We need to get our collective heads together, to figure out what a Fairness Doctrine would look like on modern technology - cable stations, social media, etc - and how to base it legally so that the result is in fact fairness not a tool for propaganda.
We need to write/call our Congress people, regardless of who they are, to advance our views. This can be done even before there are clear ideas on how to proceed, especially if sympathetic congress people will help figure out how to do it. There might actually be a right-left coalition that could be built on this one, but the devil is in the details - we want real fairness, not more lies.
If our Congress people seem hopeless, find someone to run against them who understands the value of what we are proposing.
Once we have some clear ideas, we could form an organized advocacy group to promote them.
In a separate thread, HCR reader Kimberly Kennedy posted that the Washington Post settled a $250 million lawsuit by the student portrayed as verbally berating an Omaha tribal elder, in absence of a bigger context.
Yep, Dems create a government bureau to judge the factual basis of news and commentary, and then the Republicans win some elections, and crush opposing ideas.
If we have a government bureau deciding factual basis, that is what I meant by a vehicle for propaganda that we don't want. The original Fairness Doctrine worked very well, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The Republicans canned it while Reagan was president, which cleared the way for wild unchallenged falsehoods on Fox News and the current problems where massive lying about the election is now believed by the majority of Republicans because they have never heard anything else, and a significant number of people assaulted the Capitol based, at least in part, on those beliefs.
1. I don't believe Fox News was ever hampered by the Fairness Doctrine, because Fox News was always a cable and satellite channel--never an over-the-air broadcast station. Think AM and FM radio, and TV channels coming in to TV sets over rabbit ears, or rooftop antennas.
2. A counterexample: "Pravda" means "Truth" in Russian. And, Pravda was the official house organ (mouthpiece) of the government of the Soviet Union.
"As the names of the main Communist newspaper and the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda and Izvestia, meant "the truth" and "the news" respectively, a popular saying was "there's no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia".[22] However, though not highly appreciated as an objective and unbiased news source, Pravda was regarded тАУ both by Soviet citizens and by the outside world тАУ as a government mouthpiece and therefore a reliable reflection of the Soviet government's positions on various issues. The publication of an article in Pravda could be taken as indication of a change in Soviet policy or the result of a power struggle in the Soviet leadership, and Western Sovietologists were regularly reading Pravda and paying attention to the most minute details and nuances."
The UK has Ofcom, a licensing bureau that requires news be factual. Though the BBC is far from perfect and has been pushed into contorted shapes since the advent of Brexit-based discourse toxicity, it remains more reliable than nearly anything available in the US.
All right. Do you think the use of social media to flood the country with lies is just fine and dandy? If not, do you like the default condition of it being up to media CEO's to decide what is acceptable? They coddled trump's dangerous lies for a long time, only stopping after the assault on the Capitol. If you think some kind of updated Fairness Doctrine - which worked quite well in its day - is impossible to achieve in a good way, what do you think is the best way to pull this country out of its divided silos?
Both cable news and social media, along with their virtues, have been instruments of pushing this country into extreme ideas and political tribalism. It's a real problem. The point of updating the Fairness Doctrine would be to address that. Do you have some other ideas on how to do it?
Looks like one focus for the Herd is getting the Fairness Doctrine reinstated. What are the actions we need to take? P.S. Great job this afternoon.
We need to get our collective heads together, to figure out what a Fairness Doctrine would look like on modern technology - cable stations, social media, etc - and how to base it legally so that the result is in fact fairness not a tool for propaganda.
We need to write/call our Congress people, regardless of who they are, to advance our views. This can be done even before there are clear ideas on how to proceed, especially if sympathetic congress people will help figure out how to do it. There might actually be a right-left coalition that could be built on this one, but the devil is in the details - we want real fairness, not more lies.
If our Congress people seem hopeless, find someone to run against them who understands the value of what we are proposing.
Once we have some clear ideas, we could form an organized advocacy group to promote them.
Also include what the reprisals for non compliance will be.
Joan, with u 100%
And follow the money.
In a separate thread, HCR reader Kimberly Kennedy posted that the Washington Post settled a $250 million lawsuit by the student portrayed as verbally berating an Omaha tribal elder, in absence of a bigger context.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/24/media/washington-post-sandmann-settlement-lawsuit/index.html
Yep, Dems create a government bureau to judge the factual basis of news and commentary, and then the Republicans win some elections, and crush opposing ideas.
If we have a government bureau deciding factual basis, that is what I meant by a vehicle for propaganda that we don't want. The original Fairness Doctrine worked very well, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The Republicans canned it while Reagan was president, which cleared the way for wild unchallenged falsehoods on Fox News and the current problems where massive lying about the election is now believed by the majority of Republicans because they have never heard anything else, and a significant number of people assaulted the Capitol based, at least in part, on those beliefs.
1. I don't believe Fox News was ever hampered by the Fairness Doctrine, because Fox News was always a cable and satellite channel--never an over-the-air broadcast station. Think AM and FM radio, and TV channels coming in to TV sets over rabbit ears, or rooftop antennas.
Source: "The Fox News Channel (FNC) is an American basic cable and satellite news television channel...." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Fox_News)
2. A counterexample: "Pravda" means "Truth" in Russian. And, Pravda was the official house organ (mouthpiece) of the government of the Soviet Union.
"As the names of the main Communist newspaper and the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda and Izvestia, meant "the truth" and "the news" respectively, a popular saying was "there's no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia".[22] However, though not highly appreciated as an objective and unbiased news source, Pravda was regarded тАУ both by Soviet citizens and by the outside world тАУ as a government mouthpiece and therefore a reliable reflection of the Soviet government's positions on various issues. The publication of an article in Pravda could be taken as indication of a change in Soviet policy or the result of a power struggle in the Soviet leadership, and Western Sovietologists were regularly reading Pravda and paying attention to the most minute details and nuances."
--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda#Soviet_period
I for one do not want a government bureaucrat deciding what things we can say, and, in particular, saying that if we say X we must also say Y.
The UK has Ofcom, a licensing bureau that requires news be factual. Though the BBC is far from perfect and has been pushed into contorted shapes since the advent of Brexit-based discourse toxicity, it remains more reliable than nearly anything available in the US.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom
All right. Do you think the use of social media to flood the country with lies is just fine and dandy? If not, do you like the default condition of it being up to media CEO's to decide what is acceptable? They coddled trump's dangerous lies for a long time, only stopping after the assault on the Capitol. If you think some kind of updated Fairness Doctrine - which worked quite well in its day - is impossible to achieve in a good way, what do you think is the best way to pull this country out of its divided silos?
Both cable news and social media, along with their virtues, have been instruments of pushing this country into extreme ideas and political tribalism. It's a real problem. The point of updating the Fairness Doctrine would be to address that. Do you have some other ideas on how to do it?