Wow! You finally got it! Took you a while but you finally made that last little jump.
Free speech means that people are, get this, free to say what they want. Of course there are some limitations. Those limitations are set rather high so that speech isn’t censored unnecessarily.
Of course, what you really want is for the government to step in and censor things you don’t like. You are assuming that the ‘truth’ that will be censored will be the truth you disagree with.
Slee
Canada manages it. Maybe emulate them? Somehow the collapse of their news industry has not ensued despite proclaiming “a licenser may not broadcast … any false or misleading news.”
As for the blizzard of YouTube videos that already happens and an awful lot of people manage to remain ignorant.
Barring Citizens United news companies are not “people”.
Free speech is also not totally “free”. There are numerous ways it is circumscribed. It is not an absolute right.
As for censoring what I do not like then sure, if you mean I do not like patently false information spread as the truth by a news organization.
And this is the retarded nub of why this issue is retarded. You don’t get fairness by having a Democrat talking head for 10 minutes and a Republican talking head for ten minutes, or a right-winger and a left-winger. Or a creationist for ten minutes, and a scientist for 10 minutes. And who says the opposite of a christian creationist is a scientist? Why can’t it be Deepak Chopra?
There aren’t two sides to every story. Some stories have one side. Some have two sides. Some have three sides. Some have 25,000,000 sides.
The notion that you can be punished for saying something that isn’t true is dangerous un-American nonsense. The assholes on Fox News lie all day every day? So what?
Does Canada’s law have a provision that says anyone may sue a news outlet if they think it’s broadcasting false news?
Yes, it does. Just like people continue to believe Obama is a Kenyan despite thousands of news reports stating the contrary.
You’re not even bothering to google anything. Pelosi absolutely favored it.
**On June 24, 2008, U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, California (who had been elected Speaker of the House in January 2007) told reporters that her fellow Democratic Representatives did not want to forbid reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine, adding “the interest in my caucus is the reverse.” When asked by John Gizzi of Human Events, “Do you personally support revival of the ‘Fairness Doctrine?’”, the Speaker replied “Yes.”[25]
**
The big laugh is that when FCC Chairman Mark Fowler wanted to repeal the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s, he wasbitterly opposed by Reagan’s own adviserswho felt the media were too liberal. On the other hand, former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson – by far the most liberal member the FCC ever had – also opposed repeal.
Of course, the Fairness Doctrine would have no impact at all when Talking Head A and Talking Head B both sit there and slant, misinform and, yes, flat out lie. After all, that’s balanced.
Then showing, as proof, a shoving match from a protest in Sacramento and leading the viewers to believe it happened in Madison…
Honestly I have no idea how their law is applied.
All I can say is it has not resulted in endless lawsuits and it apparently has stopped the equivalent of Fox News from setting up shop in Canada because of it.
Why would news media decide to not setup shop because of a fear of a law that they must be honest?
You have never wondered why this is so?
Do you really think there are not people who get most, maybe all, their information from one source?
Anecdotally my grandma “loved” Tom Brokaw (or maybe it was Dan Rather…I forget now). She watched that news show like clockwork and she trusted him completely. If he said it then it was so in her mind. (FTR my grandma died well over a decade ago).
You think that is unusual in the US? The polls I cited suggest people are not looking at other sources of info. Or if they are they are not believing them. This is being exploited.
Why is insisting on truthful information a bad thing? Truthful in this case literally being the black-and-white truth (e.g. the sun rises in the east and not the west)?
Indeed.
If you watch closely they change the label on the video from “Madison, WI” to “Union Protest” so technically they are off the hook (that is from memory so apologies if it is not exactly correct but I think close enough to get the idea across).
Thing is the video was a couple minutes of Madison then, with no clear shift, a video of Sacramento.
Obvious misdirection (obvious to those paying attention since all of a sudden there were Palm trees in the video…none of those in Madison).
Much as I loathe Fox News, that actually sounds like the chilling effect you were asking for. 
Even if you get all your news from FN, you’re likely aware of the truth about the birth certificate. The truth is too widespread. For the most part, they either don’t trust the accurate information (that’s the hallmark of a conspiracy theorist, after all) or they just don’t give a shit: they feel Obama isn’t American, facts and common sense be damned. Good luck fighting that with a Fairness Doctrine.
And how do you plan to force them to believe them?
It isn’t a bad thing. But it’s like passing a law that requires everybody to be nice: almost everybody agrees being nice is a good thing, but once you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, you’d have a lot of trouble getting a big swath of people to agree on what it means. That makes it hard to create good rules and it makes it a really terrible idea to have a small group of politically connected people deciding what everybody should do (or in this case, see and read). The problem is not the idea, it’s the implementation. And when you come up against this kind of implementation problem, the solution is to let people decide for themselves what they want to do instead of trying to create once-size-fits-all rules.
[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole]
Why is insisting on truthful information a bad thing? Truthful in this case literally being the black-and-white truth (e.g. the sun rises in the east and not the west)?
[/QUOTE]
Because ‘truth’ is often in the eyes of the beholder, especially when politics and philosophy come into the mix. Some things simply aren’t black and white. You should know this since you’ve participated in plenty of debates on the board where 'dopers from different political philosophies simply can’t agree on what is or isn’t the ‘truth’. Do you think one side is lying? One side is simply stupid and doesn’t know what they are talking about? I HOPE that isn’t the case, since even when I disagree with someone…you for instance…I still respect them and still think that they are earnest in their beliefs and intelligent. We simply disagree.
Was that the poll from the first page? The one talking about the number of Republican’s who believe that Obama was born in Kenya or somewhere outside of the US? The one that started off with the 58% figure, but then it turns out that only 28% ACTUALLY believe that Obama is a non-American, while 30% are unsure (and the largest percentage…of Republicans, mind…actually agree that he’s American)? THAT poll? What’s the ‘truth’ of that poll?
-XT
Trouble is, the most controversial subjects in the news today also don’t have a lot of objective standards. What happens when the subject of the suit is economics (like the stimulus) or reaches into that weird area of philosophy (like abortion), both of which can be, uh, mildly contested?
Oh! How does one prove whether or not gay marriage would “cheapen the institution”? (Many a conservative pundit has said something like this on the air, so I don’t think it’s improbable.)
I think you’re misreading. Marley23 acknowledged that.
I think he’s asking “if the Democrats are so gung ho about the issue, why was it never even brought to the table even when they controlled things after Obama’s election?”
Of course someone bent on a conspiracy theory is not likely to be swayed by anything.
However…
I am 43 years old so old enough to remember the 70’s and 80’s. My recollection is that while the right and left fought back then (as they do today) there was a much better level of basic truths they’d operate from.
Nowadays it has been learned that spewing any bullshit has traction all its own (want me to cite US Senators talking about Death Panels?). It doesn’t matter how many places point out the error…people believe their favorite source.
Back “in-the-day” (for me) there were only the three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) who really provided the news. It was inconceivable to them to pull the shit FOX does. They kept each other in check because they felt honest reporting was the measure that they were judged by and got viewers. Journalists had an ethical framework (not a formalized one but it was there…if you think otherwise consider what Edward Murrow would say about journalism today).
Now it seems the way to get viewers is to be as partisan as possible. FOX on one side, MSNBC on the other. NPR in the middle and CNN not able to figure what the hell they should do.
Despite MSNBC being partisan though they do not hold a candle to what FOX does. Regardless I would hold them all to the same standard.
You are implying that the truth cannot be discerned.
I disagree.
When they are talking about a current news story and show a video that is purportedly of that event but really of an entirely different event it is not honest.
There is no quibbling over what is “truth” here. It is patently wrong.
Yes.
And while you take issue with the rhetoric the fact is NO ONE should believe the president is a foreigner.
Period.
Yes, any poll would have a few but with a population that was largely informed those numbers should be more like 3% think he is a foreigner and 10% “not sure”.
Quibble all you like. Those numbers are embarrassing.
As for “Truth is in the eye of the beholder” I agree to an extent. I have also noted repeated, provable falsehoods by FOX News. Not “I believe” stuff but rather they are telling us the sun rises in the west stuff. Or 2+2=5 stuff.
Absolute, provable, 100% falsehoods.
I can give you more if you want.
A lot of people are so bent.
I’m open to explanations, but I’m skeptical of this premise.
Read a little about Hearst, Pulitzer, and McCormick, and then get back to me. Yes, things are different. The news divisions used to exist to add to the prestige of the networks; now they’re expected to contribute to the bottom line. The culture is also different, and the news networks do have to compete with a lot of other outlets and media. (You can see this examples whenever CNN does something totally moronic like having reporters read blog posts or playing YouTube videos.) The differences are not as simple as ‘now the people on the news lie.’
Start at the top: the goal is to get and keep viewers. The partisanship flows from that.
I am not implying we can’t know the truth. I am stating that it is often difficult to establish the truth on a contentious issue, and it is even more difficult to prove intent. Intent is central to lying.
I agree it’s dishonest. The hallmark of Fox News is taking facts (when necessary) and fitting them into a story that meshes into the preconceived notions of their viewers.
I don’t know why you linked a rant from Kennedy but Fox News is carried in Canada by Access Communications, Bell TV, Cogeco, Eastlink, Manitoba Telecom Services, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw Cable, Shaw Direct and Telus TV. Only one of the top 5 does not carry it and that is Videotron.
[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole]
And while you take issue with the rhetoric the fact is NO ONE should believe the president is a foreigner.
[/QUOTE]
No one should believe that the 9/11 attacks were a secret government plot to kill thousands of American’s to take us to war so that Bush could make a big profit either…and yet, I’d guess that more than 28% of American’s believe it, and a large percentage are ‘unsure’. Heck, I’ve seen polls showing that over 20% of Canadian’s, who supposedly have this fairness doctrine or it’s equivalent, believe that the US government was responsible. And in Europe the figures are even higher.
People believe all manner of horseshit. How many believe that Kennedy was assassinated by a secret US plot? How many believe that AGW is a government plot, or a left wing plot? How many believe that fluoride is a secret government plot, or that immunizations are a secret pharma plot? My friend…people believe what they are going to believe, and the absolute worst thing you can do is to shut down debate on those subjects under some sort of ‘fairness doctrine’…or to give them more weight than they deserve by trying to be balanced.
European populations are supposedly ‘informed’…yet they believe all manner of bullshit. So do Canadians. What do you expect? Americans believe bullshit because they are too lazy, usually, to dig around much…and, IMHO, citizens in other countries aren’t all that much better, in general, if you really dig. I’m actually surprised that the number believing the Obama born in Kenya horseshit is so low, to be perfectly honest. To me, that actually says something about how the word has gotten out even to SELF IDENTIFIED REPULICANS. I wish that whatever the hell the folks getting the truth out about Obama would get busy with the freaking 9/11 Truthers!
So can I man. I can point out myriad CT’s or odd beliefs that, to me are 100% horseshit. Alien abductions…Roswell…Atlantis…liberal economics…
Just kidding about that last one btw. The point is, that people believe bullshit, and attempting to legislate against that by creating an artificial Fairness Doctrine run by a committee is not the way to fight it. In fact, I think it would make things worse, and I think that, when the worm turned you’d be quite unhappy if, say, a right wing religious president and a right wing leaning Congress appointed their own henchmen to man such a board and ensure ‘fairness’ and ‘balance’.
-XT
What news agency says he is?
Maybe I remember wrong but I honestly do not remember anything akin to the distortions FOX (to name one) gets up to back then.
Jennings/Brokaw/Rather were not overtly partisan.
Walter Cronkite is rolling in his grave. Were he alive he’d probably kick Roger Ailes in the nuts.