24 United States The EconomistNovember 9th 2019
2 Federal Communications Act of 1934. Poli-
tifact, an independent fact-checking web-
site, deemed Ms Warren’s claim that “most
networks” would refuse to air an ad by Mr
Trump that contained a lie “mostly false”.
Rather than acting exceptionally, Facebook
is in step with current practice.
Lying in ordinary speech is not crimi-
nal. In commercial advertising it is. It is
fine to claim that one’s beans are magical,
but using such claims to sell them will at-
tract the ire of the Federal Trade Commis-
sion (ftc). Political adverts are exempt
from such truth-in-advertising require-
ments. The ftcdoes not regulate political
adverts because the current understanding
of the first amendment protects political
speech even when it is manifestly false.
Some states do have laws banning false-
hoods in political advertising, but several
these have been struck down by the courts.
Due to these first-amendment concerns
an ftc-like entity could not be given the
power to censor political ads that contain
lies. It could potentially act as a fact check-
er, labelling ads “false” and highlighting
claims that are dubious or hard to assess.
This suggestion is not without problems. “I
worry what happens when that govern-
ment institution is captured by an admin-
istration that doesn’t care very much about
the truth”, says Richard Hasen of the Uni-
versity of California, Irvine School of Law.
Facebook’s commitment to freedom of
expression is also far from absolute—it has
censored speech on behalf of foreign gov-
ernments. And removing problematic con-
tent unless it comes from a politician is
also not in keeping with the American tra-
dition of freedom of expression, as it grants
certain speakers a licence to lie but not oth-
ers. The company’s position probably has
more to do with the difficulty of regulating
political ads than anything else, says Mi-
chael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan
Media Project, which tracks political ads.
Facebook hosts an enormous number
of ads, especially given the tendency to test
variations to see which provokes the most
engagement. Establishing whether an ad
contain falsehoods is difficult; at scale the
task is monumental. Even Twitter’s new
policy of banning all political adverts does
not make for easy regulation, as it is hard to
determine what qualifies as “political”.
Facebook also allows campaigns to mi-
cro-target receptive groups with ads that
opponents are unlikely to see and there-
fore cannot dispute, disarming the tradi-
tional defence against falsehood. When it
comes to political advertising, legislation
has failed to keep up with technology. The
Honest Ads Act is a good first step. Spon-
sored by Ms Warren’s democratic rival Amy
Klobuchar, it would force digital political
ads to reveal how they were funded, as ads
on tvmust. But it would not quell worries
about lies in political advertising. 7“M
ilwaukee is resilient, like this
building,” says Mandela Barnes, a
32-year-old from Wisconsin’s largest city.
He chats over ginger tea in Shindig Coffee, a
lively spot inside the Sherman Phoenix, a
complex of dozens of small shops, hair sa-
lons, yoga studios and galleries. It opened a
year ago, renovated after arsonists attacked
the building, a former bank, during anti-
police riots in 2016. Its rise and the success
of its black-owned businesses are symbols
of optimism in a place that is short on it.
Mr Barnes recalls how, last century, his
grandfather moved into the area from Loui-
siana as big factories drew floods of mi-
grants north. He worked for A.O. Smith, a
firm that supplied frames to car producers
for decades and at one point employed over
10,000 north-siders. But as its fortunes slid
and it quit the car-supply business in 1997,
those of its African-American workers, liv-
ing near its giant industrial site, tumbled
too. After a four-year spell as a state law-
maker, Mr Barnes was elected last year as
Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, the first
African-American to hold the post. But he
knows many of his generation are left be-
hind. Problems linger for the 40% of Mil-
waukeeans who are black. “There is 50%
black joblessness, very high rates of incar-
ceration,” he says. “One in 19 students is
homeless,” with black pupils most affect-
ed. Over half the children in one north-side
area count as officially poor.
Most black residents remained in areas
like Sherman Park even after the jobs went.
The Brookings Institution, a think-tank,rates Milwaukee as the most racially segre-
gated of America’s 51 large metro areas. To
become fully integrated, Brookings wonks
reckon 80% of the city’s black residents
would have to move to largely white dis-
tricts. And though the downtown and lake-
side areas boast new tall buildings, grow-
ing tourism and more white-collar jobs for
the well-educated, the poorer neighbour-
hoods have gained little.
Another study in March by the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin looked at one especially
blighted zip code—53206—that abuts Sher-
man Park. It listed “cumulative disadvan-
tages” and barely any improvement since
recession struck just over a decade ago. The
poverty rate, at 42% of households, is six-
times higher than in the suburbs. Three-in-
four high-school dropouts have no job.
One-in-four housing units has been aban-
doned. Household incomes, adjusted for
inflation, are down by a quarter between
2000 and 2017. Public schools, meanwhile,
are especially dire and are losing students
fast. In many, not even one-tenth of pupils
reach levels of reading or maths expected
for their age.
Mr Barnes says the underlying problem
is economic. Residents who rely on patchy
public transport struggle to get to jobs. Ab-
sent fathers (some in prison) and gun vio-
lence also take a toll. On a walk in one
neighbourhood, a teacher says bullets have
struck both his home and a part of his
school building nearby.
Lena Taylor, a state senator who has
lived in the same north-side block for 53
years, laments an ongoing “epidemic” of
foreclosures and other housing woes. She
also refers to a confrontational culture
whereby residents “go from zero to a thou-
sand, shooting people with no warning.”
She hopes to become the first African-
American elected as city mayor, next April,
saying “it’s overdue. It’s not all peaches and
cream, we need big changes.”
Tom Barrett, the current mayor, is try-
ing to lure investors to the north side. He
hopes a new meatpacking plant there will
create hundreds of jobs. A Spanish firm
that refurbishes trains is to expand opera-
tions. He grumbles about narrowly miss-
ing out on a “positive atom bomb”, when
Amazon recently shelved plans for a distri-
bution centre, and 2,000 jobs, to be put on
the old A.O. Smith factory site.
The mayor has another card. The city
last year opened a swanky arena for the
Bucks basketball team that can attract
grand non-sporting events, too. The big-
gest so far will be next July, when 50,000
people—including 15,000 media workers
from around the world—will descend for
the Democratic national convention. They
will mostly be downtown. “A giant oppor-
tunity” exists to promote the city, says Mr
Barnes. The challenge is to get as many Mil-
waukeeans as possible to benefit. 7MILWAUKEE
The Midwesterners who have really
been left behind dwell in citiesMilwaukee’s north sideThe silent
minority