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I know Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and all the rest don't count as broadcast media but I feel like we got here in part because the 1987 elimination of

I know Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and all the rest don't count as broadcast media but I feel like we got here in part because the 1987 elimination of FCC's fairness doctrine slowly allowed a shift in how we communicate with each other. We went from specious claims and conspiracy theories being the subject matter of newsletters to their public broadcast to millions via talk radio ~and Fox News~, thus allowing people to descend into their own bubbles without ever having their views challenged. Now people seem to rely on social media to give them the same experience. When challenged too much people just pull up stakes to insulate themselves: voat, parler, and private facebook groups are only three recent examples. It'll be interesting to see if whoever replaces Ajit Pai holds a different view on public intercourse over the airwaves. Edit: Well as some people have pointed out, Fox News would have been exempt from the Fairness Doctrine as a cable network, i.e. it doesn't use the public spectrum. As Wikipedia says "The channel was created by Australian-American media mogul Rupert Murdoch to appeal to a conservative audience, hiring former Republican media consultant and CNBC executive Roger Ailes as its founding CEO." So my personal view that Fox (among others) is responsible for a) exposing millions to fact-free content without opposing views and b) people got used to that and don't like it when it's challenged created the bubble we have today. I'm wrong that the Fairness Doctrine would have prevented Fox, although it might have prevented talk radio.

xxpor 6y ago
Even if the fairness doctrine hadn't been eliminated administratively, it's very plausible it'd have been overturned by SCOTUS anyway. Not that'd I agree with that, but given the way the court has gone on corporate "free speech"...
- ls612 6y ago
  The only reason the fairness doctrine could even plausibly exist constitutionally was because radio and tv were broadcast media using a public good (spectrum). Cable TV, newspapers were not affected and the internet likely wouldn’t have been affected either.
  - xxpor 6y ago
    Yeah exactly. We might not have had Rush Limbaugh in the mid-90s, but we still would have had Fox News or whatever.
  - SilasX 6y ago
    That always felt like a dubious standard. Parkland is a public good, but the Supreme Court would insta-smackdown any FD-style restriction on political speech in parks.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      The nature of each "public good" could be evaluated to determine what was appropriate to ensure all citizens equal access to a public good. FD just required a media outlet to make sure the media basically gave another candidate the opportunity to access, it didn't actually require equal time, not unless that candidate wanted to, or in the case of advertisements was willing to buy them. Certainly parkland should be equally available to members of different political parties, but it's not like you have to use the same standard either: the nature of a "public good" would determine the nature of what fair equal access meant. For airwaves it's one thing. For a limited physical resource it's another.
      - SilasX 6y ago
        Parkland is a limited physical resource.
        pythonaut_16 6y ago
        But limited in a different way than radio spectrum.
        ineedasername 6y ago
        So is radio spectrum. Regardless, as I said, you determine for each "public good" what appropriate fairness means. You don't back down from it just because doing the right thing isn't as easy as doing the easy thing.
- Lendal 6y ago
  We gave up on the fairness doctrine because it didn't work. It forced news media to give equal time to the 1% of crackpots who disagreed with the 99% of scientists on a number of topics, including climate science. It was always going to go this way, regardless of the fairness doctrine existing or not.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    The whole point was so government officials could decide what was fair, and what wasn’t. So full blown censorship by controlling who gets access.
wyldfire 6y ago
I suspect that the fairness doctrine change is more of a symptom than a cause. The FCC will have close to zero impact on twenty first century media. I don't know how or even if we can fix this.
- technofiend 6y ago
  I'm sure it's a symptom of something but my point was Fox News (which was established in 1996 according to Wikipedia) could never have been born prior to 1987. What happened yesterday in Washington, DC may prove a counterpoint to 1st amendment claims that all speech should be allowed, regardless of consequences. Edit: I see I was wrong about Fox as it is a cable network and not broadcast over public airwaves. I still think their viewers are insulated from opposing viewpoints and that's part of the problem.
  - roywiggins 6y ago
    The fairness doctrine never applied to cable channels. The only reason it was plausibly Constitutional was the use of the airways, which are considered a public resource. Private cables strung by private companies into private homes were never regulated by the fairness doctrine.
    - klondike_ 6y ago
      Fox is broadcast over the air in many areas
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        The programming on Fox broadcast channels is different than Fox News, which is specifically transmitted via cable or satellite and, legally, not via public airwaves. Fox broadcast channels are subject to the same laws as other broadcast channels.
      - roywiggins 6y ago
        Yes, but the stuff that people find most objectionable- the Fox opinion shows, Hannity etc- have their home on Fox-the-cable-channel. They might get picked up on some Fox affiliates (though I doubt it, they're the special sauce that gets people to pay for cable), but the engine of the thing is the cable channel.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
Matt Taibbi talks about all this in his book Hate Inc. The 24/7 news networks needed new stuff to sell since the USSR was out. Turns out just general outrage at every little thing works good.
- technofiend 6y ago
  Oh, thanks. I'll put that book on the to-read pile.
- rconti 6y ago
  I noticed this last night. I mostly watch local news, but I put on CNN during the voting last night, and while the BBC was sorta talking over the voting going on in the background, CNN gave up on it entirely and it was just 5 people spouting outrage. Even when it's outrage I agree with, it angers me.
  - jschwartzi 6y ago
    And indeed who voted and who spoke and how they spoke was far more consequential to our country than hot air from 5 random commentators. I was watching PBS NewsHour and saw people like Representative Cawthorn give very calculated speeches that were very disturbing if you read between the lines.
    - InitialLastName 6y ago
      This is why I spent the night watching the C-SPAN streams, where they prioritized (and seem to always do) live footage, both of the debates and the chaos. They also spent most of the rest of the time taking phone calls from randos on a public line, and the views expressed in those calls really illuminated the breadth of public opinion at the moment (obviously with selection bias of who felt inclined to call in). Down the line, I can read other people's thoughtful analysis of what people said and how people voted and evaluate it in the context of having seen it live, rather than from having heard Michael Barbaro's quick-cut package in the morning.
- olivermarks 6y ago
pentae 6y ago
Have you actually watched Fox News lately? Right wingers are leaving it in droves because except for a few pundits (Tucker Carlson etc) They are too moderate. Most of the craziness is on social media these days and right wing news sites on the web
- bra-ket 6y ago
  it's not that Fox News became "moderate" , they became just another left-wing propaganda hub like CNN and WaPo , except for very few commentators like Tucker and Ingraham. Their elections coverage was a disaster as well. I think they are in identity crisis of sorts.
  - paradox242 6y ago
    How do I know you're delusional? You think Fox News is a "left-wing propaganda hub".
    - InitialLastName 6y ago
      There appear to be a substantial group of people who are soc convinced that certain leaders can do no wrong, so any outlet that calls those leaders on anything is inherently exposed as socialist propaganda.
  - whateveracct 6y ago
    why was their election coverage a disaster? because they called AZ first?
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    You are cracking me up. I haven't laughed so hard out loud in front of my computer in years. Thank you!
- Natanael_L 6y ago
  There's nothing moderate about them. They're just not sufficiently extreme for the taste of those audiences. They fell under scrutiny that some of their smaller competitors aren't facing, so they're trying to maintain plausible deniability, which means the crowd of extremists has to go elsewhere to get their rage fix.
youeseh 6y ago
Traditional TV and Print News Media gets the most eyeballs when they are controversial. Fox, CNN, MSNBC all do everything they can to coddle their specific segment. They phrase and comment on the news in a way that'll either excite their segment when they think it'll benefit and soften the blow whenever they think it'll hurt. And no, none of them appeal to a general audience. The ads that each network displays will tell you exactly who their specific audience is. Twitter's audience is narrow: Most of the people I know (across countries, religions, genders, professions) do not have a Twitter account. So, they make decisions that suit their userbase, which is significantly narrower than Facebook's. Facebook user base is closer to the general public. Unfortunately, their platform also enables an echo chamber. So, they have a tough job to do and in this regard. They have to be careful about whom to censor. Whatever they choose will be closer the law. I think they're trying their best.
- wrsh07 6y ago
  I tend to think that the business model of a cable news room is pretty fundamentally broken. Insofar as you value investigative journalism or pieces with some depth, you will be disappointed by organizations that host ESPN style shout fests, but they're produced for exactly the same reasons. It's cheap to make garbage filler content. When you see that all of the channels are deeply flawed, it's because they're incentivized to be flawed in exactly the way that they are. Curiously, John Oliver (say what you will about his biases) has found a way to fund real investigative journalism. This marks an interesting counterpoint to the 24 hour news room which extends what comedy central (daily show etc) had begun
  - strategyanalyst 6y ago
    John Oliver is also focused on a sub-segment and is also at least misleading at times. There are no sources of information that are credible with more than 45-55% of US Gen pop. We really need a source that can at least be relied upon as accurate source by 70-80% to avoid total collapse of democratic order in US.
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
starik36 6y ago
You can't be fair when you only blame Fox for fact-free content when the same fact-free content(just inverted) is peddled by all the other mass media outlets. They just cater to a different bubble.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  So there is no truth at all?
  - leadingthenet 6y ago
    not in the absolute sense of the word, no.
  - misanthropic 6y ago
    there never was
- oivey 6y ago
  That’s a pretty false equivalence. To cite the most recently example, Fox repeatedly propagating Trump’s lies about the election has no analog on the left.
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    What about Trump/Russia collusion?
    - oivey 6y ago
      One of Trump’s children perjured themselves to lie about the purposes of a meeting with a Russian lawyer (later proven to be for Clinton dirt), his campaign manager was convicted for laundering money with Russia connected people, an advisor was convicted for coordinating with WikiLeaks, and some lower level campaign staffers were convicted for more improper connections with Russians. There wasn’t enough proof to say whether Trump personally knew about these things, but the alternative where he is clueless isn’t exactly a good look, either. All of those things were proven in court. Not one of Trump’s barrage of election lawsuits has gained any traction at all. They are very much not the same.
dionian 6y ago
Fox (however detestable you may find it) was created as an alternative to the corporate media hegemony on thought, I fear you have it backwards.
- munificent 6y ago
  Fox News was created to have enough control over media to prevent a Nixon-like event ever happening to the GOP again. https://www.businessinsider.com/roger-ailes-blueprint-fox-news-2011-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/roger-ailes-blueprint-fox-ne...
  - munk-a 6y ago
    That line summarizing the article you linked isn't inaccurate but left out some big chunks of logic. Just to clarify the article outlines that Fox News was created to prevent something like what Nixon did ever having a disastrous effect on the party - rather than preventing what Nixon did.
    - munificent 6y ago
      Sorry, yes, I wrote my comment quickly and poorly. It was created to enable GOP politicians to behave like Nixon while avoiding the accountability to the truth that Nixon was forced to face.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  As I understand it, Fox News was created as a "junk food" alternative to traditional media. By cutting back on investigative journalism and focusing on commentary and shows like "The O'reilly Factor" Fox could create "news" content for less than their competitors. I'm not sure if the apparent "right" lean was due to the ownership or to market realities that made that kind of content more appealing to right-of-center media consumers. This model has been pretty successful financially and the other major media outlets in the US have followed suit (though often leaning left instead). I think MSNBC was one of the first with the obnoxious melodrama of Keith Olbermann.
d0mdo0ss 6y ago
Variety has an in depth look into Roger Ailes, Film Review: ‘Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes’ https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/divide-and-conquer-the-story-of-roger-ailes-review-1202961176/ https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/divide-and-conquer-the...
zeroxfe 6y ago
> It'll be interesting to see if whoever replaces Ajit Pai holds a different view on public intercourse over the airwaves. Really hoping you mean "public discourse" :-)
- giantrobot 6y ago
  I hope they didn't. ;)
  - technofiend 6y ago
    Uh, well... Intercourse: noun: communication or dealings between individuals or groups. I mean how you choose to communicate or deal with people is clearly different than me. :-)
- paulnechifor 6y ago
  Humor aside, intercourse and discourse are synonyms. Although, intercourse is often used as short for "sexual intercourse". But you are pretty much asking for that joke (like when you still use "ejaculate" with the "blurt out" meaning).
  - technofiend 6y ago
    I literally meant intercourse in the dictionary meaning: "communication or dealings between individuals or groups." Even so words change and usage does too; some people literally don't mean literally when they use that word, but I do. I suppose it's a matter of when you learned the definition.
  - zeroxfe 6y ago
    > Humor aside, intercourse and discourse are synonyms. TIL, thanks. I've never heard the term "public intercourse" before, always "public discourse", so I thought it was a typo.
lallysingh 6y ago
Video is a terrible format for anything requiring the reflection and nuance of politics. People need to read at their own pace, stop and make their own judgements, and re-read parts to make it all make sense. Video is a firehose that keeps attention instead of letting you _think_. Leave it for entertainment and deep documentaries. If we had no more news channels and nightly programs, I think we'd both be happier and better informed.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Straight up Marshall McLuhan, hot (immersive) & cool (passive) media.
  - r4ltman 6y ago
    Video https://youtu.be/a3IbIPQcmy8 https://youtu.be/a3IbIPQcmy8 Western Cynical: McLuhan Unclaimed (2018)
antihero 6y ago
The larger a company gets, especially in influence, the more regulation is needed to enforce accountability. With great social power, comes great social responsibility.
clankyclanker 6y ago
> Fox News would have been exempt from the Fairness Doctrine as a cable network, i.e. it doesn't use the public spectrum. Yes, but city-wide local Fox-affiliate news channels broadcast over the public airwaves would not have been exempt. Those are often watched in their local environments more than their cable alternatives. See also Sinclair Broadcast Group: broadcasting over public airwaves is in the name!
marcosdumay 6y ago
The death of the press¹ has been an worldwide phenomenon, so attributing it to a single US legislative bill is a bit too reductionist. It's quite possible that there was US protagonism on that process, and it's quite possible that the bill was a relevant factor, but the bill doesn't have an worldwide impact, and the US influence does certainly not come from it. 1 - It looks quite dead by now, nearly everything we call by that name is free of any usable information. Of course there's some activity here or there, but it's dead like a dead forest, something spurs here or there, but nothing is able to grow.
- Florin_Andrei 6y ago
  Regardless - giving every single person, no matter what their accomplishments or talents, the same voice online, without anything out there filtering the garbage, was a really, REALLY bad move. Unfiltered social media is an amplifier for bullshit. Truth, reason, a good analysis - they're all hard. Spewing out nonsensical mythology is easy. Something needs to change.
  - yeetman21 6y ago
    Regardless - giving every single person, no matter what their accomplishments or talents, the same ability to vote, without anything out there filtering the garbage, was a really, REALLY bad move. Unfiltered universal suffrage is an amplifier for bullshit. Truth, reason, a good analysis - they're all hard. Spewing out nonsensical mythology is easy. Something needs to change.
    - tanseydavid 6y ago
      Thank you for this -- I hope that the point (that I think) you are making is not lost in the large thread.
  - shishy 6y ago
    Not necessarily, I think what we have today is far better than a world where a few people got to control what was said. That only works if they are well intentioned and trustworthy, but it’s corruptible. And they certainly aren’t necessarily arbiters of truth. What we have today is orders of magnitude better. The main challenge moving forward will be designing information systems so as to promote challenging opinions rather than reinforcing them, which requires these companies to move away from optimizing engagement but something else. IMO, solving that problem is a step in the correct direction. Implementing systems that rely on credentialing and moderation are a net regression, even if they (maybe) solve this specific problem. It’s just going back to systems in the past where things appeared great but weren’t actually. Think of all the people who, today, legitimately thrive because we’ve broken down some of the credentialing gatekeepers (Ben Thompson at Stratechery comes to mind).
nojito 6y ago
>I know Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and all the rest don't count as broadcast media but I feel like we got here in part because the 1987 elimination of FCC's fairness doctrine slowly allowed a shift in how we communicate with each other. 230 renders the Fairness Doctrine moot. Even if it still existed today.
rayiner 6y ago
Blaming Fox is really disingenuous. Fox became popular as an alternative because of the mainstream media’s reaction to George W. Bush, in particular mocking him for his religiousity. If you look at surveys, people understand Fox has a bias. But it’s very hard to listen to news from people who don’t appear to share your basic values. Consider this summer. We can debate the merits of whether violent rioting, setting police stations on fire, etc., is a justified response in certain circumstances. But the public has divergent opinions on this, and journalists have a pretty uniform opinion on this issue. This is a divergence that didn’t exist during the 20 years between when CNN was started and when Fox got popular. But it does now. And it’s very hard to watch coverage of this issue when the person behind the news desk obviously sees the world very differently than you. Fox didn’t create this divergence. It responded to a divergence that grew. And it’s a divergence that’s become more extreme as media consolidation has resulted in most media being beamed from the coasts into the rest of the country.
stx 6y ago
>It'll be interesting to see if whoever replaces Ajit Pai holds a different view on public intercourse over the airwaves. I think the word you mean is discourse not intercourse.

xxpor 6y ago

Even if the fairness doctrine hadn't been eliminated administratively, it's very plausible it'd have been overturned by SCOTUS anyway. Not that'd I agree with that, but given the way the court has gone on corporate "free speech"...

ls612 6y ago
The only reason the fairness doctrine could even plausibly exist constitutionally was because radio and tv were broadcast media using a public good (spectrum). Cable TV, newspapers were not affected and the internet likely wouldn’t have been affected either.
- xxpor 6y ago
  Yeah exactly. We might not have had Rush Limbaugh in the mid-90s, but we still would have had Fox News or whatever.
- SilasX 6y ago
  That always felt like a dubious standard. Parkland is a public good, but the Supreme Court would insta-smackdown any FD-style restriction on political speech in parks.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    The nature of each "public good" could be evaluated to determine what was appropriate to ensure all citizens equal access to a public good. FD just required a media outlet to make sure the media basically gave another candidate the opportunity to access, it didn't actually require equal time, not unless that candidate wanted to, or in the case of advertisements was willing to buy them. Certainly parkland should be equally available to members of different political parties, but it's not like you have to use the same standard either: the nature of a "public good" would determine the nature of what fair equal access meant. For airwaves it's one thing. For a limited physical resource it's another.
    - SilasX 6y ago
      Parkland is a limited physical resource.
      - pythonaut_16 6y ago
        But limited in a different way than radio spectrum.
      - ineedasername 6y ago
        So is radio spectrum. Regardless, as I said, you determine for each "public good" what appropriate fairness means. You don't back down from it just because doing the right thing isn't as easy as doing the easy thing.
Lendal 6y ago
We gave up on the fairness doctrine because it didn't work. It forced news media to give equal time to the 1% of crackpots who disagreed with the 99% of scientists on a number of topics, including climate science. It was always going to go this way, regardless of the fairness doctrine existing or not.
- treeman79 6y ago
  The whole point was so government officials could decide what was fair, and what wasn’t. So full blown censorship by controlling who gets access.

wyldfire 6y ago

I suspect that the fairness doctrine change is more of a symptom than a cause. The FCC will have close to zero impact on twenty first century media. I don't know how or even if we can fix this.

technofiend 6y ago
I'm sure it's a symptom of something but my point was Fox News (which was established in 1996 according to Wikipedia) could never have been born prior to 1987. What happened yesterday in Washington, DC may prove a counterpoint to 1st amendment claims that all speech should be allowed, regardless of consequences. Edit: I see I was wrong about Fox as it is a cable network and not broadcast over public airwaves. I still think their viewers are insulated from opposing viewpoints and that's part of the problem.
- roywiggins 6y ago
  The fairness doctrine never applied to cable channels. The only reason it was plausibly Constitutional was the use of the airways, which are considered a public resource. Private cables strung by private companies into private homes were never regulated by the fairness doctrine.
  - klondike_ 6y ago
    Fox is broadcast over the air in many areas
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      The programming on Fox broadcast channels is different than Fox News, which is specifically transmitted via cable or satellite and, legally, not via public airwaves. Fox broadcast channels are subject to the same laws as other broadcast channels.
    - roywiggins 6y ago
      Yes, but the stuff that people find most objectionable- the Fox opinion shows, Hannity etc- have their home on Fox-the-cable-channel. They might get picked up on some Fox affiliates (though I doubt it, they're the special sauce that gets people to pay for cable), but the engine of the thing is the cable channel.

Dirlewanger 6y ago

Matt Taibbi talks about all this in his book Hate Inc. The 24/7 news networks needed new stuff to sell since the USSR was out. Turns out just general outrage at every little thing works good.

technofiend 6y ago
Oh, thanks. I'll put that book on the to-read pile.
rconti 6y ago
I noticed this last night. I mostly watch local news, but I put on CNN during the voting last night, and while the BBC was sorta talking over the voting going on in the background, CNN gave up on it entirely and it was just 5 people spouting outrage. Even when it's outrage I agree with, it angers me.
- jschwartzi 6y ago
  And indeed who voted and who spoke and how they spoke was far more consequential to our country than hot air from 5 random commentators. I was watching PBS NewsHour and saw people like Representative Cawthorn give very calculated speeches that were very disturbing if you read between the lines.
  - InitialLastName 6y ago
    This is why I spent the night watching the C-SPAN streams, where they prioritized (and seem to always do) live footage, both of the debates and the chaos. They also spent most of the rest of the time taking phone calls from randos on a public line, and the views expressed in those calls really illuminated the breadth of public opinion at the moment (obviously with selection bias of who felt inclined to call in). Down the line, I can read other people's thoughtful analysis of what people said and how people voted and evaluate it in the context of having seen it live, rather than from having heard Michael Barbaro's quick-cut package in the morning.
olivermarks 6y ago

pentae 6y ago

Have you actually watched Fox News lately? Right wingers are leaving it in droves because except for a few pundits (Tucker Carlson etc) They are too moderate. Most of the craziness is on social media these days and right wing news sites on the web

bra-ket 6y ago
it's not that Fox News became "moderate" , they became just another left-wing propaganda hub like CNN and WaPo , except for very few commentators like Tucker and Ingraham. Their elections coverage was a disaster as well. I think they are in identity crisis of sorts.
- paradox242 6y ago
  How do I know you're delusional? You think Fox News is a "left-wing propaganda hub".
  - InitialLastName 6y ago
    There appear to be a substantial group of people who are soc convinced that certain leaders can do no wrong, so any outlet that calls those leaders on anything is inherently exposed as socialist propaganda.
- whateveracct 6y ago
  why was their election coverage a disaster? because they called AZ first?
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  You are cracking me up. I haven't laughed so hard out loud in front of my computer in years. Thank you!
Natanael_L 6y ago
There's nothing moderate about them. They're just not sufficiently extreme for the taste of those audiences. They fell under scrutiny that some of their smaller competitors aren't facing, so they're trying to maintain plausible deniability, which means the crowd of extremists has to go elsewhere to get their rage fix.

youeseh 6y ago

Traditional TV and Print News Media gets the most eyeballs when they are controversial. Fox, CNN, MSNBC all do everything they can to coddle their specific segment. They phrase and comment on the news in a way that'll either excite their segment when they think it'll benefit and soften the blow whenever they think it'll hurt. And no, none of them appeal to a general audience. The ads that each network displays will tell you exactly who their specific audience is. Twitter's audience is narrow: Most of the people I know (across countries, religions, genders, professions) do not have a Twitter account. So, they make decisions that suit their userbase, which is significantly narrower than Facebook's. Facebook user base is closer to the general public. Unfortunately, their platform also enables an echo chamber. So, they have a tough job to do and in this regard. They have to be careful about whom to censor. Whatever they choose will be closer the law. I think they're trying their best.

wrsh07 6y ago
I tend to think that the business model of a cable news room is pretty fundamentally broken. Insofar as you value investigative journalism or pieces with some depth, you will be disappointed by organizations that host ESPN style shout fests, but they're produced for exactly the same reasons. It's cheap to make garbage filler content. When you see that all of the channels are deeply flawed, it's because they're incentivized to be flawed in exactly the way that they are. Curiously, John Oliver (say what you will about his biases) has found a way to fund real investigative journalism. This marks an interesting counterpoint to the 24 hour news room which extends what comedy central (daily show etc) had begun
- strategyanalyst 6y ago
  John Oliver is also focused on a sub-segment and is also at least misleading at times. There are no sources of information that are credible with more than 45-55% of US Gen pop. We really need a source that can at least be relied upon as accurate source by 70-80% to avoid total collapse of democratic order in US.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago

starik36 6y ago

You can't be fair when you only blame Fox for fact-free content when the same fact-free content(just inverted) is peddled by all the other mass media outlets. They just cater to a different bubble.

JKCalhoun 6y ago
So there is no truth at all?
- leadingthenet 6y ago
  not in the absolute sense of the word, no.
- misanthropic 6y ago
  there never was
oivey 6y ago
That’s a pretty false equivalence. To cite the most recently example, Fox repeatedly propagating Trump’s lies about the election has no analog on the left.
- throwaways885 6y ago
  What about Trump/Russia collusion?
  - oivey 6y ago
    One of Trump’s children perjured themselves to lie about the purposes of a meeting with a Russian lawyer (later proven to be for Clinton dirt), his campaign manager was convicted for laundering money with Russia connected people, an advisor was convicted for coordinating with WikiLeaks, and some lower level campaign staffers were convicted for more improper connections with Russians. There wasn’t enough proof to say whether Trump personally knew about these things, but the alternative where he is clueless isn’t exactly a good look, either. All of those things were proven in court. Not one of Trump’s barrage of election lawsuits has gained any traction at all. They are very much not the same.

dionian 6y ago

Fox (however detestable you may find it) was created as an alternative to the corporate media hegemony on thought, I fear you have it backwards.

munificent 6y ago
Fox News was created to have enough control over media to prevent a Nixon-like event ever happening to the GOP again. https://www.businessinsider.com/roger-ailes-blueprint-fox-news-2011-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/roger-ailes-blueprint-fox-ne...
- munk-a 6y ago
  That line summarizing the article you linked isn't inaccurate but left out some big chunks of logic. Just to clarify the article outlines that Fox News was created to prevent something like what Nixon did ever having a disastrous effect on the party - rather than preventing what Nixon did.
  - munificent 6y ago
    Sorry, yes, I wrote my comment quickly and poorly. It was created to enable GOP politicians to behave like Nixon while avoiding the accountability to the truth that Nixon was forced to face.
AlexandrB 6y ago
As I understand it, Fox News was created as a "junk food" alternative to traditional media. By cutting back on investigative journalism and focusing on commentary and shows like "The O'reilly Factor" Fox could create "news" content for less than their competitors. I'm not sure if the apparent "right" lean was due to the ownership or to market realities that made that kind of content more appealing to right-of-center media consumers. This model has been pretty successful financially and the other major media outlets in the US have followed suit (though often leaning left instead). I think MSNBC was one of the first with the obnoxious melodrama of Keith Olbermann.

d0mdo0ss 6y ago

Variety has an in depth look into Roger Ailes, Film Review: ‘Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes’ https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/divide-and-conquer-the-story-of-roger-ailes-review-1202961176/ https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/divide-and-conquer-the...

zeroxfe 6y ago

> It'll be interesting to see if whoever replaces Ajit Pai holds a different view on public intercourse over the airwaves. Really hoping you mean "public discourse" :-)

giantrobot 6y ago
I hope they didn't. ;)
- technofiend 6y ago
  Uh, well... Intercourse: noun: communication or dealings between individuals or groups. I mean how you choose to communicate or deal with people is clearly different than me. :-)
paulnechifor 6y ago
Humor aside, intercourse and discourse are synonyms. Although, intercourse is often used as short for "sexual intercourse". But you are pretty much asking for that joke (like when you still use "ejaculate" with the "blurt out" meaning).
- technofiend 6y ago
  I literally meant intercourse in the dictionary meaning: "communication or dealings between individuals or groups." Even so words change and usage does too; some people literally don't mean literally when they use that word, but I do. I suppose it's a matter of when you learned the definition.
- zeroxfe 6y ago
  > Humor aside, intercourse and discourse are synonyms. TIL, thanks. I've never heard the term "public intercourse" before, always "public discourse", so I thought it was a typo.

lallysingh 6y ago

Video is a terrible format for anything requiring the reflection and nuance of politics. People need to read at their own pace, stop and make their own judgements, and re-read parts to make it all make sense. Video is a firehose that keeps attention instead of letting you _think_. Leave it for entertainment and deep documentaries. If we had no more news channels and nightly programs, I think we'd both be happier and better informed.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Straight up Marshall McLuhan, hot (immersive) & cool (passive) media.
- r4ltman 6y ago
  Video https://youtu.be/a3IbIPQcmy8 https://youtu.be/a3IbIPQcmy8 Western Cynical: McLuhan Unclaimed (2018)

antihero 6y ago

The larger a company gets, especially in influence, the more regulation is needed to enforce accountability. With great social power, comes great social responsibility.

clankyclanker 6y ago

> Fox News would have been exempt from the Fairness Doctrine as a cable network, i.e. it doesn't use the public spectrum. Yes, but city-wide local Fox-affiliate news channels broadcast over the public airwaves would not have been exempt. Those are often watched in their local environments more than their cable alternatives. See also Sinclair Broadcast Group: broadcasting over public airwaves is in the name!

marcosdumay 6y ago

The death of the press¹ has been an worldwide phenomenon, so attributing it to a single US legislative bill is a bit too reductionist. It's quite possible that there was US protagonism on that process, and it's quite possible that the bill was a relevant factor, but the bill doesn't have an worldwide impact, and the US influence does certainly not come from it. 1 - It looks quite dead by now, nearly everything we call by that name is free of any usable information. Of course there's some activity here or there, but it's dead like a dead forest, something spurs here or there, but nothing is able to grow.

Florin_Andrei 6y ago
Regardless - giving every single person, no matter what their accomplishments or talents, the same voice online, without anything out there filtering the garbage, was a really, REALLY bad move. Unfiltered social media is an amplifier for bullshit. Truth, reason, a good analysis - they're all hard. Spewing out nonsensical mythology is easy. Something needs to change.
- yeetman21 6y ago
  Regardless - giving every single person, no matter what their accomplishments or talents, the same ability to vote, without anything out there filtering the garbage, was a really, REALLY bad move. Unfiltered universal suffrage is an amplifier for bullshit. Truth, reason, a good analysis - they're all hard. Spewing out nonsensical mythology is easy. Something needs to change.
  - tanseydavid 6y ago
    Thank you for this -- I hope that the point (that I think) you are making is not lost in the large thread.
- shishy 6y ago
  Not necessarily, I think what we have today is far better than a world where a few people got to control what was said. That only works if they are well intentioned and trustworthy, but it’s corruptible. And they certainly aren’t necessarily arbiters of truth. What we have today is orders of magnitude better. The main challenge moving forward will be designing information systems so as to promote challenging opinions rather than reinforcing them, which requires these companies to move away from optimizing engagement but something else. IMO, solving that problem is a step in the correct direction. Implementing systems that rely on credentialing and moderation are a net regression, even if they (maybe) solve this specific problem. It’s just going back to systems in the past where things appeared great but weren’t actually. Think of all the people who, today, legitimately thrive because we’ve broken down some of the credentialing gatekeepers (Ben Thompson at Stratechery comes to mind).

nojito 6y ago

>I know Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and all the rest don't count as broadcast media but I feel like we got here in part because the 1987 elimination of FCC's fairness doctrine slowly allowed a shift in how we communicate with each other. 230 renders the Fairness Doctrine moot. Even if it still existed today.

rayiner 6y ago

Blaming Fox is really disingenuous. Fox became popular as an alternative because of the mainstream media’s reaction to George W. Bush, in particular mocking him for his religiousity. If you look at surveys, people understand Fox has a bias. But it’s very hard to listen to news from people who don’t appear to share your basic values. Consider this summer. We can debate the merits of whether violent rioting, setting police stations on fire, etc., is a justified response in certain circumstances. But the public has divergent opinions on this, and journalists have a pretty uniform opinion on this issue. This is a divergence that didn’t exist during the 20 years between when CNN was started and when Fox got popular. But it does now. And it’s very hard to watch coverage of this issue when the person behind the news desk obviously sees the world very differently than you. Fox didn’t create this divergence. It responded to a divergence that grew. And it’s a divergence that’s become more extreme as media consolidation has resulted in most media being beamed from the coasts into the rest of the country.

stx 6y ago

>It'll be interesting to see if whoever replaces Ajit Pai holds a different view on public intercourse over the airwaves. I think the word you mean is discourse not intercourse.