Has The United States’ Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic Exposed the Marketplace of Ideas as a Failed Experiment?

The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic in the US has placed a spotlight not only on the fragility of the American economy and the perils of yawning income and social inequality, but also on the dangers flowing from the crisis of truth infecting US politics and American culture more broadly. In particular, President Trump’s purported daily coronavirus ‘briefings’ have morphed into brazen campaign rallies laden with falsehoods and incendiary rhetoric directed at the press, the World Health Organisation, and Democrats, among others. Trump’s sustained and increasingly vitriolic attacks on reporters during the pandemic are especially troubling as they undermine the First Amendment’s basic assumption that the press serves as an important restraint on government.