Why would you expect that?
Serious question. How does one not know the difference between FNC (cable) and Fox news affiliates (broadcast)?
Well, I accomplished it by paying absolutely no attention to Fox News.
And yet, the OP is complaining that the debate wasn’t on the Fox network. How can someone be that clueless?
It’s not kept “carefully insulated” from broadcast rules. All the cable news channels are, wait for it… on cable! As are all but a few channels available today.
It’s not an unreasonable expectation, that for something of the *assumed *importance (more on this later) of the debate, NewsCorp could wish to maximize eyeballs-on-screen by simulcasting. To the general public, Fox is Fox, and it’s ***not *** no-brainer bloody obvious that Fox News Channel and the Fox Broadcast Network have separate editorial and programming autonomy. It does not require being “clueless”.
BUT, while the expectation was not unreasonable, it was in error, and the “public importance” of the event from the POV of NewsCorp is different as from the POV of the political wonk left high and dry.
Another thing some people miss is that someone has to pay for this and on the one hand Fox Broadcast Network was not about to dump **their own paying sponsors’ ad time to simulcast with the cable news channel a PRE-primary debate five months before the first caucus and featuring anyone who polls 4% or nore because that’s as far down as “top ten” goes. On the other hand, the GOP was not going to pay to commandeer two networks and why should they? It’s a perfectly legitimate decision by NewsCorp and the GOP to have it run one one single cable channel.
A news media entity has such a thing as editorial freedom to what is run and what not. The NY Post could headline “Headless Body In Topless Bar” instead of whatever else was going on in the world that day; the broadcast and cable networks have the right to decide what they cover when and how and if exclusive rights were negotiated, well that’s what was negotiated. See John Mace’s earlier post, they are not morally bound to give away their product any more than the NY Post or Times are. (plus I wonder if competitors could raise an issue if it looked as if a FBN simulcast was being used as a subterfuge for FNC to achieve broader market penetration)
Besides this was an excellent marketing opportunity for FNC to tell the people who were left jonesing for it “Call your Cable/Satellite company and demand that they offer Fox News Channel!” so why pass it up.
But it’s not as if all the debates of the 2011 pre-primary season were broadcast across the board either. Heck, even the election-year National Conventions of the two major parties nowadays get pathetic coverage on the mainstream broadcast channel of all the networks. Someone wanting to actually hear the speakers before each evening’s headliner has to go to Cable and possibly C-SPAN at that. This debate was made such a big deal partly because the party eliminated the “Straw Poll” the traditional event that winnowed out the truly hopeless, partly becaise the GOP adopted a debate set-up seeking to avoid overexposing the candidates lest there be a repeat of the rapid-succession burning of frontrunners in the Fall of 2011… and, frankly, yes, above all because people wanted to tune in to see if Mr. Combover had or provoked a meltdown or at least someone had a Perryesque Epic Moment Of Fail. The fate of the world does not *yet *hang in the balance.
And one reason you do not want an “official” mandated venue for political speech dissemination (never mind public, let’s just say a syndicate of media outlets who’d be obligated to provide) is that then someone would be in court demanding it should provide ALL the political speech to ALL the population. Entirely impractical. Someone would still have to pass a judgement on who gets heard when and where and who’s that gonna be? At least here was a deal struck between the Party and the News Channel as to how it would be handled.
The SDMB is allegedly smarter than the general public. Not knowing the difference between cable and broadcast is clueless, IMO.
On the average, yes. As individuals the range varies. And in any case I am sure there are any number of specific items you consider a well informed person should know, that myself or someone else either doesn’t know or is misinformed about, and vice versa. Now, OTOH, once corrected about the misconception, the person(s) should pause and consider why was there such a misconception and how to prevent it in the future.
What if a person doesn’t have TV, radio, Internet, or access to any media at all? What then? I suppose that then they wouldn’t be very useful participants in democracy. But your question is rather different than the one at hand, which is the question of locking a debate of public interest away on a cable-only channel that many people don’t have and don’t wish to have, and putting the online stream behind a paywall, and moreover, having it hosted by a shameless shill for the Republican party.
Of course Fox and their Republican masters have good reasons for doing things this way. It makes them lots of money, but perhaps even more importantly, it allows them to control the message. I give you RNC chairman Reince Preibus: “We need to control the debates. The Party needs to control the debates” – said by him in a moment of candor on August 5, 2013.
I may as well address your other comment at the same time:
The first paragraph is true but ISTM that it only argues for why such a channel has no business claiming exclusive rights to an event of public interest.
The last paragraph is bad logic. It only works if, absent the generous hosting of Fox News, there would be no debates at all. But since debates are seen to have value and serve a clear public interest, any number of impartial organizations can and do organize and host debates. All that Fox News has done is monopolize it, take it out of the public purview and, moreover, put it in a realm where it can be used to shape the Republican agenda.
As several have already pointed out, the quote doesn’t contradict the need for public broadcasting. Indeed it says the opposite – in the modern era, I would say it argues that the liberty of the press is too important to be dominated by self-serving commercial interests.
That last sentence is laughable in its absurdity. Public broadcasting “does not meet our nation’s goals”? Well, it doesn’t meet the goals of corporatists, that’s for sure. Does the US not claim to be a democracy? Then its approach to the foundational democratic principle of an informed public is radically different from that of any other democracy in the world – its funding of public broadcasting is so pathetic as to be almost non-existent – absolutely unique in the industrialized world in the way that the most important resource for impartial public information is cast aside and disdained like a used dishrag. And it’s even worse than that, because the underfunding sends them out begging for donations, and guess who obliges? Corporations. The Koch brothers are now significant funders of PBS, and the malevolent influence has already manifested itself.
The approval rating of Congress is in the gutter, to a large extent because they’re seen as do-nothing for the average person and almost totally devoted to corporate interests. But I’m sure that’s just coincidence. :rolleyes:
Yes. My cite is the dictionary, under the definition of “democracy”. If “the people” are going to be effectively self-governing, then they had better understand the things they are governing. In particular, they had better understand the issues and the positions of the candidates they are voting for. Instead, the commercial media is dominated by advocacy advertising, political advertising and attack ads, and has become such a cesspool of directed misinformation, and the voting process so corrupted, that the typical voter casting his vote for the corporate plutocracy is totally convinced it’s his own idea and in his own best interests. Anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating should read, in full, the thread on Fox News.
We do understand that the Ohio Republican Party and the Republican National Committee are private organizations themselves, right? They can organize and schedule and program their primary “debates”-- which are internal *campaign *events not objective informational exchanges – and choose their network as they see fit and the free press can still report all what was said in the debate, and in fact has been doing so, and the citizens can decide just to not vote for the control freaks. The public was not denied the information presented, we were *inconvenienced by not being able to watch the candidates as they presented it, *unless we were already FNC customers, which BTW is the cable companies’ and Fox’s call.
So your position is that the debate among the top ten contenders for the Republican nomination for President of the United States is a “private” matter? At what point do you think presidential campaign events incur a compelling public interest?
It sort of reminds me of something Jon Stewart said the other day, commenting about the decision by the Koch brothers to allow a very limited amount of press coverage on their conference with half a dozen of the Republican presidential candidates, wherein they are selecting candidate(s) that they will favor with approximately one billion dollars in funding. These meetings, like some of the other billionaire political conferences, are usually entirely confidential. Stewart’s incisive sarcasm was that at last we are taking the corrupting influence of the common voter out of politics, leaving it quite properly between the politicians and the billionaires.
He’s right, of course. To me this is just another symptom of everything wrong with US politics – the mercenary commercialization of democracy itself, the instruments of public policy owned by the highest bidder. And then you wonder why government sucks, and you learn to never trust it. Of course there are certain elements of this everywhere, but what always astounds me, especially about US federal politics, is the sheer audacity of it – the shameless, blatant, extremeness of it.
The debate content was of public interest, and as such was and has been covered by the press without limitation. The live broadcast was not, however, of public domain so yes, RNC and Fox could limit who saw that live broadcast.
Is it a desirable set-up? No. Did they have a legal obligation to do otherwise? Is there any lawful, constitutional authority to compel an “open neutral” debate and mandate universal access to the feed? No on both. ( “the dictionary” is not one).
Should we the voters then judge their choice of action and make them face the consequences? Yes, absolutely, that’s what we should do. If the GOP runs a reality show instead of a debate, the voters should reject those who willingly made it so. Let’s see if they do or they continue willingly voting for those who insult their intelligence.
Ah, missed adding: however if as has been suggested, Fox has been abridging the released transcripts of the debate THAT if true would be IMO a moral breach of trust.
Are they refusing access to other members of the press? As far as I’m concerned, we have the right to information, but not the right to demand that the information be presented to me in a specific fashion.
There is no doubt that the information is out there, every media outlet in the country had the ability to access the event, at a trivial cost.
As noted, political parties are private entities. They are picking their candidate, not the public at large. There is a distinct different between a primary election and a general election.
An interesting opinion, but one that is not objectively correct. Especially since it’s an event of private interest, the RNC being a private organization.
I don’t see any reason to believe that other hosting parties could have been found for this particular debate that would have broadcast it over one of the “free” channels. Besides, virtually anyone who is interested in the debates can view them in some other format or access the transcripts. There is no attempt to hide this information from the American public.
I have consulted a wise and elderly man who lives at my house, and he claims to remember a time when people just more or less assumed that major civic events would be broadcast to as wide an audience as could be arranged. They would have thought it strange that an important political event might be “private” somehow, subject to the opinions of the guys in Marketing.
That guy is thinking of a time when cable didn’t exist, so that time does not inform us very well re: 57 channels and nothing on. Hah! How quaint that there were only 57 channel and not 57 hundred channels back when Bruce was singing that. That old guy also isn’t taking into account that virtually no one who wants to see the debate is unable to do so.
I wanted to watch the debate too but I got rid of cable and only have a basic package , I feel Fox news should had the debate on a station so everyone could watch it . I feel the president election is an importance issue and people that can’t afford cable or just don’t want should be able to watch it without having to pay extra for it. Fox news treated as it was some kind of sporting event , and I bet it was on cable b/c Trump is running a lot of people wanted to see that.
Just for the record, I was pretty clear in the OP that I was asking about whether people thought it was OK, not whether it is currently legal. Sadly, this thread hasn’t really debated what I had hoped, which was whether or not there is a duty to make these things as widely available as possible. I also wondered whether a law mandating such a dissemination was a good idea. But nowhere did I even hint that I believed a law was being broken.
Mostly, we’ve had the rantings of someone who thinks he’s a genius (or everyone else imbeciles) because the delineation between two entities with shared ownership isn’t obvious to everyone.
Anyway, most people seem to think that private is as private does, and that’s OK. Fair enough, though I wish I could believe in a nation where the political process transcends intellectual property.
Here you go. Watch it whenever you like.
I believe that link was good, live, too.