Andy Chalk said:
Shamanic Rhythm said:
Why must everything be either 1984 style government control or laiz-affair he-with-the-largest-pockets dominance? Can't we strive for a system of balance and oversight?
We have that now. Libelous statements can be pursued in civil court. It's far from a perfect system, but I'd say it's a lot better than some government agency monitoring what we say to ensure that we don't get out of line. (Or say "fuck.")
Okay, first of all, civil court processes are inherently biased towards plaintiffs with the largest wallets. Even if the case is open and shut, the judiciary never has a problem granting adjournments and appeals, which drag proceedings on endlessly while the legal bills rack up. That alone is enough to dissuade many people from taking action.
Secondly, libel is only one problem. Half the time media people with vested interests are capable of continually making false or misleading statements that don't slander any particular body and aren't covered by libel law. There's no effective legal recourse under the Australian system, for instance, to punish people who continually use factual errors to push a misleading agenda. It's all well and good to leave it to the free press to provide counter arguments, but again, this tends to lose out in favour of the person with the largest wallet being able to control public opinion. It happens all the time in debate on climate change, economics, immigration, etc.
The answer is not empowering a government agency to monitor everyone's communication, I agree. But the present solution of leaving it to be resolved within public debate and the courts is not working. A possible solution would be giving a government agency the ability to take restrictive measures if complaints from the public are upheld, but every time that gets proposed, we get "Stalinism" and "Orwellian" rammed down our ears before anyone can even discuss how it would operate.