While Twitler aims his ‘fake news’ gun at MSM, his minions are busy manipulating federal agencies to lie to the public.
excerpt from above link.
"an unprecedented attempt to delete or bury credible scientific information they find politically inconvenient.”
One more effecting American Women.
Yeah I just wish we could think up something new that would work. It’s not that I am against something that would work against propaganda - I’m not. I just want something that will work.
I totally agree. I started to say something earlier to that affect but you did it so good.
How about Tom Steyer buying Sinclair? Someone should ask him.
Donald Trump‘s little army of deplorable robots all programmed with his soundbites for the day.
Show me the case law. The Supreme Court held that it wasn’t. The benchmark case was Red Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969)
Held:
2. The fairness doctrine and its specific manifestations in the personal attack and political editorial rules do not violate the First Amendment.
This was a unanimous decision of the Court that has never been overturned.
Ok then you tell me how we impose it on all broadcasting, like broadcasting out of Britain or China or Russia.
They based that decision on public airways just like they always did. That’s how they got around what is clearly a prior restraint by the government,
We do not have any Sinclair owned stations in the Phoenix area, and local news is still pretty much shit.
IANAL, but foreign companies must comply with American laws when doing business in the U.S. Just because their content originates outside the country, I don’t see why they would get a pass with a resurrected (and presumably updated) Fairness Doctrine when broadcasting that content to American audiences.
O for fuck’s sake - I get so tired of this argument. I’m not against fairness but who is going to police this when there are hundreds of channels?
I surrender - keep talking about an old doctrine instead of trying to think of something that will not wind up in court. I’d like to have something that works - not something that gives more power to the entity that is trying to destroy the free press.
Even if the FCC was only able to regulate over-the-air local networks … that is exactly what Sinclair controls, and which a large portion of the voting populace (those 50+) still regard as independent, “neighborhood” voices coming into their living rooms.
No, fairness doctrine can not affect cable news. But local news could be saved.
If they want out, why couldn’t they refuse the order and get fired. Getting fired isn’t the same as quitting. Do they sign on to penalties leveled on a dishonorable discharge?
No, they based that decision on the statutory authority of the FCC to license broadcasters to use a specific frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum commonly known as the “public airways”. This was the only area that the fairness doctrine applied to because this is the only area that the FCC is authorized to grant licenses for. The fairness doctrine never applied to the press and subsequent court cases affirmed that it did not apply to cable or the Internet. Today, the fairness doctrine would still only apply to broadcast TV and radio. The fairness doctrine was not a prior restraint. Broadcasters could broadcast whatever they wanted, but were required to grant equal time to any individual or group who felt that they had been portrayed incorrectly. Read the court case. It may be your opinion that the fairness doctrine constituted a prior restraint, but your opinion is not case law.
I know how it worked. How is it going to be enforced if you want it applied across all spectrums? How?
Any government control of the press or speech is a prior restraint and you are trying to parse language that is pretty clear. They were allowed to license because they were using the public airways.
(a) The First Amendment is relevant to public broadcasting, but it is the right of the viewing and listening public, and not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.
Somehow I don’t think the current “Corporations are people, my friend” SCOTUS majority would agree with that sentiment. And a district court ruling is not binding to the SCOTS (not that prior SCOTUS rulings are either these days …)
(b) The First Amendment does not protect private censorship by broadcasters who are licensed by the Government to use a scarce resource which is denied to others.
…
(e) It has not been shown that the scarcity of broadcast frequencies, which impelled governmental regulation, is entirely a thing of the past, as new uses for the frequency spectrum have kept pace with improved technology and more efficient utilization of that spectrum.
That is precisely what doesn’t apply to cable companies. Broadcast scarcity is not necessarily a thing of the past (although with HD broadcast’s many more channels one could certainly re-argue the point). But cable/satellite/internet broadcast capability is definitely not a rare resource.
There you have three of the five points the DC Circuit used to counter first-amendment concerns no longer relevant. The remaining two points basically point to this as a very narrow ruling on the specific rule and application, and say that the Court shouldn’t entertain “worst case” slippery slope arguments until they are concrete (another tendency of restraint the current SCOTUS has proven itself incapable of minding). I don’t think those remaining points would be strong enough to stand scrutiny on their own, in 2018-20.
All fair points. The idea, though, would be that if terminated, the contracts themselves could be challenged.
Given that there is a problem with the major media conglomerate and the manipulation of the FCC, and a subversion of journalism, the question is indeed whether to go along with that subversion or not. I did not expect or imply that it would be an easy thing to make a choice that is costly to oneself. It is. However, can you think of a more opportune time to start pushing back against this kind of thing? I can’t.
And in answer to your question, I did not do anything quite like this in my professional life, but I did change jobs in order not to do work on behalf of clients whose values I found opposed to my own, and generally socially harmful.
“Prior restraint” is probably the wrong description. The Fairness Doctrine is supposed to give coverage and access to both sides of a story. And to the Loan Arranger, the case you cite had to do with a personal attack on someone who wanted equal time to reply without having to pay the station to get it. It has nothing to do with restraint.
The problem we have with local news here in Pennsylvania is that they cover fires and shootings but never what our state politicians are up to. As for national news, they don’t give us news, they give us opinion and speculation.
My point precisely. As implemented, the fairness doctrine had nothing to do with restraint.
Quite true. The FCC doesn’t license cable companies or the Internet. However, AM Hate Radio could not exist with a fairness doctrine.
There appears to be some understandable controversy surrounding a resurrected FCC Fairness Doctrine but the Wiki article I linked offers alternatives that might serve better in the current environment; e.g., Media reform organizations such as Free Press feel that a return to the Fairness Doctrine is not as important as setting stronger station ownership caps and stronger “public interest” standards enforcement (with funding from fines given to public broadcasting).
Aside from monopoly control of regional news my concern is that, with the exception of the occasional objecting news staffer(s) leak, there is often no way for audience to know where the content and putative news is coming from and/or who is promoting it. The Wiki article also notes this by way of Accurate Labeling Rules
Under the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, the FTC requires that all ‘consumer commodities’ bear a label with an accurate ‘statement identifying the commodity’. If revenue-generating commercial broadcasts (whether by radio, tv, or internet) are a ‘consumer commodity’, then they must be accurately labeled. That would seem to preclude ‘News’ that is not genuine, ‘Opinion’ that is not the author’s actual opinion, or ‘Analysis’ that is not at least arguably analytical. Note that in general the FTC only has authority over commercial aspects (pertaining to revenue) rather than speech.