Having a plan to pay for things isn’t the same as requiring a balanced budget. The plan part alone makes it more conservative than what the Republicans have been doing. Unless screwing people over counts as a plan.
They get 23 hours a day for all the commercial broadcasting they want.
Right, I was over-simplifying.
I dunno, my local ABC affiliate has news from 4:30-7:00 AM, 11:00 am-12 PM, 4:00 - 6:30 PM, and 10-10:30 PM.
For the math challenged, that leaves significantly less than 23 hours for commercial broadcasting.
Somewhere, I thought I remembered it being said that it required one hour a day, but I am unable to find that as a cite, so I will retract a claim on that particular number unless someone else knows where it can be found, but the FCC doesn’t require 6 and half hours of news, most of which is not local.
How this extra 5 or so hours of news should be treated is debatable. On the one hand, I would say that a no commercial requirement should only apply to the required news programming. On the other hand, I’ve watched most of these news programs, and honestly, the content that they present could easily fit within an hour if it weren’t dressed up in sensationalism and eye-candy to drum up ratings, so demonetizing the news may also help with that.
And regulating commercials on broadcast television has precedent.
But, as I said earlier, this really doesn’t change anything, as cable channels are virtually unregulated by the FCC, and that’s where the real problems are anyway. However, if historically and traditionally the news was broadcast without commercials, it may have been more difficult for 24 hour news networks to break in as they did.
Anyway, were I in charge, I would say that if you want to label something as a news program, it can’t have commercials. So, if you want to say, “These are real journalists, telling you the factual state of the world.” then they would be subject to a stricter interpretation of the prohibition against distortion, and they would not be allowed to run commercials.
You can have shows like Good Morning America, which sometimes has informational value similar to a news program, with commercials, because it’s not labeled as news, but entertainment. They can also lie if they want to, because they are not considered to be a trusted source of news.
I’m not sure how or if you could apply these rules to cable stations under the current framework, but I think that our country would be better off if we could.
I agree with this on one level. Children’s drawings, pet segments, photos of bullfrogs and lightning, etc. ain’t news. Also the obviously previously recorded segments (although they usually don’t note them as such) that we see on Friday, and again on Saturday, & Sunday.
This isn’t directed at you, just a question I’ve been curious about since this side conversation started. How are any stations (broadcast or cable) expected to pay for the production of a news segment without commercials/sponsors? I assume it’s fair to say they’re not going to eat the cost of that if it can be avoided. My assumption is that they would just add additional commercials to the other shows. I can’t imagine it’s that hard to spread 10.5-12 minutes worth of commercials over the remaining 23 hours. And if the reason for requiring the news to be commercial free is so they’re not beholden to the sponsors, I don’t think that would necessarily be the case.
Also, WRT to something being labeled as a news program, I’d take it a step further and say rules that apply to a news program shouldn’t stop at shows being labeled as a news program, but shows that a reasonable person would consider to the news (and possibly adding in shows that a reasonable viewer assume are telling them the truth (but that would have to be more narrowly defined than that)).
IOW, if we’re going to apply certain standards to “news shows”, we’d have to make sure not to create a loophole where they can just remove the word “news” from the name and no longer have those standards apply to them.
Yeah,they’d pay for it based on the revenue that they collect over the other 23 hours. Either more commercials or higher rates for commercials.
The point is that the FCC considers the airwaves to be a valuable public resource that are allocated for the benefit of the public. Broadcasters can make money off this resource, but in exchange, there are requirements they have to follow. There already are pages and pages of regulations. It wouldn’t be regulating an unregulated space, but rather adding a regulation to an already highly regulated space.
I don’t think it would be possible to add this in today, more my point is that they should have done so when they first set the whole thing up. I don’t know if adding it now would have much of an effect when such a large part of the problem of misinformation comes from cable.
More so that broadcasters don’t have an incentive to drive up ratings for their news shows. It should be a public service to inform the people as to what is going on in their community and beyond, not a competition to see who can put on the most dramatic show.
Problem with that is that we have different standards as to what a reasonable viewer will consider to be news. Tucker Carlson will freely admit that no reasonable viewer would take him to be speaking factually and truthfully, but people still do.
By having requirements of fact checking and providing source material in order to be considered news, shows that do not meet that standard can be taken as seriously as learning quantum physics from Avengers Endgame.
One of the things I considered is that we might end up with a small handful of third party production companies popping up whose sole purpose is to make an hour of news each day, as cheaply as possible, and sell it to networks (broadcast or otherwise) who could then play it at 3am to fulfill their hour/day requirement. It could make issues with the content less the networks problem and more the production company’s problem.
Yes, that, I think, is always going to be a problem. Whoever sets these standards and/or decides on whether or not a certain show is considered ‘news’, is going to be the subject of an almost unlimited about of backlash, lawsuits, threats and all kinds of other harassment.
There may be some simple way to fairly implement something, but I have no idea what it is.
Interestingly, that’s might be a bigger issue. While it’s certainly a problem that some news shows broadcast content that, for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t be considered news, the bigger problem is the non-news shows that people take very seriously. Tucker being a perfect example.
Even people that are onboard with shows that are calling themselves news being held to a certain standard may not be so thrilled about non-news shows, at least in certain circumstances, requiring some type of disclaimer to ensure viewers understand that it’s not the news.
Current FCC guidelines require that broadcast studios be located in or near their broadcast area, and I don’t see any reason to change that. It does make the broadcaster responsible for the content (as much as the News Distortion regulation is actually enforced, anyway).
Once again, something I heard somewhere, but I don’t remember where and I can’t find a cite specifically said that it was supposed to be at certain times. If that’s not the case, then it’s something that I would add in anyway. In any case, the requirement for the broadcaster to act in good faith towards being responsive to the needs of the community, which is current regulation would more or less preclude that loophole.
Noting simple ever works, but this doesn’t need to be too complicated. They can be required to provide their sources to the public and to the government, and they are required to do due diligence in fact checking those sources.
Currently, they pretty much have to admit to intentionally lying in order for the FCC to take any action against them.
The disclaimer doesn’t have to say that they are liars, it just has to say something like, “The views expressed in this program are the opinions of the commentators, and are not fact checked against their sources. This program is meant for entertainment purposes only.”
And while we are at it, I also want a pretty pink princess pony.
Getting back to the question, it is hard to disagree with this advice in The Economist.. The Dems should be much more aggressive about unpopular recent decisions and spend much less energy on the finer points of identity politics which are of less everyday relevance to most people.
Definitely about the former, but the latter is mostly Republican whining. The elected Democratic officials have very little involvement with identity politics. They’re more concerned about preventing the country from falling apart. Most of the noise about identity politics is Republicans exerting their own bigotry and resentment.
That article inadvertently does a good job demonstrating why the “Democrats have gone too far” narrative is fluff and someone like Biden trying to prove his moderate bona fides doesn’t significantly change the narrative.
For the most part, the things in that article that Biden actually has any control over are areas where he hasn’t wavered from their advice. He’s been tough on immigration. His speech after Roe was overturned did not mention “birthing people” once. He’s been both implementing and promoting increased federal spending on police and vocally rejecting defund.
The “democrats have gone too far” narrative persists and is propagated by the media regardless of the actual evidence and there isn’t a magic solution. Whoever wrote and edited that economist piece knew they didn’t have to bother actually checking what Biden’s policies or rhetoric are on immigration, crime, etc. because the narrative of the Democrats not doing enough to appeal to the center doesn’t actually depend on what the Democrats are actually doing to appeal to the center.
Heh, great minds think alike.
Since I am not American, I rely on the media to discuss American politics. No doubt it is a distorted view. If you do not like that article, you may like this one still less. Democrats who favour a return to Clinton’s policies.
The moderate Democrats get derided for not pausing from work to make a public casting out of the progressives… while the Republican leadership won’t dare call out armed white supremacists. Motes, beams.
When you read these articles are their specific policies you’re reading about where you go “yes, they should start doing that in order to get more support”?
This is what they say about a Clinton ad from the 90’s in that article that is purportedly the blueprint the Dems should follow nowadays:
So unfortunately welfare work requirements actually are a very popular option for Democrats still if they want to shift to the right. Same for the death penalty (although IMO that barely counts as we still have a federal death penalty, and any efforts one way or the other on it are not making a blip in the media or public consciousness)
For the rest, I guess Biden (or the congressional Dems) should be more like Clinton by passing their gun control bill? Or they should balance the budget while cutting middle class taxes - so they should cut the military budget or raise taxes on the rich? Or cut social security and medicare? (that at least would actually be a right-wing option which apparently is the goal)
I do not think so, no. I agree the “Problem Solvers” have solved nothing. Bipartisanship only works with a meaningful degree of cooperation. I also agree a lot of political mileage has been made by exaggerating or misrepresenting what most Democrats believe.
However, the Democrats do have an image problem. Most Democrats are unimpressed with Biden, who must be judged by other measures than just how he would fare in 2024. He must respond immediately to things like overturning Roe rather than spend two weeks making a plan. He certainly needs to get people more involved and with more urgency. I don’t know how he can do that. Is the problem his policies deviate from mainstream views? Occasionally it is. A lot of it is communication, in particular it is hard to counteract disinformation and people unwilling to reasonably cooperate.
To the extent possible, their policies should resonate with Joe and Jenny Average. Manchin is certainly acting and negotiating in bad faith, but has caused enormous problems. The Democrats should screen their candidates more carefully? Where you stand depends on where you sit.
Who will fact-check the fact-checkers? It’s not like Glenn Kessler, Snopes, et al. don’t have their own biases.
What nonsense.
Did they have oppo research to smear their opponent? Of course they did. They did against Clinton too. And Biden. Welcome to politics. Absolutely nothing new here. Hell, Clinton had it on Sanders in the primary.
Sanders has been in politics nearly non-stop for forty years or more. Successfully. Do you really think republicans (and democrats) only just now found the skeletons in his closet? That prior to this his opponents played nice and didn’t bother muckraking? That only now would the pearl clutching revelations begin?
