There has been lots of discusssion recently about ‘fake news’.
Should using the term “News” require a license of some sort (Federal, State, Local, I don’t know.)
Using the term would require that the information you publish is factual.
That does not mean that you can’t be selective in what you report.
It does mean the items you report did, in fact, occur.
So, you could still publish fiction, but you could not call your site/publication/program XXX News.
You could still publish/broadcast opinions, but again, you could not label the vehicle a “News” vehicle.
I remember when radio stations would periodically give a statement saying they they were licensed as a public trust.
This meant that if it could be shown that the station was not operating in the interest of the public, they could have their license revoked. I don’t recall hearing that recently, maybe the still do it.
I think this would just be an extension of that principle. If people cannot trust that a “News” station provides factual information, that station should be sanctioned, somehow.
Unfortunately, any licensing scheme will end up limited to the country mandating it - it’ll have no effect on, say, a website based in Belarus that purports to be an American news agency.
Look how well that worked in the Soviet Union. Freedom of speech is better.
Besides, didn’t the American news organisations just massively fail America by failing to report the political truth? By putting their liberal bias on what they did report? No, you want the upstarts, the Drudges, the Breitbarts, the gadflies. And let the people sort out fact from fiction. The public is too used to the mainstream press covering up its failures (q.v. Jayson Blair, Johann Hari, Stephen Glass, etc).
The intent would not be to have “Government Approved News”. It would just license the use of the term “News” to describe your outlet.
I think of it more like the French Appelation Controlee for wine. You are free to make sparkling wine or red wine, but to call it Champagne, or Burgundy, the grapes have to originate from those regions.
I am not suggesting censoring any outlets. Sure, Breitbart, Limbaugh, etc. could still spew fiction, but they could not label it “News”. I’ve found that people place undue confidence in information presented in the guise of “News”. I constantly hear things like: “You didn’t hear about it? It was all over the news.”
I think rewriting the constitution to limit rights because the side you’re on lost the election is a really bad idea. And that goes for whichever side you happen to be on.
The FDA has the authority to prosecute anyone marketing a product that claims to “diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease” that has not received FDA approval through the clinical trial process.
The FDA does not prevent you from marketing something as a “dietary supplement”, but you are not allowed to use any of the above words in your claims.
I see this as similar. You can say/publish anything you want. But you cannot call it “News” unless it can be shown to contain factual content.
This does not eliminate bias of any kind. The far right can publish far right, factual information.
The left can publish left-leaning, factual information.
The left/right pundits can still spin/distort he facts as they see fit.
Expanding on what I wrote there, there’s already a method through which we separate the wheat from the chaff, it’s called science; perhaps journalism should become more scientific in its methodology.
Just to be clear, you want Trump to be in charge of licensing news sources. Is that correct? Because Obama is not going to be in office past January of next year.
Journalism! I remember that. We used to have that when I was young: Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Edward R. Murrow. Yeah, Journalists.
Sadly, that is an endangered species. If we had more of them today, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Back then, there were limited sources of “News”: The three major networks, newspapers, and radio stations. Each of these required significant capital to establish.
Now, anyone can start a blog or web site and call it News. And it is asking too much of people to develop the required critical analysis skills to “separate the wheat from the chaff”. So we end up with a large number of misinformed people making misinformed decisions.
How many levels do we have to choose from? You either get one central authority doing it, or 50 (or more) doing it. But not seeing how that makes any difference. There are lots of crappy/corrupt governors and mayors out there, too.
Again, this is not the idea.
I’m not suggesting that every single piece of information be approved by some authority. I’m suggesting that outlet for that information need a license if they want to describe themselves as a “News” outlet. This license could be renewed annually, for example.