Is there a right to fake news? A ruling reopens the debate on freedom of expression

Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana issued an order that “during the Covid-19 pandemic the United States government appears to have assumed a role similar to that of the Orwellian Ministry of Truth”. The Biden administration has already appealed a decision that promises to herald new and decisive judicial disputes

In the free market of ideas, restrictions on freedom of expression are not necessarily efficient because, as John Milton had already underlined, “in a free and open encounter” the truth would have managed to prevail. Similar ideas have been repeated by numerous authors over the years. After all, it was Thomas Jefferson himself who underlined the need to tolerate “errors in opinions (…) when reason is left free to combat them”. What remains today of the theory of the market of ideas, of the effective possibility of the individual to develop a genuine conviction on a rational basis which, combined with the free self-determination of the other associates, leads to the emergence of the truth and the triumph of the forces of reason over falsehoods or on erroneous beliefs?