{"id":626,"date":"2015-06-24T16:49:24","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T16:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?page_id=626"},"modified":"2025-06-26T12:26:34","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T12:26:34","slug":"corporate-speech","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/corporate-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Regulating corporate speech"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Climate.Jail.Nazi.FirstAmend\"<\/a>

June 18, 2016, FB post with falsehoods about proposed law, and related falsehoods about climate science. Question: Who decides what is a lie?\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

What happens<\/strong> when a law designed to prevent false and misleading commercial advertising is applied to larger issues such as climate change? Take,\u00a0\u00a0for instance, a proposed California law,\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0SB 1161 of 2016<\/a>, \u00a0designed to bring corporations into court to defend climate change denial. \u00a0No individual lawsuits, and no criminal penalties,\u00a0 had ever been part of the failed legislative proposal.<\/p>\n

But even after the proposal failed to clear a state house committee, opponents associated with the fossil fuel industry published pictures of Nazi soldiers, claimed the law would have jailed dissidents, \u00a0and proclaimed the death of the First Amendment.<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, these are not mere “opinions” under the Ollman test. They are testable facts and, following a reasonable test, outright fabrications.\u00a0 And the fact that corporations openly publish lies about public affairs in order to advance their agenda is nothing new.\u00a0 The power of social media advertising to allow corporations to target susceptible individuals is the new element.<\/p>\n

Dangerous commercial and corporate speech has existed since\u00a0 the early days of \u00a0advertising, when there was no regulation. At the time, cereals and opioids were hawked as curing appendicitis and cancer. \u00a0That kind of\u00a0 false advertising is illegal today because of the damage caused by unethical advertising practices.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A climate denial group’s post claiming that scientists are wrong about sea level rise is challenged by fact checkers. Usually such claims are ignored.<\/p><\/div>\n

Today,\u00a0\u00a0the question about false and misleading advertising overlaps with questions about the First Amendment rights of corporations and public relations practitioners working with the corporations.<\/p>\n

While information about products must be truthful, is there, in effect, a right to lie about broader issues like climate change or vaccine efficacy or rigged voting machines?<\/p>\n

Consider this: \u00a0Even if the First Amendment only protects truthful communication, how difficult is it for courts to decide between truth and error? \u00a0And even if some communication is in error, isn’t John Stuart Mill’s idea about allowing error in order to provide a livelier impression of truth\u00a0\u00a0at the very heart of the common law approach to freedom of speech? \u00a0What about Justice Louis\u00a0 Brandeis’ idea (from Whitney v. Calif.<\/a>) that “the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones?” In other words,\u00a0 shouldn’t we trust the marketplace of ideas.<\/p>\n

Among the major issues <\/strong>that have surfaced around corporate speech in recent decades are:<\/span><\/h4>\n