4 ms·

This is what we get allowing mega-corporations control our media. I hope the US brings back fairness doctrine. Or if not, force these companies and all their p

by jmclnx 2y ago

This is what we get allowing mega-corporations control our media. I hope the US brings back fairness doctrine. Or if not, force these companies and all their parent/subsidizes to own no more than 3 Media companies. By media I mean: Radio, TV, Cable, Streaming, Movie Production and Social Media.

bartc 2y ago
Zero chance of that happening unfortunately. The current Supreme Court would consider restrictions on corporate media ownership a violation of the first amendment, much like restrictions against unlimited campaign donations and restrictions on discriminating against non-Christians.
dingnuts 2y ago
if the Fairness Doctrine was implemented for the Internet and you had a Democrat leaning political blog you would have to give equal time/space to MAGA narratives on your site. That's what you want?
- daveguy 2y ago
  If that's what it takes to get 50% of the US to not be forced fed only one side by dipshits. Yup.
- dylan604 2y ago
  I think if you are going to claim fair coverage, then yes. If you are going to openly say you are for one side or the other, then okay. Having a tag line like "fair and balanced" without the balance or being fair then no.
- xboxnolifes 2y ago
  The fairness doctrine does not require equal time. It requires you to dedicate some amount of time to controversial topics, and then give some amount of time to opposing parties within those topics. Which, if you're going to argue against someone's position, I'd think it best to get that position directly from them, rather than building a strawman to beat down.
  - kelipso 2y ago
    Or you could do what Ezra Klein did a couple of days ago and get a mentally ummm not all there member of the other side and let them free associate the entire interview.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    Either way, it's not compatible with the First Amendment. Come up with something else to try.
    - redeux 2y ago
      The Fairness Doctrine was never found incompatible with the First Amendment. It was removed by a politicized FCC. The topic was taken up by the Supreme Court and they did not find that it violated the constitution, quite the opposite actually.
      - CamperBob2 2y ago
        When applied to broadcasters using licensed public resources under Federal jurisdiction, yes. When applied to privately-operated Internet sites that readers have to go out of their way to access, no. Not just "no," or "Hell, no," but fuck no.
yyyyz 2y ago
[dead]
nradov 2y ago
The FCC's Fairness Doctrine only ever applied to broadcast radio and television, and was justified based on the limited supply of spectrum. It never applied to other types of media for which supply and distribution is effectively unlimited. Anyone can make a movie or build a new social media app. Traditional broadcast is kind of dying; younger people almost never consume OTA broadcast radio or TV.
- vFunct 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
    > they’re the problem because they vote You may want to rephrase that.
    - ReptileMan 2y ago
      Let's be honest. He nailed on the head the main drawback of democracy. That the wrong people also get to vote. And the horror - even win elections and get their way sometimes. What he missed is that everyone has different ideas about who exactly the wrong people are.
      - bdangubic 2y ago
        just like driver’s license there should be an age limit to voting rights. few question why you have to be 18 to vote. why 18? today’s 14-year olds are on average infinitely more mature than 14 year olds in say 1950. if someone was to say you are voter when you start high school half of this country would go batshit crazy. a different half would bark if we put an upper limit on voting rights but both make sense. take brexit for example - this was a decision that affect the FUTURE of UK. why would anyone sane say “lets have bunch of 80 year olds who are one foot in the grave make this decision for the people that will have to spend their entire lives with the consequences of that decision…” it is same for any election, elections matter and elections have consequences and old people shouldn’t be involved in making these decisions :)
bgentry 2y ago
> This is what we get allowing mega-corporations control our media. What mega corporation is the Washington Post part of?
- nemomarx 2y ago
  Amazon, yes?
  - zamalek 2y ago
    I think people struggle with the fact that it's not a legally so. However, per the article, Bezos is exerting power over WP because Amazon lost contracts to Microsoft (due to WP being critical of Trump). Their balance sheets may not be aligned, but their interests are.
    - marcus_holmes 2y ago
      And if Bezos toes the line and does things that Trump likes, then Amazon may benefit. Trump sees "friends" and "enemies" [0], and doesn't care about actual ownership of shares. "Bezos is a friend and sorted out that WaPo mess, so I'll cut him some slack and kill off that Amazon anti-trust thing" is something we can all picture Trump saying. [0] Obviously I have no idea what he actually sees or thinks, but this picture seems to match his public pronouncements.
  - delfinom 2y ago
    Bezos fully owns WaPo personally. It is not under Amazon
  - bgentry 2y ago
    Apparently there are a lot of people confused about this, but no, Amazon does not have ownership over the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos bought it with his own personal funds using an LLC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#The_Washington_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#The_Washington_Post
    - 2y ago
starspangled 2y ago
Looks like the old "they're a private company, they can do what they want" chestnut is coming back around. Whoever could possibly have foreseen this?
scarface_74 2y ago
The answer is not giving the government even more power to decide whether what is published is “fair”.
fallingknife 2y ago
Ownership limits are only effective in a pre cable / internet world. Now one media company located anywhere can be seen by customers everywhere. So what do you do? You can't have the government tell people what to watch. If you try to restrict a company to broadcast on only one channel e.g. radio / social media / streaming it's a clear violation of freedom of the press.
UncleMeat 2y ago
The primary benefit of taxing the shit out of billionaires is not actually the revenue it produces, but the fact that it means that we don't have billionaires. "People with more money than God own and influence media" has historically not been a recipe for social stability.
ch4s3 2y ago
This is strikingly ignorant of how the fairness doctrine was used in practice historically, like for example Nixon using it to suppress dissent about the Vietnam War by threatening networks airing coverage he didn't like. The predecessor law was used int the 1930s to close non English language radio stations in Chicago and FDR used it to threaten people criticizing the New Deal. You could go on and on with examples of abuse by administrators of both parties. The fairness doctrine violated the first amendment and was garbage. As an exercise, imagine applying it to a story about climate change. Now image Trump’s FCC gets to decide what is fair. Do you really want that?
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  It also, more importantly, basically required you to platform a crazy person to argue for a side if there was no rational or reasonable take for that side. The fairness doctrine would be just as godawful as the Debate between Kent Hovind and Bill Nye. It only serves to legitimize crazy outliers. The problem with Fox News is not that they don't have the fairness doctrine, the problem is that your average american has so little media literacy that they can't recognize that Fox News is absolute horseshit, and that a company that has multiple times had to admit to a judge that they willfully lie to their audience should not be trusted. Republicans love to bitch about how bad CNN is as a "liberal" media source but educate liberals do not watch CNN because they once asked a physicist if MH370 could have disappeared into a black hole, and other utterly insane and clearly not journalism things. OAN and Newsmax currently exist. There is no equivalent for "liberals". A bunch of extreme right wing youtubers were found to be paid by RT, ie literal Russian State Propaganda outlet, and none of them lost their audience. There isn't a communist state funded liberal equivalent. But apparently most americans didn't learn how to evaluate a media source, like at all, which is weird because we spent a couple classes in the library learning exactly that, along with learning how to use boolean operators to better search google for example. We were even tested on it. But I guess all the kids who thought english class was worthless didn't pay attention, and now believe "Truth of media" === "How much it confirms my biases"
  - ch4s3 2y ago
    The funny thing about Fox News to me is that it’s such a bogey man in some crowds, but they only get about 3 million viewers on their best days.
sebazzz 2y ago
The biggest issue with US media is allowing for opinion to be mixed with news. Essentially everything is opnion, everything is biased in some way. If you look at the other side of the pond you have news outlets reporting news without stating opinion, and highlighting multiple view points. Then there are separate talkshows where people around a table discuss news and other actualities. Doesn’t mean there isn’t bias in the news outlets, because they can still choose not to report on something - but generally it is fairly in the middle.

by jmclnx 2y ago

bartc 2y ago

Zero chance of that happening unfortunately. The current Supreme Court would consider restrictions on corporate media ownership a violation of the first amendment, much like restrictions against unlimited campaign donations and restrictions on discriminating against non-Christians.

dingnuts 2y ago

if the Fairness Doctrine was implemented for the Internet and you had a Democrat leaning political blog you would have to give equal time/space to MAGA narratives on your site. That's what you want?

daveguy 2y ago
If that's what it takes to get 50% of the US to not be forced fed only one side by dipshits. Yup.
dylan604 2y ago
I think if you are going to claim fair coverage, then yes. If you are going to openly say you are for one side or the other, then okay. Having a tag line like "fair and balanced" without the balance or being fair then no.
xboxnolifes 2y ago
The fairness doctrine does not require equal time. It requires you to dedicate some amount of time to controversial topics, and then give some amount of time to opposing parties within those topics. Which, if you're going to argue against someone's position, I'd think it best to get that position directly from them, rather than building a strawman to beat down.
- kelipso 2y ago
  Or you could do what Ezra Klein did a couple of days ago and get a mentally ummm not all there member of the other side and let them free associate the entire interview.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Either way, it's not compatible with the First Amendment. Come up with something else to try.
  - redeux 2y ago
    The Fairness Doctrine was never found incompatible with the First Amendment. It was removed by a politicized FCC. The topic was taken up by the Supreme Court and they did not find that it violated the constitution, quite the opposite actually.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      When applied to broadcasters using licensed public resources under Federal jurisdiction, yes. When applied to privately-operated Internet sites that readers have to go out of their way to access, no. Not just "no," or "Hell, no," but fuck no.

yyyyz 2y ago

[dead]

nradov 2y ago

The FCC's Fairness Doctrine only ever applied to broadcast radio and television, and was justified based on the limited supply of spectrum. It never applied to other types of media for which supply and distribution is effectively unlimited. Anyone can make a movie or build a new social media app. Traditional broadcast is kind of dying; younger people almost never consume OTA broadcast radio or TV.

vFunct 2y ago
[flagged]
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  > they’re the problem because they vote You may want to rephrase that.
  - ReptileMan 2y ago
    Let's be honest. He nailed on the head the main drawback of democracy. That the wrong people also get to vote. And the horror - even win elections and get their way sometimes. What he missed is that everyone has different ideas about who exactly the wrong people are.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      just like driver’s license there should be an age limit to voting rights. few question why you have to be 18 to vote. why 18? today’s 14-year olds are on average infinitely more mature than 14 year olds in say 1950. if someone was to say you are voter when you start high school half of this country would go batshit crazy. a different half would bark if we put an upper limit on voting rights but both make sense. take brexit for example - this was a decision that affect the FUTURE of UK. why would anyone sane say “lets have bunch of 80 year olds who are one foot in the grave make this decision for the people that will have to spend their entire lives with the consequences of that decision…” it is same for any election, elections matter and elections have consequences and old people shouldn’t be involved in making these decisions :)

bgentry 2y ago

> This is what we get allowing mega-corporations control our media. What mega corporation is the Washington Post part of?

nemomarx 2y ago
Amazon, yes?
- zamalek 2y ago
  I think people struggle with the fact that it's not a legally so. However, per the article, Bezos is exerting power over WP because Amazon lost contracts to Microsoft (due to WP being critical of Trump). Their balance sheets may not be aligned, but their interests are.
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    And if Bezos toes the line and does things that Trump likes, then Amazon may benefit. Trump sees "friends" and "enemies" [0], and doesn't care about actual ownership of shares. "Bezos is a friend and sorted out that WaPo mess, so I'll cut him some slack and kill off that Amazon anti-trust thing" is something we can all picture Trump saying. [0] Obviously I have no idea what he actually sees or thinks, but this picture seems to match his public pronouncements.
- delfinom 2y ago
  Bezos fully owns WaPo personally. It is not under Amazon
- bgentry 2y ago
  Apparently there are a lot of people confused about this, but no, Amazon does not have ownership over the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos bought it with his own personal funds using an LLC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#The_Washington_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#The_Washington_Post
  - 2y ago

starspangled 2y ago

Looks like the old "they're a private company, they can do what they want" chestnut is coming back around. Whoever could possibly have foreseen this?

scarface_74 2y ago

The answer is not giving the government even more power to decide whether what is published is “fair”.

fallingknife 2y ago

Ownership limits are only effective in a pre cable / internet world. Now one media company located anywhere can be seen by customers everywhere. So what do you do? You can't have the government tell people what to watch. If you try to restrict a company to broadcast on only one channel e.g. radio / social media / streaming it's a clear violation of freedom of the press.

UncleMeat 2y ago

The primary benefit of taxing the shit out of billionaires is not actually the revenue it produces, but the fact that it means that we don't have billionaires. "People with more money than God own and influence media" has historically not been a recipe for social stability.

ch4s3 2y ago

This is strikingly ignorant of how the fairness doctrine was used in practice historically, like for example Nixon using it to suppress dissent about the Vietnam War by threatening networks airing coverage he didn't like. The predecessor law was used int the 1930s to close non English language radio stations in Chicago and FDR used it to threaten people criticizing the New Deal. You could go on and on with examples of abuse by administrators of both parties. The fairness doctrine violated the first amendment and was garbage. As an exercise, imagine applying it to a story about climate change. Now image Trump’s FCC gets to decide what is fair. Do you really want that?

mrguyorama 2y ago
It also, more importantly, basically required you to platform a crazy person to argue for a side if there was no rational or reasonable take for that side. The fairness doctrine would be just as godawful as the Debate between Kent Hovind and Bill Nye. It only serves to legitimize crazy outliers. The problem with Fox News is not that they don't have the fairness doctrine, the problem is that your average american has so little media literacy that they can't recognize that Fox News is absolute horseshit, and that a company that has multiple times had to admit to a judge that they willfully lie to their audience should not be trusted. Republicans love to bitch about how bad CNN is as a "liberal" media source but educate liberals do not watch CNN because they once asked a physicist if MH370 could have disappeared into a black hole, and other utterly insane and clearly not journalism things. OAN and Newsmax currently exist. There is no equivalent for "liberals". A bunch of extreme right wing youtubers were found to be paid by RT, ie literal Russian State Propaganda outlet, and none of them lost their audience. There isn't a communist state funded liberal equivalent. But apparently most americans didn't learn how to evaluate a media source, like at all, which is weird because we spent a couple classes in the library learning exactly that, along with learning how to use boolean operators to better search google for example. We were even tested on it. But I guess all the kids who thought english class was worthless didn't pay attention, and now believe "Truth of media" === "How much it confirms my biases"
- ch4s3 2y ago
  The funny thing about Fox News to me is that it’s such a bogey man in some crowds, but they only get about 3 million viewers on their best days.

sebazzz 2y ago

The biggest issue with US media is allowing for opinion to be mixed with news. Essentially everything is opnion, everything is biased in some way. If you look at the other side of the pond you have news outlets reporting news without stating opinion, and highlighting multiple view points. Then there are separate talkshows where people around a table discuss news and other actualities. Doesn’t mean there isn’t bias in the news outlets, because they can still choose not to report on something - but generally it is fairly in the middle.