Assessing Competing Claims to Speak over Mass Media: The Priority of Audiences' Epistemic Claims

Abstract

This dissertation makes three main theoretical interventions. The first is to reconstruct the

value of the freedom of speech and how it is realized. I argue that speech acts can serve a

variety of individual interests, and that speech is best promoted not by leaving all such acts

unhindered but by establishing diverse speech forums in which all of these interests may be

promoted in turn. The second is to reject common arguments that, in the forums of mass

media in particular, speaker interests hold paramount moral significance. The third is to

argue that the interests of moral priority in mass media are audience interests, and

particularly interests in sound political judgment. I defend this latter claim against the

challenge that audience interests in political equality, instead, should prevail. Finally, the

dissertation applies this framework for thinking about our speech claims over mass media

in order to offer several policy recommendations for alleviating threats to sound political

judgment, focusing especially on campaign finance regulations.