Amy Westervelt
Investigative climate journalist who founded Drilled in 2017 as an audio investigative project and has reported on climate for more than 20 years.
“The idea that corporations should have equal speech rights to individuals is completely out of touch with reality. They have a hundred times the budget to craft their message, get it out, amplify it… And they should be held to a higher standard of truth as well because of that.”
Drilled · Climate & Energy · November 2026
Context
Amy Westervelt was explaining the main argument of her book on a polluted information system. She had just said someone sharing a belief is different from someone paid by a company to spread a narrative.
Transcript
…that are like, you know, any type of speech, a lie, hate speech, you know, violent speech, whatever it is should all be allowed forgets like the other side of the coin of free speech, which is like the right to discourse, you know, the right to information, like the right to be informed. Well,
the right to an unpolluted information supply, just like we could expect an unpolluted water supply. It's just as fundamental.
…the difference between individual free speech and corporate speech. This is like a very toxic product created in the US and now disseminated globally. The idea that corporations should have. Have equal speech rights to individuals is completely out of touch with reality. They have, you know, a hundred times the budget to craft their message, get it out, amplify it, all of those kinds of things. And they should be held to a higher standard of truth as well because of that. You know, like there's absolutely no reason that we can't say, like, oh, you know, companies shouldn't knowingly spread misleading information. I don't understand why that's even remotely controversial. I mean, the easiest thing you can do is like disengage from social media, right? Just do it.
And we can regulate the tech platforms as well, which is another proposal you made. Yeah.
Absolutely. That's another big one. That's another one that they're really crying censorship over. But like the reality is these guys are not fighting for your free speech rights. They are fighting for their right to not be taxed the same as any other industry has the entire history of capitalism.…
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