Claim: Biden is the most ‘anti-free speech president’ since John Adams

Question

Turley said Biden said "Without having our views censored or edited on the internet, ... how will the public know the truth?"  (at approximately 3:15 in the video clip referenced).

Is Biden really the most anti-free speech president since John Adams? And why John Adams?

Answer 1

This question does not have an answer because it's a matter of opinion. There is no good way to measure how free-speech or anti-free-speech a president is. Here's what I can give you:

The organization 'Varieties of Democracy' does research to calculate a 'freedom of expression' score for many countries. They have data on the USA's freedom of expression from 1789-2021 currently available. The Biden Administration averages a score of '.92', which is larger than the Trump administration's average of '.9'. However, both Trump and Biden have the lowest scores since the Nixon Administration.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression?tab=chart&country=~USA

In terms of why John Adams is mentioned, he does have the lowest freedom score in US history. He passed 'The Alien and Sedation Acts' which hindered a lot of freedom in the United States. These acts limited immigration; but, more importantly, in terms of free speech, it made it illegal to criticize the government. You can find these acts here: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/alien-and-sedition-acts

This is a long way to say this:

1. There is no true way of determining if this is true or false as there is no correct way to measure how 'free-speech' someone is. 

2. Using the 'freedom of expression' score during each president's time in office - no, this claim is false. One could argue, though, that Biden is the second most anti-free speech president since Nixon. 

Comments

Thanks for the great answer!

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The freedom of expression score is an interesting and valuable addition to your explanation and fact-check. Good job finding that!

Answer 2

The speaker in this video and the author of the article that was referred to which was published in The Hill, Jonathan Turley, states that Biden is the "most anti-free speech president" the US has had since John Adams. This statement is already very absolute and extreme, so it's probably at best exaggerated and slightly misleading, if not outright false. The quote by Biden that's used in the video is a real quote, but it doesn't support the claim made. The reason Turley mentions Adams is because he was known as being very anti-free speech in the way we define it today. He believed it should be illegal to criticize the president and passed laws like the Alien and Sedition Acts which imprisoned those who did. So comparing Biden to Adams in terms of restricting free speech is already pretty extreme. This claim is somewhat opinionated because there isn't one specific way to measure how pro or anti-free speech someone is; it's not quantifiable and is somewhat subjective. However, there are various evaluating indexes used to "measure" the level of democracy in a country. One of these is the Democracy Index which is compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. According to the Democracy Index ratings from past presidencies, Biden's Civil Liberties measure, which evaluates freedom of speech and expression, is not the lowest even in recent years. In fact, the years of Obama and Trump's presidencies hit a rating of 82-83 while the lowest Biden's has been is 85. This shows that even though this claim is subjective and opinonated, it can still be proven false based on more objective evaluations of the level of free expression citizens currently have compared to the past.   

https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-19-4-b-the-alien-and-sedition-acts-defining-american-freedom.html

https://gregology.net/2020/08/democracy/

Comments

Very good explanation and analysis. And I like how you were able to prove that the claim is false using objective data. Nice work!