The alternative-media revolution of the last twenty years has smashed the liberal monopoly over news outlets and created a true marketplace of ideas. Rather than fight back with arguments, today’s liberals are working relentlessly to smother this new universe of political discourse under a tangle of campaign-finance reform and media regulations.
Best-selling author Brian Anderson and Adam Thierer examine the crucial place of free political speech in our nation’s history, from the feisty polemics of Revolutionary-era pamphlets to the explosion of new media in the twenty-first century. Today, shockingly, freedom of political speech in America is facing sustained attacks unlike anything since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
In clear, jargon-free prose, Anderson and Thierer debunk the principal arguments made in support of this counterrevolutionary effort, exposing the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 and a growing movement to impose new “fairness” regulations on the Internet and talk radio as damaging to free speech—and democracy. A Manifesto for Media Freedom is both a wake-up call for all Americans who care about their most fundamental rights and a coherent strategy to guarantee an unfettered marketplace of ideas.
