4 ms·
This is a partisan political article. >supposed anti-conservative bias. CNN and MSNBC are at all time low viewership, reported trust in the media is at a hist
by Dig1t 2y ago
This is a partisan political article.
>supposed anti-conservative bias.
CNN and MSNBC are at all time low viewership, reported trust in the media is at a historic low. This mistrust is due to intense partisan bias in most news sources.
Fox News started it and every other news source ended up copying them. Now we are in a disastrous state where journalists have mostly become partisan propagandists and nobody trusts them.
It’s bad and honestly the whole system should be reworked. Some kind of fairness doctrine needs to be reintroduced.
Ars pretending like they and other publications don’t have a strong bias is a huge part of the problem.
- CamperBob2 2y agoSome kind of fairness doctrine needs to be reintroduced. Ah, yes, force everyone to present "both sides" of issues with a half-dozen sides, none of them optimal. That'll work.
- throw0101b 2y ago> Some kind of fairness doctrine needs to be reintroduced. The fairness doctrine only applies to public airwaves. Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are all run on private cable infrastructure: no public resources (e.g., radio frequencies) are used in their dissemination, and so the public/government does not get to tell them what they can(not) say.
- tivert 2y ago> Ars pretending like they and other publications don’t have a strong bias is a huge part of the problem. The thing about bias is that it's always a problem with the other guy, somehow.
- happytoexplain 2y agoReporting on the bad behavior of an in-power group invites their bad behavior upon you. Irrational biases are common, but there is also no such thing as zero bias, for good reason.
- jsbisviewtiful 2y ago> Some kind of fairness doctrine needs to be reintroduced. I recall learning about The Fairness Doctrine in college and being very confused about the existence of Fox News only in the next few sentences to discover that it was *yet another* great policy dismantled by the Reagan administration... The birth of Fox News quickly followed. > CNN and MSNBC are at all time low viewership... Fox News started it and every other news source ended up copying them. I would love to read a study on this outcome for CNN and MSNBC. Folks to the left don't seem to get their information from television whereas folks to the right gobble up hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of TV news per year. Such an intriguing dichotomy.
- jfengel 2y agoFox News would never be subject to the Fairness Doctrine. It applied only to over-the-air broadcasts. Fox News is a cable network. The timing isn't coincidental. They've both got the same cause -- a strategy of casting doubt on whether actual news is possible at all, and so propaganda is just as good as journalism. That strategy has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
- jsbisviewtiful 2y ago> It applied only to over-the-air broadcasts. Fox News is a cable network. Yes that's fair to point out. The Doctrine wasn't updated for developing tech and needed to be, but instead was revoked.
- jfengel 2y agoIt would have been hard to update it. It was possible only because it used public airwaves, which are a limited resource. The government could impose requirements as part of giving them a monopoly on the use of certain frequencies. The Fairness Doctrine might have saved us a lot of grief when it came to hate radio. But even that is less important now that we have social media. The First Amendment dramatically limits how much you can regulate that. A proper update would have required a Constitutional amendment. Personally, I'd love to see something like Germany's Basic Law: "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." But a Constitutional amendment is an extremely high bar to clear.
- rickydroll 2y agoThe solution is easy. Give no politician any airtime or print space for any reason whatsoever. The haters feed on media attention, so starve them of their fuel