Meiklejohn & His Disciple

Further developing his first­amendment thesis for the electronic media, Meiklejohn moved with even greater force against commercial television:

On the whole, the "liberties"' of what we call "Free Enterprise"' are, I think, destructive of the "freedoms"' of a self­governing society. The unregulated self­seeking of the profit­makers is much more dangerous in its effect upon the morality and intelligence of the citizen than that participation in regulatory action for the common good to which free enterprise has so often shown itself hostile. . . . [P]rivately sponsored television has proved to be even more deadly [than radio]. Those business controls of communication are, day by day, year by year, destroying and degrading our intelligence and our taste by the use of instruments which should be employed in educating and uplifting them. ¹¹¹

Additionally, and as a corollary, Meiklejohn called for "affirmative"' congressional measures to buttress the classical ideal of freedom of expression. ¹¹² Such affirmative measures seemed particularly necessary because he believed that laissez­faire economy and technology stirred modern consumptive tendencies contrary to the classical model of self­restraint.

More recently, Meiklejohn's thesis has been extended by one of his intellectual disciples, Professor George Anastaplo. ¹¹³ In a little­noticed but challenging essay, ¹¹⁴ Anastaplo criticized the effects of television on the viewing public: its addictive quality, its simplistic portrayal of reality, its threat to civic piety and associational values, its commercial drives for material consumption, and its detrimental impact on education. Meiklejohn's thesis leads directly to the abolition of commercial television:

[I]t has long seemed obvious to me­­that the television industry should be abolished completely in this country, that nothing short of this can remove its crippling influence from American life. If this is indeed a society open to experimentation, then let us deliberately experiment for at least a decade with the remedy of complete suppression of television. ¹¹⁵

Anastaplo advocates governmental regulation of television precisely to further first­amendment values:

[T]here should be, in ordinary constitutional circumstances, both an absolute prohibition against previous legal restraints of the press and an absolute previous restraint (that is, total abolition) of the television industry. . . .I see in the abolition of television no serious First Amendment problem. Rather than abridge the "freedom of speech"' guaranteed by the First Amendment, the abolition of television (and hence a radical reform of the mass media) would enlarge freedom of speech among us. . . . Thus abolition of television would probably contribute among us to the preservation of self­ government and hence genuine freedom. ¹¹⁶