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The fairness doctrine in practice boxed out any opinions outside of the mainstream and allowed both major political parties to control public discourse. It was
by ch4s3 5y ago
The fairness doctrine in practice boxed out any opinions outside of the mainstream and allowed both major political parties to control public discourse.
It was also compelled speech by the government which plainly violated the first amendment.
- samhw 5y agoThank you. I hate this increasingly common attitude that free speech should be constrained because [political candidate or movement which I don't like] is in the ascendancy. You can really see someone's ideals in what they do under pressure, and apparently people's liberal ideals of free speech etc aren't very strongly held.
- unethical_ban 5y agoUnrestrained freedom to intentionally lie to the public and use social media to amplify propaganda is clearly a public health threat. The question is if there is any cure that doesn't destroy legitimate political speech. (Illegitimate speech being the calculated, coordinated distribution of false information).
- ch4s3 5y ago> Unrestrained freedom to intentionally lie to the public You're presuming that TV and news media never lied to the public before the end of the fairness doctrine, and the giving equal time didn't give undue weight to some bullshit ideas. The controlled messaging around the war in Vietnam is a great counter point here.
- samhw 5y agoI'm alarmed by anyone who can genuinely talk of 'legitimate speech' and not see the issues here.
- unethical_ban 5y agoI'm alarmed that you don't see any danger of intentionally, factually false speech being spread to tens of millions of people a day. Or that you don't have any desire to at least brainstorm on a solution.
- ch4s3 5y agoDuring the civil rights movement, politicians in the south accused civil rights leaders of lying and tried to used the state to block their speech. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee called the First Amendment their weapon against oppression. Now I agree that people shouldn't go on TV and say for example that the recent election was "stolen", but I don't think the state should be given the power to stop someone from doing that. Having the power to stop one kind of speech can easily give the state the power to stop any speech. We shouldn't expect every future government use that power wisely. Imagine your worst political enemy having the power to decide what "factually false speech" shouldn't be spread. I wouldn't want that. Do you?
- unethical_ban 5y agoNo, but it's a false premise because I disagree that throttling the velocity of known malicious speech and its amplification is equivalent to banning speech. I see your point but don't think it's an infinitely slippery slope.
- samhw 5y agoYou keep not understanding that the problem is using words like 'legitimate' and 'known'. You can't keep sneaking those in, in such a factive way. In real life, people don't have labels floating above their heads saying 'Liar', and statements don't have labels saying 'Known' or 'Malicious'. Someone, or some group, or some process, needs to decide what is true and what false, who is benign and who malign, and so forth. And now that I've guided you to this point, I hope I don't need to explain where things can go wrong from there.
- lovecg 5y agoThe argument at the time was that with a limited resource like airwave that the government regulates and licenses out the first amendment doesn’t apply. Harder to use this line of reasoning for modern communications.
- ch4s3 5y agoI believe that argument was always a fig leaf over restricting speech.