Just as an aside, I’m giggling at the possibilities of a world that never was.
“President Nixon announced today that he is not a crook.”
[beat]
“But he totally is, you guys.”
[beat]
“And now, this.”
No mention yet of the Fairness Doctrine?
Cliff Notes version - The holders of public airwave broadcast licenses were required to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was — in the Commission’s view — honest, equitable, and balanced. Then, during the Reagan administration the Fairness Doctrine was eliminated. What followed is our current world.
So, newspapers were never subject to the Fairness Doctrine and were consequently more transparently slanted. Whereas broadcast media was subject to the Fairness Doctrine. For those of us over a certain age, we have a memory of broadcast news being more newsy and not slanted.
^ This
+1
Television news is a business now. The news departments/networks need to attract viewers and advertisers.
(post shortened)
Then the news media is no longer a “news” media. They’ve let themselves become just one more professional lobbying group.
Personally, I prefer that the fourth estate supply verified facts.
Heh, that has been my motto for years, more than once I have pointed out that since there is a bias that can be almost impossible to remove, then as consumers we should look at the sources that do not have a preference to feed viewers and readers with things that are not facts.
To this day I have not been able to find FOX officially denouncing programs like their Moon Hoax show. I do remember Gerardo on a FOX news mentioning that show in passing, but the comment was neutral as like saying “how nice that was” as in ‘nothing more needs to be said’ because some type of viewers can get upset. Just about what can be expected from the “Mr. Al Capone’s vault” fiasco.
That abortion of the facts Moon Hoax show is what IMHO made a lot of people that fall for conspiracy theories to love that network.
So, more loyal viewers! So it worked.
In 1986 philosopher Thomas Nagel published The View From Nowhere which argued against this sort of bland neutrality arising from an attempt to seem a detached observer.
Nagel proved influential in a circle of journalism which sought to subvert the detached narrator model that had been prevalent at the time. Among those influenced was Jay Rosen, faculty member at NYU School of Journalism (and future department chair). Rosen took Nagel’s point of view to heart and promoted as preferred that journalists should express their view in their reporting, albeit with the responsibility to disclose that point of view to their audience. It was not long before journalists dropped Rosen’s last proviso and stopped disclosing their own biases.
TLDR; at least since 1986, and accelerating since then.
Interesting. I just read that one of the arguments why folks think this (doctrine) is no longer needed, is there used to be slimmer pickings in broadcast news. Now, with the profileration of channels, a viewer (so they say) is less at risk of getting one-sided views. My two cents–trying to filter out the spin by “balancing” your viewing between, say, FOX and MSNBC is a huge pain in the ass. So people just float in their little broadcast news echo chambers.
Here’s the punchline on modern arguments over reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine (ready?)–it’s become a partisan issue!
Two notes on the fairness doctrine.
- It applied only to broadcast license holders (the “airwaves” being public property vs cable being private property)
- It was repealed in 2011
mc
It was eliminated in the 80s. There was nothing left of it by 2011. I remember when Obama was first running some Republicans were saying there was a danger that he’d revive it, but he was never really a fan in the first place. Free speech and all that.
It’s due to the liberal scum that owns most of the media.
Most of them are Jewish, so what do you expect?
:rolleyes:
To be blunt, if your reaction to Trump’s election wasn’t despair and cursing, something is wrong with you. Bipartisanship in reaction to an election where one party nominated a rational politician and the other elected a reality TV host with no apparent understanding of the difference between reality and fiction is not reasonable. When one side is rationally indefensible, fair newscasting does not obscure this.
Wow, I didn’t know that. Maybe someday we’ll have a philosophy of mind advanced enough to tell us what it’s like to be a Fox (viewer)!
The important thing to remember is that both sides do it. Partisans are stupid, so if you are totally non-partisan, you must therefore be smarter. Non-partisan Broderism is the aunt that everybody kisses but nobody loves.
I think non-partisan media was the anomaly (perhaps a confluence of the rise of the middle class and the Cold War, perhaps something else) and we’re just returning to the default state. People (on both sides) just love their red meat.
It was abolished in 1987.
that’s what Rushgeekgirl said, too. but it’s not the whole truth; form a WaPo article from 2011
like a vampire, it was hard to kill!
mc
This.