The Fairness Doctrine: a good idea?

Great Debates
61

[QUOTE=Clothahump]
The issue, to me. seems to be that the libs hate conservative talk radio. They are not content to have the newspapers and the TV networks tilt their way, they gotta have it all. So they tried the free market concept, with predictable results. When Air America went belly-up because nobody listened to it, they could only come up with the idea of forcing talk radio out of business with this so-called Fairness Doctrine.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly.

Especially since the new media of the Internet and blogs broke the leftist stranglehold on the major media outlets. Look what happened when CBS tried to influence the election in 2006 with the falsified documents. Forty years ago, they would have gotten away with it, and relied on their fellow travellers to downplay it if it had been found out. Nowadays, the clear facts that CBS ignored their own experts in their haste to smear a President they don’t like were out on the Internet in hours.

All the liberals were crowing that they had divined the secret of Rush’s success, that all that was needed was to put someone on to lie and smear the Right, and talk down to the American public. Then Air America went bankrupt, and they discovered that it wasn’t as simple as it looked. So they are attempting to use the government to stifle a point of view with which they can’t compete.

Get back to me when the liberals want to impose “fairness” on PBS or the New York Times or another of the media they already control. Until then, it is somewhere between “sour grapes” and an attempt at political repression of free speech.

Regards,
Shodan

62

[QUOTE=Shodan]
Especially since the new media of the Internet and blogs broke the leftist stranglehold on the major media outlets.
[/quote]

:rolleyes:

[QUOTE=Shodan]
Look what happened when CBS tried to influence the election in 2006 with the falsified documents.
[/quote]

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[QUOTE=Shodan]
Get back to me when the liberals want to impose “fairness” on PBS or the New York Times or another of the media they already control.
[/QUOTE]

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

You can stop lying any time now, Shodan. We won’t mind.

63

I wonder what the Democrats would say if the big three networks had news correspondents and major personalities who came out of politics on the Republican side.

Can you imagine “This Week with Ari Fliescher”? How about “Hardball, with Karl Rove?” Or “Meet the Press” with Ben Stein?

George Stephanopoulis was Clinton’s Press Secretary. Now he’s a major TV anchor.

Tim Russert worked for Democrat Patrick Moynihan. Now he’s the achor of the most powerful news show on TV.

Chris Matthews worked in the Carter White House. Now he’s the host of ‘Hardball’.

Maria Shriver was a major news correspondent, and she’s a liberal democrat from a political family.

If TV were loaded up with Republicans in major positions, you’d be screaming murder. Oh, yeah, you already do. Fox News is the equivalent on the right, but you’re convinced that your side is fair and balanced and neutral, but they are demons from hell.

Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 2-1 as employees in the U.S. major TV markets. In the last fundraising cycle, major figures in the news industry donated to Democrats against Republicans by a 6 to 1 ratio.

Democrats outnumber Republicans about 3-1 on the faculty roles of state universities. And most of the Republicans are clustered in the engineering, economics, and business faculties. The social sciences are overwhelmingly liberal. It is extremely hard to find a formal education that presents liberal and conservative arguments in a fair manner free of bias.

The U.S.'s largest newspapers are overwhelmingly liberal in tone and content - The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times are both liberal and activist - both have used their papers to attempt to promote partisan political causes. Most major newspapers are liberal.

When I go to the book store, I find that very popular conservative books are nowhere to be found, while every bizarre lefty screed has made its way onto the shelves. So I can’t find Von Mises’ “Human Action” or Hayek’s “The Road To Serfdom”, but the complete collected works of Seymour Hersch are on proud display. Because bookstore staff are overwhelmingly liberal in outlook, and they decide what to stock and what to promote.

If I go to the library and ask for help on a certain partisan subject, I’m more likely to be steered to books that tilt to the left, because librarians and library assistants are overwhelmingly liberal.

But hey, the conservatives get the drivetime show on one of two dozen radio stations. That’s unfair. We must use the heavy hand of government to squash them.

64

I think I’ve only now realized something - maybe because I’m slow.

Liberals look at the ownership of media companies and think “conservative.”

Conservatives look at the reporters/writers of media companies and think “liberal.”

Both sides look at the content and think “this proves I’m right.”

65

[QUOTE=Leaper]
I think I’ve only now realized something - maybe because I’m slow.

Liberals look at the ownership of media companies and think “conservative.”

Conservatives look at the reporters/writers of media companies and think “liberal.”

Both sides look at the content and think “this proves I’m right.”
[/QUOTE]

Damn skippy.

-FrL-

(Myself, I look at the content and think “Fucking news is fucking retarded. Fuck.”)

66

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
:rolleyes:

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

You can stop lying any time now, Shodan. We won’t mind.
[/QUOTE]

What an utterly and completely moronic response. Not a hint of rational discourse, not the slightest effort at debate. Six fucking rolleyes and two lines of assholery.

This is what passes for thought on the Left. No wonder you need laws to prevent people from disagreeing with you.

67

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
I wonder what the Democrats would say if the big three networks had news correspondents and major personalities who came out of politics on the Republican side.

Can you imagine “This Week with Ari Fliescher”? How about “Hardball, with Karl Rove?” Or “Meet the Press” with Ben Stein?
[/quote]
With respect to the Fairness Doctrine, why should we talk about the Big Three, and exclude Fox? Because you’re describing Fox.

He isn’t an anchor.

Moynihan was the Dem that all Republicans loved to quote. Worked in the Nixon White House. Russert hasn’t worked for him for 25 years.

Carter was a centrist Dem, and it’s been at least 26 years since Matthews worked in the Carter White House. Tweety’s so liberal, he voted for Bush in 2000. Swoons over GOP presidents’ and candidates’ manly natures and smells. That’s our liberal media.

And married to a Republican who’s only as moderate as he is because he got hammered in the polls for being too pro-business.

The GOP equivalent of the stuff you describe would be if TV was filled with people who used to work for Mark Hatfield and Lowell Weicker. I could deal with that.

If you think the Big Three networks are as far left as Fox is far right, then our versions of reality are very, very different.

Is that the one where very few of the contributors had anything to do with the news, and were mostly Joe Schmoe over in accounting?

And this has to do with the Fairness Doctrine how??

IYHO. And again, this has nothing to do with the Fairness Doctrine.

Dude, you’re in Canada, so this doesn’t even say anything about the U.S.A., let alone about the Fairness Doctrine.

Ditto.

It’s called the heavy hand of ownership. If I own something, it’s my right to decide what to do with it. I thought conservatives were big on property rights and stuff. This is a property-rights question. We, the American people, own the airwaves, and we have the right to regulate them in the manner of owners, not in the manner of consumers.

68

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Let those media that are owned in common by we, the people (broadcast TV and radio), be governed by the Fairness Doctrine, and those media that aren’t (everything else), not.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not aware of any radio or television stations “The People” own. There is NPR, which strives mightily to be fair and balanced, but even those stations are owned by private, not-for-profit corporations. As far as I know, the U.S. government doesn’t own any stations broadcasting in the U.S. today.

69

[QUOTE=Shodan]
What an utterly and completely moronic response. Not a hint of rational discourse, not the slightest effort at debate. Six fucking rolleyes and two lines of assholery.

This is what passes for thought on the Left. No wonder you need laws to prevent people from disagreeing with you.
[/QUOTE]

I’m pretty sure part of Brainglutton’s point was to assert that your own post contained “not a hint of rational discourse” etc. The post asserted this indirectly, by carrying on as though your post deserved nothing better than a further post with “not a hint of rational discourse” etc.

That’s how I read BrainGluttion’s post, anyway.

-FrL-

70

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
It’s called the heavy hand of ownership. If I own something, it’s my right to decide what to do with it. I thought conservatives were big on property rights and stuff. This is a property-rights question. We, the American people, own the airwaves, and we have the right to regulate them in the manner of owners, not in the manner of consumers.
[/QUOTE]

Well, the government may own the airwaves but they lease them to private corporations. Furthermore, there is the little sticking point of the First Amendment, which limits the power of government to regulate the content of speech. I’d certainly say that government forcing stations to carry certain types of political speech would violate that Amendment.

71

[QUOTE=Leaper]
I think I’ve only now realized something - maybe because I’m slow.
[/QUOTE]

You’re not slow. You’re shallow. this is just another instance of shallow cynicism of the form “evahboddy does it and there’s no use in trying to make critical distinctions between groups or positions because if you strain hard enough you can find equivalences between almost any two groups or positions. So a pox on both your houses, I am superior!”

72

[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
You’re not slow. You’re shallow. this is just another instance of shallow cynicism of the form “evahboddy does it and there’s no use in trying to make critical distinctions between groups or positions because if you strain hard enough you can find equivalences between almost any two groups or positions. So a pox on both your houses, I am superior!”
[/QUOTE]

You got all that out of Leaper’s post?

How?

-FrL-

73

[QUOTE=Renob]
Well, the government may own the airwaves but they lease them to private corporations.
[/quote]
No, we don’t. We license them to use our airwaves, in return for serving the public interest.

How so? If I own a newspaper, it’s not an infringement on the First Amendment to fire a columnist I don’t like. I can’t see how the First Amendment binds an owner of a property from acting to restrict speech on that property in an ownership capacity.

It would be one thing if the public airwaves were open to all. If you, I, and the fellow over there could broadcast whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, over the airwaves as a great public commons, then (aside from the fact that broadcast interference would be intolerable) no limitations on speech would be reasonable.

But what has happened on the airwaves is that the 300 million of us have ceded our rights to a relative handful of broadcasters, so that they can represent all of us. I’ll freely admit that there’s no good way to do this, but I aver that some ways are worse than others. And to give a relative handful of large corporations the privilege of speaking for themselves over our airwaves, with only the barest pretense of representing the public at large, is just plain absurd. It would make a hell of a lot more sense to divide the airwaves up by frequency and time slots, and have a big lottery to determine whose opinions ruled the roost at what time and on what station.

74

[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
I’m not aware of any radio or television stations “The People” own. There is NPR, which strives mightily to be fair and balanced, but even those stations are owned by private, not-for-profit corporations. As far as I know, the U.S. government doesn’t own any stations broadcasting in the U.S. today.
[/QUOTE]
We own the airwaves that they broadcast over. You can have a fortune’s worth of broadcast equipment, but if you don’t have the rights to a frequency, you’re SOL.

75

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
No, we don’t. We license them to use our airwaves, in return for serving the public interest.
[/quote]

No, I don’t think there is any provision that the airwaves must be used “in the public interest” (if there is, please show me). How would you justify most of the crap put on the radio and TV as being “in the public interest”?

If the government if the owner of something, it is explicitly bound by the Constitution. The governnment is the owner of the airwaves; therefore, for the government to dictate the political content of speech on those airwaves would violate the First Amendment.

So they only get to use the airwaves to “represent” us? What does that mean? Can you back up that assertion with any type of cite?

76

[QUOTE=Shodan]
What an utterly and completely moronic response. Not a hint of rational discourse, not the slightest effort at debate. Six fucking rolleyes and two lines of assholery.

This is what passes for thought on the Left. No wonder you need laws to prevent people from disagreeing with you.
[/QUOTE]
At a certain point, responding rationally to a Big Lie is only going to further its dissemination, elevating it to a rational debate topic rather than the idiocy it is.

77

[QUOTE=Renob]
Well, the government may own the airwaves but they lease them to private corporations. Furthermore, there is the little sticking point of the First Amendment, which limits the power of government to regulate the content of speech. I’d certainly say that government forcing stations to carry certain types of political speech would violate that Amendment.
[/QUOTE]
Nope, nobody owns the airwaves. Airwaves can’t be owned. Our radio station is licensed to broadcast its signal because at one time there was a finite, countable number of frequencies broadcasters could use. Cable, the internet and high-definition technology have pretty much erased those old limitations, but we still have the licensing requirement simply because once the federal government is given a power, it never relinquishes it.

The Fairness Doctrine was a liberal concept that came out of the 1960s to counteract the market forces of the time, which tended to award air time to the highest bidder. It never worked as intended and ended up having the chilling effect its opponents always said it would have. I remember in the 1970s and early 1980s being told that stations I worked for never allowed anything controversial on the air because nobody wanted to screw around with “the whole fairness thing.” Instead of making it easier to get conflicting points of view on the air, the FD made it harder because we just didn’t do it.

Remember, broadcast is primarily an entertainment medium, and its entertainment elements figure prominently even in news and current events coverage. Video editing techniques that are used to make a TV crime drama more compelling are also used to make a news report from Iraq more compelling. The primary concern of people like Keith Olbermann, Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews and others isn’t, “What IS this?” but “What does this look like?” As long as Matthews appears to “play hardball” by simply shouting down his guests, he can claim that he actually does play hardball. Olbermann appears to be poking Swiftian holes in the arrogance of the powers that be when, in fact, he’s just a highly-paid smart-ass. Rush Limbaugh is a truth-challenged gasbag who appears to be a plain-talking pundit, while Bill O’Reilly offers random right-wing fantasies packaged as insight and revelation.

I’ve been in broadcasting off and on since 1968 (when I wasn’t “newspapering”) and I will tell you that trying to regulate broadcast is like trying to bring order to the clowns in a three-ring circus. People go into broadcast for one reason only – to make money – and you don’t make any money from news and opinion.

78

Googling around, I see that there is some sort of “public interest” requirement about granting licenses. I’ll concede that point. But what exactly the “public interest” means is left undefined. So how to define it? Obviously some here think the “public interest” is served by forcing right-wing talk show hosts off the air. Some here think that the “public interest” is served by forcing station owners to provide a forum for people with whom they disagree. Some here, including me, think the public interest is served by allowing people to allow whatever speech they want on their stations. Since the public is clearly divided, who speaks in their voice? Who gets to decide? And, in this era of a variety of different media outlets (broadcast stations, newspapers, websites, satellite radio, cable TV, etc.), is there really a lack of “alternative viewpoints”?

79

[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
Nope, nobody owns the airwaves. Airwaves can’t be owned. Our radio station is licensed to broadcast its signal because at one time there was a finite, countable number of frequencies broadcasters could use. Cable, the internet and high-definition technology have pretty much erased those old limitations, but we still have the licensing requirement simply because once the federal government is given a power, it never relinquishes it.
[/QUOTE]

Granted. However, if the government is in charge of divying up the airwaves and no one can use the airwaves without a government license, then it essentially owns it.

80

[QUOTE=Frylock]
I’m pretty sure part of Brainglutton’s point was to assert that your own post contained “not a hint of rational discourse” etc. The post asserted this indirectly, by carrying on as though your post deserved nothing better than a further post with “not a hint of rational discourse” etc.

[/QUOTE]
No, that’s clearly not the case, since he clearly could identify where I was making a series of points. The only trouble is that he could not be bothered to respond to any of those points apart from rolleyes, followed by the ridiculous assertion that I was lying (that CBS used forged documents, for instance). Same for Ludovic’s post, which merely continued the assholery without any substantive response.

Because by the standards of the SDMB, Fox isn’t biased. We’ve gone over this before.

Regards,
Shodan