One big change America needs is it needs to be illegal to lie on the news.
Every teevee network should have to have a nightly news program. Everything else is opinionated bullshit that one may enjoy but we could all recognize isn't the 'news'
I mean damn
I think the 24-hour news cycle has injured us dearly.
There used to be just enough time to read the facts and that was that. Now, there are a million opinion pieces, entire "entertainment news" stations, and too much bullshit.
TRUTH.
And all I can think of is the potential and power that it could have if it were used to serve the purpose of making us better, not selling us more.
We could be telling the most amazing stories, providing robust context… instead…here we are.
Good night and good luck. 😔
fuck yes.
I'm old enough to remember when the news was BORING.
I mean, mostly. Not always. Obviously.
But it wasn't frigging entertainment.
And then the black and white static, and then you got sucked into another dimension and oh right that's what happened to us all here isn't it
Wasn't the fairness doctrine about "fair time" in the media? I agree Reagan bad, cable also exempted but I honestly never understood that fair doctrine addressed falsehoods.
It didn’t. She’s wrong.
The FD was a policy for local broadcast stations licensed by the FCC for the spectrum to devote some airtime at their discretion to diversity of views. It never was a law. It never prevented lies. It never regulated news.
sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R40...
The only way would be if those same nightly programs refuted the lies, say next night, yet if they're the program spreading the lies, I see how that would be difficult.
It *is* false advertising the way it's set up now.
I already had to switch from reading journalists and reporters to factcheckers and John Oliver. Ostensibly news organizations hire fact checkers? But I'm dubious
It would be government restraint of the press; would you _really_ want the Trump Administration to be able to sue Rachel Maddow broke the law because she said something that offended His Orange Petulence?
Or give Matt Gaetz or Jim Jordan a way to bring newscasters before Congress for hearings?
There is also the practical issue that pretty much every news outlet makes mistakes on matters of fact. The more honest ones will issue retractions, but that would make such a law difficult to enforce.
Yes, I know.
Under current American law it's only fraud if you've lied to get money.
If you lie to get absolute power over America, it's perfectly legitimate.
And I'm saying that's a BAD FUCKING IDEA.
I actually wrote to my Senators a few years back and asked for a law like this, modeled after Canadian broadcast law. I was told it would never pass because it would be seen as violating the First Amendment.
Have you read Malka Older's Centennal Cycle books? I want what they had there. Real time on screen fact checking. Candidate lies? Flash that on the screen in real time, every time.
I *just* finished the trilogy last month. It's a really interesting look at politics and our ideas about what's best regarding politics and information.
I think it should also be illegal to switch political parties after you’ve been elected to office, until the term you’ve been elected to is over. And if you can’t stomach serving anymore in your party? You leave office and have to run again in the next election in that different party.
That's a lot of characters to say that you didn't learn a damned thing from the Trump years.
Do you seriously not remember Trump calling every media story he didn't like "fake news", delievered by "enemies of the people"?
The Fairness Doctrine would have been hard to implement on every news show in tv/radio as cable tv spread in the 80s so Reagan’s FCC trashed it. Still, the lying should have consequences.
Yes just the broadcast networks.
Though the others CNN, FOX, etc cannot call it a news program if they do not adhere to the CANNOT LIE rule. Those programs must also have an OPINION label or some shit so people understand...it's not news and they can lie.
I've been rolling something around in my head. How could we call them to heel? while we still all have free speech and they're wasting theirs?
I know people are unsubbing and yelling at the NYT in droves, but what about an organized push?
Also: ad boycott.
Obviously that's still only the start but they do still have an outsized influence, and they're skewing the narrative in a way that favors Trump for whatever combo of reasons.
I feel that insofar as this is from a belief they will once again make more $ a second time, we ought to disabuse them.
One of the few ways we have some power is as consumers. I don't remember who organized the ad boycotts of various Fox hosts, but seems to me they were successful at least once or twice or contributed strongly in well "canceling."
NYT doesn't have Murdoch's endless pockets.
