authenticity’, or the discovery of the ‘true’ self.⁷⁹ According to Charney, the tension between truth and freedom manifests as ‘an ambiguous conception of the subject and role of a free press in the public validation of subjectivity’.⁸⁰ Whether considering ‘inner reflection’ leading to universal principles of action associated with Kantian morality or the procedure for ‘self-reflection’ in Joseph Raz’s theory of personal identification providing access to a ‘true’ self, Charney concludes that free expression ‘is a tool that allows access to different forms of lives, and which permits individuals to identify and to design their plans in accordance with them’.⁸¹

E. ‘Truth’ as a Multi-ordinal Concept

Charney’s efforts to ‘shore up’ the ‘truth-seeking’ justification in chapters 3 and 4 are compromised by three factors, each owing to the influence of ‘process-relational’ thought.⁸²

First, the author’s evidence of the ‘resilience’ of the ‘truth-seeking’ rationale comes at the expense of wildly inconsistent versions of ‘truth’. As we know, Charney supports his ‘illusion’ of the free press to access and preserve our understanding of social reality. By contrast, his handling of ‘political’ and ‘individual’ truth in chapters 3 and 4 involves significant narrowing of his conceptions and use of ‘truth’. According to Charney, ‘political’ truth (chapter 3) comprises a democracy’s ‘fundamental normative framework’, internal to the political system itself, which is contained in its ‘plan of a constitution’.⁸³ In autonomy theories (chapter 4), ‘truth’ is further buried within the subject, ultimately comprising one’s ‘true’ self. Unfortunately, whereas Charney’s notion of ‘political’ truth is overly analytical and begs the question, ‘process-relational’ epistemology challenges the concept of one ‘true’ self, indicating that the ‘self’ is relational and contingent upon changes to dyadic relationships and context.

Secondly, as shown by chapters 3 and 4, the inherent flexibility of ‘truth’ requires careful deployment if one’s overall argument is not to be subtly altered in meaning and course. This excessive variability in ‘truth’ models can be explained more plainly by Korzybski’s theory of ‘multi-ordinality’. As ‘process-relational’ philosophy has shown, ‘truth’ is relational and is established by comparing our verbal formulations’ similarity-of-structure to the outside world—an empirically-oriented form of reality-testing. Korzybski notably includes ‘truth’ in a special group of terms that ‘may have different uses or meanings if applied to different orders of abstraction’.⁸⁴ The principal characteristic of these ‘multi-ordinal’ terms is that ‘they are ambiguous, or ∞-valued [infinite-valued], in general, and that each has a definite meaning, or one value, only and exclusively in a given context’.⁸⁵

Finally, Charney arguably mishandles this conceptual flexibility by gradually distancing his analyses from the press itself. For instance, he pivots from his main argument concerning the ‘illusion’ of the free press to a discussion of ‘democratic’ and ‘autonomy’ free expression values in chapters 3 and 4. Charney’s analyses then shift subtly from defending the press’s ‘informational conduit’ role, to showing that rival free expression justifications must still employ ‘truth’ conceptions in their overall structure. Offering only an overly analytical ‘coherence’ theory of ‘political’ truth and an epistemologically challenged notion of the ‘true’ self, Charney’s analyses not only fail to prove the ‘resilience’ of the ‘truth-seeking’ rationale, but suggest that something material is being overlooked. As explored further below, Charney’s progressive minimising of press concerns is difficult to conceive without considering a concomitant undertheorising of the ‘checking function’ of the press.

3. Democratic Undertheorising and the ‘Truth-Seeking’ Justification

A. Marginalising Accountability in ‘Democratic’ Theory

The second challenge to Charney’s argument is his consistent undertheorising of ‘democratic’ principles.⁸⁶ From the outset, Charney notes that democratic theorists have justified expressive freedoms because they were considered ‘essential to the development and strengthening of a democratic polity’.⁸⁷ Yet, whether discussing the ‘deliberative’ features of Meiklejohnian theory or Robert Post’s conceptions of ‘participatory’ democracy, Charney has almost nothing to say about equally important notions of democratic accountability. In fact, when Vincent Blasi’s ‘checking value’ of the press finally surfaces at the end of chapter 3, Charney essentially discounts it as ‘ancillary’ to Meiklejohnian theory and, more remarkably, to truth-seeking itself.⁸⁸ Similarly, even after admitting that ‘the need for government accountability is undeniable’,⁸⁹ Charney quickly transforms the discussion of accountability into a much narrower debate about establishing limits to ‘access to government information’ and a citizen’s ‘right to know’.⁹⁰

Further, Charney lays out absorbing descriptions of the deterioration of the press and the public sphere without any relevant commentary. For example, describing a radically altered media environment characterised by intense and rising pressures to ‘reduce costs’, Charney endorses the anecdotes of Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies, who describes modern journalists as ‘automated piece(s) in the process of news production’.⁹¹ Without the time or resources for ‘boots on the ground’ investigative reporting, Davies warns of the increasing incidence of journalists ‘reproducing information coming from unknown or unchecked sources’.⁹² Given Charney’s extensive knowledge of the ‘crisis of journalism’ and the present-day deterioration of the public sphere, it is incongruent that he does not even mention the press’s ‘watchdog’ role, let alone prioritise it.

Lastly, Charney manages to evince a distinct undertheorising of the checking function whilst examining the ‘political dimension’ to Milton and Mill’s classical theories of truth in chapter 2. Beginning with the Radical Whigs, who fought for political emancipation by opposing government interference with political speech and liberty of the press in the 17th and 18th centuries, Charney impressively perceives cyclical fluctuations involving both the ideas of a free press as ‘a fundamental security against corrupted and tyrannical governments’ and ‘human enhancement’ through improvements to ‘intellectual liberty’.⁹³ Yet, despite his otherwise keen eye for diagnosing contemporary media failings, his enhanced awareness of legal context does not elicit any concerns about the ‘checking function’ or the importance for democracy of maintaining a strong, independent and adversarial press.

Whatever the relevance of the ‘truth-seeking’ justification more generally, combined, these press-centric concerns suggest that, contrary to Charney’s sub-argument in chapter 3, the only reason ‘truth’ returns through the ‘back door’ is because the ‘checking function’ and core conceptions of political accountability are essentially overlooked. At the very least, this situation merits a more comprehensive analysis of Charney’s understanding of the differences between Meiklejohnian theory and the checking function’s defining features, factual relevance and distinct relationship to the institutional press.

B. Distinguishing the Checking Function from Meiklejohnian Theory

To be fair, Charney’s handling of democratic theory reflects long-standing problems in political and legal philosophy. Ever since Hanna Pitkin’s seminal work on representation,⁹⁴ the role of accountability in representative government has required illumination. While remarking upon the ‘accountability view’ of representation, which she dismissed as ‘partial and distorting’, Professor Pitkin confirmed: ‘It is not an important strand in the literature of representation; so far as I know, no writer has discussed it at length or developed it into a theoretical system.’⁹⁵ Moreover, despite the efforts of political theorists over the last half century,⁹⁶ including those who have highlighted ‘accountability’ in their explanations of democracy,⁹⁷ accountability theory has been slow to establish its own tradition of academic analysis.⁹⁸

Returning to The Illusion of the Free Press, Charney predictably marginalises the ‘checking function’ both by conflating it with Meiklejohnian theory and by ignoring it outright.⁹⁹ Conceding that he was never ‘arguing that truth-seeking justifications are the only relevant justifications in liberal theory’,¹⁰⁰ aside from rolling out the traditional ‘democratic’ and ‘autonomy’ free expression justifications, at no point does Charney recognise the checking function as an independent rationale. Given the examples of undertheorising listed above in section 3A, and Charney’s principal objective of ‘improving our understanding’ of press freedom ‘as a fundamental notion in any democratic polity’,¹⁰¹ it is necessary to review the contrasting features of Meiklejohnian theory and Blasi’s ‘checking value’ of the press.

(i) Meiklejohn’s democratic ‘self-governance’ theory

As Charney himself recognises,¹⁰² Meiklejohn’s democratic ‘self-governance’ theory occupies a leading position among free expression justifications. Having been transplanted from its American constitutional context to Britain,¹⁰³ Canada¹⁰⁴ and, to a lesser extent, Australia¹⁰⁵ and New Zealand,¹⁰⁶ Meiklejohn’s primary target in his seminal essay ‘Free Speech and its Relation to Self-Government’ was America’s prevailing doctrine of ‘clear and present danger’, most famously applied by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr in Abrams v United States.¹⁰⁷ Foremost among Meiklejohn’s concerns with Holmes’s ‘marketplace of ideas’ metaphor was that its excessive individualism and pessimism would bring about ‘intellectual irresponsibility’,¹⁰⁸ concerns also shared by Charney. Without standards for ‘determining the difference between the true and the false’, Meiklejohn worried that Holmes’s view amounted only to ‘what a man or an interest or a nation can get away with’.¹⁰⁹ As Charney adds, ‘truth’ then is simply ‘the outcome of a savage struggle where everyone fights to impose their own views on others’.¹¹⁰

Providing an aspirational counterpoint, Meiklejohn argued that one cannot understand the basic purposes of the US Constitution unless one understands that citizens are ‘eagerly and generously serving the common welfare’ in their political activities.¹¹¹ While accepting that the First Amendment was a device for truth-discovery, Meiklejohn clarified that its primary purpose was giving to each citizen ‘the fullest possible participation in the understanding of those problems with which the citizens of a self-governing society must deal’.¹¹² As Charney rightly observes, Meiklejohn’s conception of truth ‘is not about a blind Miltonian faith that unabridged freedom of discussion will necessarily lead to its discovery’, nor is it ‘exclusively about approaching objective truths, which are somewhere out there waiting to be discovered’.¹¹³ Meiklejohn’s ‘highest insight’ of political freedom was that truth-seeking was instrumental to democratic deliberation and the ‘voting of wise decisions’.

Meiklejohn also defended a strict separation of ‘public’ and ‘private’ discourse entrenched in parliamentary privilege and ‘due process’ guarantees in the Fifth Amendment, emphasising that Americans ‘self-govern’ only insofar as their education enables them to ‘direct the pursuit of private interest in whatever way the public welfare may require’.¹¹⁴ Insisting upon ‘equal’ education, Meiklejohn clarified that the final aim in public life ‘is not that everyone shall speak, but that everything worth saying shall be said’,¹¹⁵ a subtle point caught by Charney in The Illusion of the Free Press.¹¹⁶ Shared understanding and effective deliberation, not direct participation, were Meiklejohn’s overriding political concerns.

Lastly, rather than address Meiklejohn’s heightened moralism or aspirational expectations of American citizenship, Charney adds to his exposition of Meiklejohnian theory by arguing that ‘the second purpose of the truth-seeking function of the First Amendment is … to secure what we might call a “self-restraining power” of the people’.¹¹⁷ Without grounding this interpretation in a careful evaluation of Meiklejohn’s and Blasi’s respective scholarship, Charney essentially conflates both justifications by concluding that Meiklejohn’s ‘political truth’ not only promotes ‘an informed process of decision-making’, but also ‘enables the checking function of the press, which contributes to the observance of the law’.¹¹⁸

In the end, Charney’s theoretical misstep regarding the checking function is symptomatic of a much larger issue. Although Meiklejohn embraced admirably the ideals and aspirations of democratic rule, he contributed little to our understanding of democratic accountability and mitigating political corruption. This conclusion is seemingly inescapable after comparing Meiklejohn’s theory to Blasi’s ‘checking value’ of the press.

(ii) Blasi’s ‘checking value’ of the press

The dominant authority on the checking function rationale is Professor Vincent Blasi. In a well-documented review published in the American Bar Foundation Research Journal in 1977,¹¹⁹ Blasi advised that, along with the three core values underlying First Amendment theories (as recognised by Charney in The Illusion of the Free Press),¹²⁰ ‘free expression is valuable in part because of the function it performs in checking the abuse of official power’.¹²¹ Blasi provided an authoritative definition of this ‘checking value’ by classifying its five constitutive premises, seeking to better understand it by examining ‘the premises on which it rests, and the ways in which it differs from other values’.¹²²

The first premise of the checking function is that the abuse of official power is more serious than abusing private power.¹²³ Presaging many 21st-century technical developments, Blasi warned of government’s effects on individuals through its ‘significant investigative capabilities’, its ability to store and use ‘vast accumulations of data’, and its ‘capacity to employ legitimized violence’.¹²⁴ Of course, the checking function’s second premise involves accepting ‘an essentially pessimistic view of human nature and human institutions’.¹²⁵ Blasi observed that ‘[h]uman beings have an unmistakable tendency to hurt each other, so much so that the prevention of man-made evil can be viewed as the most important task of all political arrangements’.¹²⁶

Given the increasing size and complexity of modern government, a third premise posits a ‘need for well-organized, well-financed, professional critics to serve as a counterforce to government’.¹²⁷ This requires critics proficient at ‘acquiring enough information to pass judgment on the actions of government’, who are ‘capable of disseminating their information and judgments to the general public’.¹²⁸ The fourth premise is that ‘the general populace must be the ultimate judge of the behavior of public officials’.¹²⁹ Although implying a connection to democratic theory, Blasi rightly noted that ‘it is the democratic theory of John Locke and Joseph Schumpeter, not that of Alexander Meiklejohn’.¹³⁰

Holding government officials to account implies a fifth and final premise ‘that the concept of “misconduct” has meaning in the context of governmental decision-making’.¹³¹ This implies ‘violation by public officials of norms that transcend a wide spectrum of policy differences’, including: (i) fraudulent criminal behaviour; (ii) unconstitutional behaviour; (iii) improper involvement in foreign affairs; (iv) serious misrepresentations made to government or the public; and (v) using public office to augment one’s private wealth.¹³² All told, the checking function provides a valuable supplement to traditional free expression justifications, particularly in light of the considerable gaps in Meiklejohnian theory.

Blasi also outlined the checking function’s dissimilarities to traditional free expression values. He sensibly advised that ‘the checking value has the potential to influence First Amendment doctrine only insofar as it can be shown to have premises and implications significantly different from those of the self-government value’.¹³³ Blasi noted two substantive differences and two different emphases. The first substantive difference was that ‘the checking value focuses on the particular problem of misconduct by government officials’, whereas Meiklejohnian theory ‘makes no such narrow ordering’.¹³⁴ The second was that the checking function permits balancing the consequences of speech activities, where constitutional protection for ‘self-governing’ speech must be unqualified.¹³⁵

The first difference in emphasis was that Meiklejohn places ‘slightly more emphasis on argumentation … than does the checking value’.¹³⁶ By contrast, the checking function emphasizes shortage of information as the most serious issue relating to political problems.¹³⁷ Secondly, the two models view social and political elites differently. Blasi rightly noted that ‘Meiklejohn [was] reluctant to assign a special role in the governmental system to any group of people’.¹³⁸ Public officials were understood as ‘agents of the collective political will’.¹³⁹ By contrast, since ‘a proponent of the checking value sees political decision-making more as a product of contending forces and counterforces’,¹⁴⁰ public officials are seen as ‘potential oppressors rather than as … agents’.¹⁴¹

As we can see, each model highlights different aspects of democratic governance and supports distinct press roles and responsibilities. First, where Meiklejohn stressed deliberation and promoting the general welfare, Blasi highlights accountability and exposing political misconduct. Secondly, embracing an idealised view of democratic rule and human nature, Meiklejohn viewed political representatives merely as ‘agents’ of the people. By contrast, owing to Blasi’s contrasting pessimism, political representatives are perceived as potential oppressors. Thirdly, concerned to protect all speech relevant to electoral issues, Meiklejohn emphasised argumentation and democratic deliberation. Focusing more specifically on misconduct by government officials, Blasi is particularly concerned with the shortage of information about political power. Lastly, both models give rise to distinct conceptions of the press. Namely, where Meiklejohn stressed the press’s ‘informational conduit’ role in facilitating electoral decision making, the ‘checking function’ emphasises the classic liberal ‘watchdog’ function of the press.

Importantly, had Charney known the extent of the differences between these two democratic models, he would have at least been forced to explore the relevance of the checking function rationale in more detail. Ideally, he would have realised that the checking function provides a more compelling response to his primary research aim of explaining why press freedom continues to be of such essential importance to modern-day liberal democracies.

C. ‘Horizontal’ Accountability Mechanisms

Returning briefly to chapter 3 of The Illusion of the Free Press, Charney’s apparent inability to discuss ‘political accountability’ without transforming this concept into a ‘right to know’ demonstrates a disquieting lack of awareness not only of the press’s ‘watchdog’ role generally, but of its special function as a ‘horizontal’ accountability mechanism.

Besides defining accountability as a ‘virtue’ or ‘mechanism’, public accountability scholars have usefully categorised accountability as ‘horizontal’ or ‘vertical’.¹⁴² ‘Vertical’ forms of accountability are implicit in most ‘principal–agent’ relationships and are typically related to accountability arrangements in parliamentary democracies. Examples include voters, ministers, departments and agencies. By contrast, ‘horizontal’ accountability refers to relationships where ‘the accountee is not hierarchically superior to the accountor’.¹⁴³ In other words, it is ‘a form of accountability to third parties’, where there is no formal obligation to render an account. Examples include semi-autonomous agencies, independent evaluators, boards of stakeholders or commissioners, interest groups and, above all, a free and adversarial press.

(i) The press as a ‘horizontal’ accountability mechanism

Prominent accountability scholars have recognised a ‘free and independent press’ as ‘perhaps the most important’ among these horizontal accountability mechanisms.¹⁴⁴ Professor Pippa Norris explains that ‘[t]he checks and balances inherent in the representative system … legitimize journalistic inquiry as part of a broader framework of government accountability to citizens’.¹⁴⁵ In fact, press dynamics play a vital role in the accountability networks of all representative systems.¹⁴⁶ This journalistic influence involves the performance of two separate functions. Specifically, the institutional press performs both ‘a direct primary role, when investigating the behavior of the powerful and instigating reports about alleged malfeasance’, and ‘a more diffuse and weaker secondary role, when disseminating general information about public affairs which was previously hidden from public attention’.¹⁴⁷

Above all, the institutional press is distinctive because it alone provides a form of ‘full-spectrum’ accountability. Notably, unlike other accountability mechanisms, it is capable at least in principle of applying to all branches of government, individuals and corporations.¹⁴⁸

D. Implications for ‘Truth’ and ‘Democracy’

These concerns present yet further difficulties for Charney’s argument that the ‘truth-seeking’ rationale alone accounts for the enduring importance of a free press to liberal democracies.

First, given Charney’s obvious concern with the ‘crisis of journalism’ and its deleterious effects on contemporary media, it would seem incumbent on him to provide some consideration of the checking function rationale when investigating the larger question of the press’s enduring importance for liberal democracy. While the highly diminished state of the press is no reason for Charney to avoid considering other justifications, section 3 herein demonstrates a lost opportunity for the author. Namely, Charney disregards that a fully theorised checking function both amplifies the importance of political accountability and holding power to account whilst diminishing the comparative relevance of other justifications, including especially the ‘truth-seeking’ rationale.

Secondly, as shown by our comparison of Meiklejohnian theory and the checking function, the chief vulnerability of Charney’s analysis is its overly high level of abstraction, divorced from specific legal doctrines (such as public libels),¹⁴⁹ and the real-world conditions inhibiting the press’s generation and reporting of ‘accountability news’. Charney’s argument overlooks that the material facts of legal disputes heighten the case for recognising the checking function as an independent rationale.¹⁵⁰ For example, defamation cases involving governments and public officials as libel plaintiffs raise unique concerns with democratic legitimacy and political accountability that are not sufficiently addressed by simply appealing to Meiklejohnian theory or the ‘truth-seeking’ rationale. Again, given today’s weakened press environment, the checking function stands alone in focusing our attention on restoring the press’s vital ‘watchdog’ role.

Lastly, the checking function also changes our inquiry into press freedom and ‘truth’. That is, the institutional press will maintain its role as a horizontal accountability mechanism as long as it retains its capacities to accumulate information on official misconduct, report it to the public and resist unwanted influence by the powers that be. Also, since this functional definition of the press does not rely upon questionable epistemological claims about the world ‘as it actually is’, there is no need to adopt any ‘illusions’ about what the press can and cannot do, and under what conditions it requires intervention and support.

4. Conclusion

One of the many virtues of John Charney’s The Illusion of the Free Press is that it situates its analysis of truth-discovery in the midst of increasingly grim realities for 21st-century journalism. Lamenting the widespread deterioration of investigative journalism, where news organisations are increasingly publishing ‘information that has been crafted especially to protect the interests of big economic conglomerates and government agencies’,¹⁵¹ Charney does a fine job of setting the scene for why we should all be concerned about the press’s diminished state. He should also be commended for his clear organisation, lucid writing, creative argumentation and intellectual honesty in taking on such a challenging topic of scholarly research.

But in the end, Charney’s ‘illusion’ of the free press must remain just that—an illusion. When confronted with ‘process-relational’ philosophy, a vital lynchpin to his argument breaks down. Since knowledge acquisition cannot follow a ‘one-to-one’ mapping of linguistic formulations to the ‘reality’ they purport to represent, we can eschew two sources of ‘epistemological anxiety’ driving Charney’s argument. First, by replacing the ‘correspondence’ model with a theory based on non-identity, non-allness and similarity-of-structure, we do not need to depend on the rigours of formal logic and the pursuit of certainty to acquire knowledge. Instead, we need to spend more time silently observing at the Object Level and systematically connecting ‘objects’ to our nervous systems. Experience first, then words.

Secondly, and relatedly, we can also offload Charney’s greatest concern that without a ‘correspondence’ theory of truth, our grasp of reality will be lost. By adopting a ‘negative metaphysical’ view of the world under ‘process-relational’ thought, where the ‘map is not the territory’ and the ‘word is not the thing’, we learn to embrace non-identity, non-allness, change and uncertainty not only as valuable and inescapable features of everyday life, but also as fundamental conditions for scientific knowledge. Then, when we realise the futility of concepts such as ‘correspondence’, ‘identity’ and ‘allness’, Charney’s ‘illusion’ of the free press ceases being an ‘epistemological necessity’, as he resourcefully imagines, and the ‘illusion’ is exposed as an unfounded fallacy. When the author’s ‘democratic’ undertheorising is also considered, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the press’s ultimate value to modern democracies lies not so much in what it supplies by way of veracity, but what it safeguards by fulfilling its foundational ‘watchdog’ function.

In the end, The Illusion of the Free Press perhaps advances freedom of expression scholarship most through its example of methodological overreaching. Despite the impressive lengths to which Charney goes to preserve the relevance of the ‘truth-seeking’ justification, an important lesson when testing the limits of a theory’s exegetical powers is to maintain an extensional (ie empirical) orientation. To maintain a rigorous ‘theory–doctrine’ interface, we must not then take our cues from the unlimited reaches and recesses of our minds, but from a full complement of free expression justifications considered in the context of specific legal disputes and institutional contexts. Only then can we see their similarities and differences in sharpest relief and thereby determine their ultimate relevance and application.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Elizabeth Fisher and my anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and constructive criticisms. All errors and omissions are the sole responsibility of the author.

Footnotes