3 ms·
This was the entire point of talk radio: mobilize the historically politically-inactive by inciting them with a summarized issue of the day. Or basically TED, e
by ethbr0 5y ago
This was the entire point of talk radio: mobilize the historically politically-inactive by inciting them with a summarized issue of the day. Or basically TED, except for anger instead of hope.
Crowdsourced rage on platforms other than radio (e.g. social media) is the same theory, different medium.
What's disgusting is that Meta/Facebook et al. avoid doing anything about it, while profiting directly. And by "it" I mean "engagement algorithms that reward outrage," not "content." Attempts to moderate content (or not) are a red herring, and useless, as addressing content doesn't change the underlying engagement systems that incentivized that outrage in the first place.
- drewcoo 5y agoI don't think Tom Snyder or Larry King were intended to "mobilize the historically politically-inactive." The revocation of the fairness doctrine[1] is what made talk radio what it became. It had been weaponized by Democrats against Republican-leaning media, so it was no surprise that Reagan stopped it. The perhaps unexpected result of that is that the fourth estate was divided by the two major parties and we have our choice of political propaganda or political propaganda with no objectivity or government oversight. One possible solution is to consider another fairness doctrine. One with standards set so as to not be controlled by the two party political system. If we don't moderate content creation, we'd have to moderate content consumption or deeper incentives (ad money). Solutions to those seem more abusive of freedoms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
- ethbr0 5y agoI can only speak back to the early-90s, which would have been post-repeal, so defer to your earlier memories. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine#Corollary_rules https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine#Coroll... Both of the post-fairness rules above that survived for a while seem reasonable to reimplement. Roughly, if either a person is attacked or a political candidate endorsed, the person or the unendorsed candidate must be afforded airtime to respond. Those 2 rules alone would drastically alter the business of the major 24/7 news channels. And I think realistically what we're talking about are "major media outlets." Which I'd define either by total viewer/listener count or local market share. If you want to go off on your blog about someone, free speech seems to hold. But if the main radio station in your area decides to relentlessly beat the drum for a candidate / issue... well, that's probably a problem for democracy.