Now, please explain to me how this is constitutional when Supreme Court decisions such as Red Lion appear to indicate it is not. And Canada isn’t relevant to that.
Would such a rule apply to newspapers too? Blogs? Would it only cover news on TV, or if people watched the feed over the internet would that be excluded? Foreign news sources?
You only need to google “fairness doctrine,senator, congressman” to see who has mentioned it recently but in 2005 there was a Republican President who could have vetoed it.
I think I’m just going to quote that entire post because this does not respond to anything I said.
I know Pelosi made some noises about it a few years ago, and Schumer said he might support the idea. No bill was ever introduced. The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress from 2006 to 2008 and did not introduce any law related to the doctrine. They controlled both houses and the presidency from 2008 to 2010 and did not introduce a law. They control the Senate now and have not introduced a law. The Democrats aren’t trying to silence Rush. Period. There are some people (like the OP, apparently) who think they can counter Fox by requiring them to be fair, but they’re wrong, and as this thread indicates, there is very little support for the concept of a new fairness doctrine on either side of the aisle.
In light of Citizens United (that gave corporations the same rights as citizens) you may be right it is impossible.
That said I find little disagreement that Citizens United is one of the worst decisions to pop out of the SCOTUS in a long time. So, perhaps that could change.
Red Lion did not seem to stop all regulations and seemed to specifically address editorial content.
I am on about not lying. I would think the courts could see their way to agree that news media has a public trust and that it is reasonable to expect them to present the truth. Patent falsehoods (not just differences of opinion) as I have cited and could cite more of are not ok.
As for blogs and so on yeah…it gets too difficult to distinguish who is media and who isn’t. Perhaps you define it as professional media (e.g. the website/newspaper/whatever generates income over some threshold [and not a high threshold…say $10,000/year collected and it does not matter if you spend $11,000/year to run it…point is you collect that cash).
I dunno…this would take more thought but starting with radio/television is a good start.
No, starting with radio and television is a horrible start. Why section out only certain groups who previously had First Amendment protection to strip some of that protection away.
This didn’t start with Citizens United. The reason I mentioned Red Lion is that it bases its power to regulate on the use of public property. The rationale used by the Court doesn’t apply to cable and satellite broadcasters.
Penalties already exist for lying by the media - libel and slander laws. What you want to do is have an extra level placed in, that of government bureaucrats. Well, our Courts have ruled multiple times that we want the bar against libel/slander to be very high when it comes to public figures. You now want to bring in a rule that not only supplements the existing protections, but also puts political hacks in charge of determining what is “true” and what is “false.” And, moreover, those same hacks will, udner your system, decide if the “false” statement was deliberate or accidental. And you really don’t see the possibility of abuse here?
You asked about 2006 to 2008 when there was a Republican President. It was DOA and I answered that.
Pelosi was knee deep in her own agenda and didn’t need another shitfest dumped on her. I would have thought that obvious.
I remember soon after the return of Hong Kong to PRC control, there was a big flap there when a PRC official told the Hong Kong press that there would continue to be freedom of the press in Hong Kong, but they needed to keep in mind that the purpose of the press is to communicate and explain the policies of the government to the people, not to stir up trouble.
The government officials work hard for the people. The people should appreciate that. There is no need to sow mistrust.
You’re moving goal posts. first you said news media and now it’s just media.
So, when FOX shows video of a rally for Palin in an effort to buff her image but the video is really of a bunch of other people cheering something different the libel or slander is where?
And I just love the notion that we are all screwed on this.
Nothing we can do. News media can literally gin up any bullshit they want and, barring actually slandering someone, are free to do it. What’s more, this is your preferred state of affairs because Og help us if the government actually demand the truth from news organizations.
No, I did not. I specifically asked about the period they controlled both houses and the presidency, which was 2008 to 2010 (well, technically Jan. 2009 to Jan. 2011). I also pointed out they hadn’t introduced legislation previously, going all the way back to 2005. There was never any chance of Bush supporting it, but even during that time, the new Democratic majority didn’t try to make it an issue.
So you agree it wasn’t part of her agenda even though she said she personally supports it, correct? I think that settles the issue. Because if it’s not on her agenda, hasn’t been proposed in the Senate (in fact I think the Senate supported an anti-Fairness Doctrine bill), and Obama has repeatedly said he opposes it, it’s not happening. So there’s no basis to say “the Democratic Party wants to silence Rush Limbaugh for his opinion” using a new Fairness Doctrine.
It’s not libel or slander.
You know what the solution to it is? The Daily Show. Or other news media. The solution is more information, not less. Get the truth out there. Don’t expect the government to be your arbiter of what is true.
“Media” is the plural of “medium.” Yes, blogs are a medium of communication. This is indisputable. Whether bloggers are journalists is a complicated issue. Earlier you used “media companies” as an equivalent to “media outlets.” It’s going to confuse the issue if you use these terms interchangeably.
I think not. From the first line of the Wiki link cited in the OP:
My emphasis. So…in the view of some Commission, it has to be ‘honest, equitable and balanced’. All of that is so ridiculously fuzzy that you could twist it anyway you wanted. If I were a commissioner, would my opinion of what is ‘honest, equitable and balanced’ be the same as your, Whack-a-Mole? What does it even mean to present both sides of a controversial issue, and who defines what are issues of ‘public importance’? Defined by who? Would the issues you think are important to the public equate to ones I would? How close would we be on what’s controversial, or even which two sides need to or should be presented (what if there are 3 sides to an issue? 4? More?).
For instance, in your post 25, to ME it looks like the things you are citing there are deliberately misleading in the first cite. It says ‘A whopping 58 percent of Republicans either think Barack Obama wasn’t born in the US (28 percent) or aren’t sure (30 percent). A mere 42 percent think he was’. Again, to ME this sounds like an attempt to deceive through playing number games. I mean, they start off saying ‘A whopping 58% of Republicans’…oh, wait…only 28% REALLY think he wasn’t born in the US, while 30% ‘aren’t sure’, which could mean they don’t care enough to have even looked into it or are just ignorant. While a ‘mere’ 42% don’t think he was…which just happens to be a larger percentage than do. Or, put another way (in ‘fairness’) this article is a lie, and the real truth (which would be an equal distortion) is that 72% of Republicans don’t think he was born in another country.
And who would decide? Who would be the people who decide? Would you be all for this if the people who decided were right wingers? After are talking about fairness here…fairness about what someone thinks are publicly important issues (‘in the Commission’s view’), and what said commission THINKS is fair, balanced and equitable. If the commission happens to be composed of anti-Evolutionists, then what they might think is fair and balanced is to present the differences between ID as opposed to direct creationism according to the Bible, or OEC vs YEC. If they are anti-AGW folks then a fair and balanced discussion might hinge around the differences between out and out denial of GW at all, vs natural causes for the current GW.
The thing is, people always seem to want these sorts of things implemented because they want to make sure their own views and ‘the truth’ get propagated. That’s laudable. Sadly, the worm turns, and if you put something like this in it’s bound to come around and bite you (and the rest of us) on the ass someday. Me, I’d rather not have the government involved in making decisions about what’s ‘honest, equitable and balanced’, or what some group or Commission THINKS are ‘controversial issues of public importance’ that need to have ‘both sides’ presented. Call me crazy, but this seems a recipe for disaster.
-XT
I already cited polls and can cite more of people (substantial numbers of them at that) believing complete falsehoods.
The “truth” is out there. Those people could learn the truth with ease.
Lots and lots of people are missing it however.
If your sole news source is FOX it doesn’t matter what Stewart says.
This presumably refers to the commissioners of the FCC (currently three Obama appointees, one Bush appointee, and one Bush appointee who Obama named to a second term).
And yet they don’t. The Fairness Doctrine won’t fix that. The truth about the birth certificate has been reported all over the universe and it’s made no difference.
What I see on networks like Fox, and MSNBC, is the rise of pundits, who are opinion shows and would likely have a lot of latitude because of that, and the language they use in their news shows. IMO, it’s intentional propaganda that is built around an emotional response, to guests expressing an opinion, or , some people say, or asking a slanted question , rather than making an assertive statement.
I’m not sure how the fairness doctrine would affect that. Perhaps it would affect issues like coverage of what’s going on in WI.
Whenever the Fairness Doctrine is brought up I always get conservatives claiming it’s just a tool for liberals to control speech. I still haven’t figured out the logic in that yet.
One of my complaints is the lack of depth in reporting and details that the 24/7 networks have. Everything seems to be superficial conflict rather than explaining the issue in depth. Does the Fairness Doctrine even address that?
You’re not satisfied with the coverage of the Crisis in Charliesheenistan?
What we can do is use our own speech to point out others’ idiocy and ignorance. Which is the whole point of Free Speech. I don’t want any people (don’t forget the government is people) telling me what I can say.
And you still haven’t answered the question about how to enforce the Fairness Doctrine.
While I mentioned the Fairness Doctrine in the title and OP I am happy with any mechanism that demands truth from the broadcast news (used loosely to include cable and satellite broadcast as well).
Perhaps make it a law then allow others to sue the perceived offender. Akin to libel or slander but broadened. This means those suing need to think there is sufficient case to spend money and time to pursue the case.
So, CNN could sue FOX. Or vice versa. Or some media watchdog group could.
Given the high bar to prosecute slander/libel and thus the rarity that such cases are brought I doubt they’d be falling over themselves to sue left and right. They’ll sue when the case seems pretty solid. News organizations will then need to keep an eye to some semblance of truth.
As it is now people here seem to be saying Palin, running for President in 2012, could have 50,000 people show up protesting her and Fox could show a clip from her book tour and claim how well she was received. That the poll that showed here down 20 points really showed her up 20 points. That such a thing is fine because John Stewart will make fun of them.
That mechanism needs to be journalists and viewers.
Good god, you’ve just killed the news. Nobody would run a news operation; they’d all be sued into oblivion by their competitors or politicians and viewers with an axe to grind.
High bar? You just encouraged Fox News to sue MSNBC and Media Matters to sue the New York Post.
Their competitors would happily rush to the air to cover the controversy, nevermind the blizzard of YouYube posts.