Can the world be Fixed?

I could cite the Reagan administration's 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, which practically overnight transformed the news from a public service into a for-profit business.
 
arthwollipot said:
No, it wasn't. Though I can understand why someone without a good grasp of history might think it was.
Click to expand...
The news media you're referring to, that was affected by Reagan's policy, absolutely always was a for-profit business. The Fairness Doctrine itself might have been a public service, but the media it constrained never was, and was never intended to be.
 
theprestige said:
The Fairness Doctrine itself might have been a public service, but the media it constrained never was, and was never intended to be.
Click to expand...
Okay, I see what you're obliquely trying to refer to here. Let me rephrase:

The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine turned news from a public service into for-profit partisan propaganda when it was no longer constrained.
 
arthwollipot said:
Okay, I see what you're obliquely trying to refer to here. Let me rephrase:

The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine turned news from a public service into for-profit partisan propaganda when it was no longer constrained.
Click to expand...
It was never a public service. ABC, CBS, and NBC did not go into business to serve the public. They went into business to make money for their owners. All the major newspapers of the 20th century (and pretty much all of the minor ones) were established as profit-making operations. All the radio stations that ever bought a frequency license did so to make money from it. That's the whole reason the Fairness Doctrine was imposed on them, for better or worse. Obviously you think for better. Obviously Reagan thought for worse. But nobody besides you (and perhaps The Atheist, who seems to have been bamboozled by your rhetoric) ever thought the media being regulated by the Doctrine were public services.

And no, I'm not trying to obliquely refer to anything. I'm trying to say, as directly and plainly as possible, that you are wrong to describe the media in question as a public service.
 
Last edited:
theprestige said:
The news media you're referring to, that was affected by Reagan's policy, absolutely always was a for-profit business. The Fairness Doctrine itself might have been a public service, but the media it constrained never was, and was never intended to be.
Click to expand...
This is not news. In the USA everything has always been "for profit". It has taken until Trump to make it obvious that that includes the presidency.
 
theprestige said:
And no, I'm not trying to obliquely refer to anything. I'm trying to say, as directly and plainly as possible, that you are wrong to describe the media in question as a public service.
Click to expand...
That's completely wrong. The Fairness Doctrine was all about broadcasting "in the public interest".

The Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters.

...

Early on, legislators wrestled over competing visions of the future of radio: Should it be commercial or non-commercial? There was even a proposal by the U.S. Navy to control the new technology. The debate included early arguments about how to address the public interest, as well as fears about the awesome power conferred on a handful of licensees.

...

In 1959 Congress amended the Communications Act of 1934 to enshrine the Fairness Doctrine into law, rewriting Chapter 315(a) to read: “A broadcast licensee shall afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of conflicting views on matters of public importance.”

...

A decade later the United States Supreme Court upheld the doctrine’s constitutionality in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (1969), foreshadowing a decade in which the FCC would view the Fairness Doctrine as a guiding principle, calling it “the single most important requirement of operation in the public interest—the sine qua non for grant of a renewal of license” (FCC Fairness Report, 1974).
Click to expand...
(Bold added by me)

Source
 
arthwollipot said:
That's completely wrong. The Fairness Doctrine was all about broadcasting "in the public interest".

(Bold added by me)

Source
Click to expand...
Yes, the Fairness Doctrine was intended as a public service. The for-profit news companies it regulated were not. Regulations don't make the private, for-profit enterprises they regulate magically transform into public services.
 
theprestige said:
Yes, the Fairness Doctrine was intended as a public service. The for-profit news companies it regulated were not. Regulations don't make the private, for-profit enterprises they regulate magically transform into public services.
Click to expand...
I think you're making a distinction without a difference. The Fairness Doctrine required the for-profit companies to act in the public interest. That was its purpose.
 
theprestige said:
And I think I'm making an important distinction, between actual public services, and private businesses regulated for the greater good.
Click to expand...
It's completely irrelevant anyway since the 1983 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine threw even the pretence of public service out the window, which was my point, and which you have not succeeded in distracting me from.
 
arthwollipot said:
It's completely irrelevant anyway since the 1983 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine threw even the pretence of public service out the window, which was my point, and which you have not succeeded in distracting me from.
Click to expand...
Please explain how the hell do you enforce a Fairness doctrine in a world with hundreds of cable and streaming TV channels.
It was enforcable when all you had was a few broadcast channels, but uneforcable through the advent of technology.
 
arthwollipot said:
I could cite the Reagan administration's 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, which practically overnight transformed the news from a public service into a for-profit business.
Click to expand...
In the US, apart from PBS, broadcasting has always been a for profit business.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom