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Distrust in the media tracks pretty well with the removal of the FCC fairness doctrine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.m.wikip

by Dig1t 4y ago

Distrust in the media tracks pretty well with the removal of the FCC fairness doctrine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine I really feel that if we brought this back, we’d have more trust in the media

hayst4ck 4y ago
Society has changed. While in the past it would take incredible resources (and therefore likely the consent of many people with a college education) to send out a message that reaches large subsets of the population. We now live in a world where one person can write a message that theoretically every single other human on the planet can read. In a world where signal and noise were limited and rationed to particular actors, the fairness doctrine made sense. Now there is no structural limit on signal or noise and so they can not be distinguished.
- Dig1t 4y ago
  Yeah you are totally right, this wouldn't work for Twitter, FaceBook, etc. But it would help with the likes of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc, who would all hold broadcasting licenses. It could help to build a core set of news providers that are held to a certain standard in my opinion.
  - hayst4ck 4y ago
    It helped when media was limited so there was only a limited set of channels. If there are 5 quality channels, the lowest quality channel might still have an objectively high quality (as forced to by the fairness doctrine), now there are infinite channels of all qualities. The problem isn't what the media pedals, it's that the media that is most emotional engaging or comforting is also the most desirable. People will choose the media that reflects the most comfortable reality for them. A coal miner is going to prefer to watch media that says coal mining is here to stay rather than media that says in 5 years there will be no more coal mining. You and I might optimize for media we find the most truthful, but most people are going to prefer the media that makes them most comfortable (even if that comfort is a state of constantly being enraged), and now that's not limited by the different broadcast frequencies, it is only limited by a person's time to scroll until they find a message they like.
zerocrates 4y ago
The fairness doctrine never applied to cable news, never applied to newspapers or magazines, didn't/wouldn't have applied to the Internet, social media, etc. Its importance is routinely overstated.

by Dig1t 4y ago

hayst4ck 4y ago

Society has changed. While in the past it would take incredible resources (and therefore likely the consent of many people with a college education) to send out a message that reaches large subsets of the population. We now live in a world where one person can write a message that theoretically every single other human on the planet can read. In a world where signal and noise were limited and rationed to particular actors, the fairness doctrine made sense. Now there is no structural limit on signal or noise and so they can not be distinguished.

Dig1t 4y ago
Yeah you are totally right, this wouldn't work for Twitter, FaceBook, etc. But it would help with the likes of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc, who would all hold broadcasting licenses. It could help to build a core set of news providers that are held to a certain standard in my opinion.
- hayst4ck 4y ago
  It helped when media was limited so there was only a limited set of channels. If there are 5 quality channels, the lowest quality channel might still have an objectively high quality (as forced to by the fairness doctrine), now there are infinite channels of all qualities. The problem isn't what the media pedals, it's that the media that is most emotional engaging or comforting is also the most desirable. People will choose the media that reflects the most comfortable reality for them. A coal miner is going to prefer to watch media that says coal mining is here to stay rather than media that says in 5 years there will be no more coal mining. You and I might optimize for media we find the most truthful, but most people are going to prefer the media that makes them most comfortable (even if that comfort is a state of constantly being enraged), and now that's not limited by the different broadcast frequencies, it is only limited by a person's time to scroll until they find a message they like.

zerocrates 4y ago

The fairness doctrine never applied to cable news, never applied to newspapers or magazines, didn't/wouldn't have applied to the Internet, social media, etc. Its importance is routinely overstated.