Ideas v. Goods

When White House Speechwriter Patrick Buchanan and other Administration spokesmen occasionally hinted about Government intervention to break the "liberal monopoly" of the national press, the gambit was obviously a partisan effort to pressure rather than persuade. It is different with Professor Ronald H. Coase of the University of Chicago, a British economist with no discernible political ax to grind. He suggests that federal regulation of the press would be appropriate on social and economic principle. In a scholarly paper given before a recent New York City seminar, Coase broadened the Nixonians' argument by challenging the special status of the American press and assaulting the philosophical validity of its chief protector, the First Amendment.

Neither in his paper nor in informal remarks did Coase specify what kind of regulation he had in mind. Rather, he talked of a "real law that would actually regulate what people say." He believes that the "market for ideas," to which journalism belongs, is economically motivated, like the market for goods, and therefore as fit for public regulation as railroads or drug companies. "I do not believe that this distinction between the market for goods and the market for ideas is valid," he declared.

In reaching that conclusion, Coase challenged two assumptions that, he says, have created the distinction in public policy: 1) that consumers are able to distinguish good ideas from bad on their own, though they need help in choosing among competing goods; and 2) that publishers and broadcasters deserve laissez-faire treatment while other entrepreneurs do not. He sees journalists as salesmen of products. Hence there is no reason to believe that "producers who are found to be so unscrupulous in their behavior in other markets can be trusted to act in the public interest whether they publish or work for the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune or CBS."

Coase seems to find little virtue in any form of journalism ("It deals with sensation and scandal, things that can be made entertaining or amusing"). He depicts the press collectively as a self-serving purveyor of misinformation. While journalists presume a high moral standard for others, they are willing to publish material drawn from "stolen" documents. Newspaper editors demand total freedom of expression for themselves, but were for years generally silent about Government restraints on their competitors in broadcasting.

Coase, 63, is no admirer of Orwellian Big Brothers. A British subject who has taught in the U.S. since 1951, he favors Barry Goldwater among politicians and has a low opinion of Government's ability to regulate anything properly. Ideally, he is against any public intervention in private enterprise. But that caveat is irrelevant to his thesis.

Coase finds it paradoxical that, historically, liberal journalists and intellectuals have urged further Government control in other fields while they use the First Amendment to deny such interference in the ideas markets. His explanation: the press trades profitably in the ideas market but cloaks its purpose in "a mantle of virtue."

Clear Record. It is here that the First Amendment protects bad journalism as well as good. The press is both fallible and sometimes loath to admit it. In its broad implications, however, the Coase theory ignores more than 200 years of American experience and blinks at contemporary facts.

For good or ill, the First Amendment already sanctions a number of constraints on journalism. Libel law is one such limitation. In the 1972 Caldwell decision, the Supreme Court restricted the ability of newsmen to protect confidential news sources. Broadcasters come under special regulation, thanks to the Fee's "fairness doctrine."

Nonetheless, America's press does enjoy great freedom and influence. From colonial times on, its tendency to discomfit the mighty has been repeatedly challenged and repeatedly vindicated.

Whether it was Tom Paine attacking despotism or the Washington Post fighting the Watergate battle, the record is clear. Despite its lapses and excesses, an unfettered press provides a unique check on powerful institutions that need constant scrutiny. That function could not be performed if the main object of scrutiny, Government, had a regulatory collar on the watchdog.

What of the charlatans lurking behind the First Amendment's skirts?

Coase argues that "buying harmful ideas is just as bad as buying harmful drugs."

Perhaps, but it is relatively easy to get an objective consensus on, say, the toxic effects of thalidomide. To imagine that any kind of Government body, however constructed, could monitor political reportage the way inspectors look for diseased chickens is fantasy.

Even if the press were as infected with misleading information as Coase thinks, there are remedies. If an Administration thinks itself falsely accused, the President can--and often does--command prime time on all three networks to tell his side of the story. If direct competition among newspapers has declined, the public still has a choice of ideamongers: the surviving papers, a variety of magazines, an assortment of network and independent broadcasters.

Further, there is a small but healthy trend among newsmen toward self-examination and criticism. None of these factors promise perfection. But the Coase theory, if ever put into practice, is a prescription for impotence.

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