I don’t have cable. Last night I wanted to watch the debate, but Fox had it behind a paywall (of sorts). It was available on the cable channel, or on-line only if one was a subscriber to a cable network which carries Fox news.
On the one hand, a broadcaster naturally has the right to sell its content. Naturally, I don’t begrudge them that. However, it seems to me that a national level political event ought to be available to all citizens, whether they have (or can afford) a cable subscription or not. Of course, I understand that making it available for streaming would require an internet connection and computer (also not free), but it would be an effort to make the political process available to all citizens.
What say you? Should there be some sort of legal requirement to make these things available? Is there a moral requirement (as distinct from the legal question)?
As I said, I am torn. I don’t like the idea of requiring them to share, but I don’t like the idea that they don’t share, either.
There’s no need for a legal requirement, because the free market will take care of it; The GOP naturally has a desire for their debate to be broadcast to as wide an audience as possible. This will counterbalance Fox’s desire to monetize the debate.
I was able to watch the whole thing online last night for free. Can’t remember where: I googled something like, “watch Republican primary debate,” and the second or third link was to a live stream of it.
There’s always someone out there serving illicit streams of major cable network channels like CNN and Fox, but they come and go and tend not to be great quality, and are certainly not legal. The loyalties of cable channels tend to be with the cable and satellite distributors that pay their carriage fees and are their bread-and-butter business, hence as the OP points out it’s common for their Internet stream to be limited to existing subscribers.
How nice. Then how come the OP wasn’t able to watch it?
This is why the appropriate venue for national political debates and other matters of important public interest is non-profit, non-partisan public television with free public access, not a slimeball operation like Fox News that combines the worst elements of being mercenary, politically mendacious, and utterly untrustworthy.
Publicly-funded television and radio do not interfere with or restrain the liberty of the press, so your argument, such as it is, is invalid ab initio.
That’s a poor analogy. It’s not a question of whether a television network has an obligation to pay for airline tickets - television networks aren’t in the travel business. But television networks are in the broadcasting business and one of the conditions under which they have access to the finite resource of broadcasting bandwidth is their agreement to provide news to their viewers. So there is a legitimate question about whether a television network has the legal right to put a newsworthy event like a presidential campaign debate behind a pay wall.
I do not have a problem with the GOP’s broadcast Pravda airing a GOP commercial on their network, but I do not see how a government order to broadcast all political speech would be constitutionally suspect.
Setting limits on what could be broadcast would certainly be suspect. The reverse would not appear to be true.
Moving the goalposts does not serve you.
An organization compelled to broadcast speech that was already being produced would not be under a compulsion to compel speech.
i do not see anyone in government ordering such a thing, but your claim that it would violate the Constitution seems far fetched.