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Split Thread "Fairness doctrine" broadcasting

marksman said:
Given the advent of satellites and cable, there's no such limitation on television and radio any more. If the Fairness Doctrine is based on the scarcity of radio and television stations, then the Doctrine has become antiquated and archaic.
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Yes, it has. That’s why Obama is not pushing for it. He probably laughs himself silly about all the wingnuts ranting against the FD. Every second they are devoting to it is one second they are not working against actual policy.
 
Moreover, there's no reason -- under a Commons theory -- that the Fairness Doctrine could not be extended to much of print media.
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That is what scares me about the "Commons" meme so popular among the wingnut left. You could extend it until everything is part of the "Commons" therefore the Government should run everything.

I got a feeling the Fairness Doctrine is going nowhere,but that does not change the fact that some people in the Democratic party who should really,really,know better are in favor of it.
What amuses me is that the Left is so spooked by the likes of Limbaugh, who was never as influential as the left likes to think and was always pretty much preaching to the choir anyway. I doubt that enough people were swayed by Rush, Bill, and company to change their votes in a general election. The people who listened and took them seriously were not going to vote Democratic anyway.
 
I see some want to still find ways to justify a fairness doctrine based on tangential issues and arguments, even knowing in their hearts what the ultimate result of the FD would end up being. Why can't you guys see what you are doing? You are finding reasons to justify it because you know it would serve you. You know it's not right. Stop trying to find silly reasons to justify it based on other policies. Ideas should stand on their own merits, not based on what other things have happened in similar arenas.

It's like the pot legalization advocate arguing it should be legal because alcohol is. Not everything in life is going to be perfectly fair and equal. Mistakes are made. One thing should never be a justification for another. They should stand on their own merits.
 
Whiplash said:
It's like the pot legalization advocate arguing it should be legal because alcohol is. Not everything in life is going to be perfectly fair and equal. Mistakes are made. One thing should never be a justification for another. They should stand on their own merits.
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You might be missing the point of such an argument. I think "It works for x, so why not do it for y" is a perfectly valid argument if you present that x and y have critical similarities for this purpose.
 
They're still in a frenzy, about this...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/18/white-house-opposes-fairness-doctrine/

check out the comments.. these people are incorrigible..

Yes, General Secretary Obama opposes the Fairness Doctrine. That is exactly why at this time UNDER HIS DIRECTION, the FCC is drafting a new doctrine under a different name that does not require congressional approval. IT'S A DI*TATOR*HIP PEOPLE!
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President Obama is not an empty suite. He has numerous ways to have the "fairness doctrine" brought back. He will just create another name for the "fairness Doctrine". He has any number of ways to pressure the FCC to act without getting directly into the process. The public had better pay close attention to "negative" news about "talk radio" and Fox news. That is where the pressure will be brought to bare and Obama will never need to raise his hand or voice. He will remain the good guy, but expect pressure to be brought to bear on certain programming. America as we know it is coming to an end. The Democratic party of my parents, and the one I originally belonged to is long gone. Can anyone define Marxism?
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Hate to say it, but the Obama statement gives 'plausible deniability'. Should the FCC say that they need to implement the 'fairness' doctrine, he can turn around and say it was his managers' decision. Delegation can be a beautiful thing . . . .
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THIS IS COMPLETELY DICTATORIAL IN NATURE, WE MIGHT AS WELL TALK TO CHAVEZ IN VENEZUELA AND BECOME PART OF HIS SOCIALISTIC EMPIRE, I AM SURE HE CAN FIND A JOB FOR OBAMA IN HIS CABINET AND WE CAN ALL THEN BENEFIT FROM CHEAP GAS.
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With all due respect, how can any kind of fairness doctrine even work?

If the goal is to make it so that all sides are represented fairly, I don't have a problem with that in principal. And I think that is how people justify it to themselves. It's just some attempt to level the playing field.

But how do you do that? If one side is getting more coverage or discussion than the other, how do you fix that? The only way is to stiffle the speech on the one side. You have to bring the one down to the others level. Unless the suggestion is that goverment waste even more money to create more "alternatives".

If it ever comes down to stiffling of speech of any kind, on either side, it flies in the very face of things this country was founded on. And I don't see how "fairness" can be enforced in any other way.

I think that many on the left support it either because they naively believe that it's possible to enforce "fairness" in political discussion without affecting free speech. Or else they know that it really just amounts to stiffling right wing speech, but they rationalize it away as hate speech that shouldn't be allowed.

I'm sorry that so many on the left don't want to accept this, but this country is a center-right country, not a center-left country. The reason that right wing talk does better is there are simply more people who care to listen to it. And as usual, the left doesn't believe the problem is that their message is being rejected, it's just that their message isn't being heard enough. And you take solace in the recent electoral victory as some kind of vindication of your beliefs and ideals rather than recognizing that it was much more about throwing the other side out.

Again, I don't have a problem with fairness in principal, it's simply a matter of how that can be achieved. Please be open minded on this people. Don't justify to me that the right does the exact same thing, so it's ok. I'm against this from either side. We shouldn't be silencing the opposition. There is nothing inherently evil or terrible about either side that one needs to be protected from. To imply there is is to be hysterical and sensationalistic.
 
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I completely disagree. I believe the US is becoming more secular, and more progressive, by the day.. I think most people that voted for Obama, voted because they believed in his ideals, and his abilities - not just to throw the other guys out. Airamerica has been doing quite well for itself, and one of it's hosts is now on MSNBC (maddow), and they're looking for another candidate to fill in their 10pm timeslot, possibly from Air America.. Also, MSNBC has really been notching up the ratings against fox, lately..

A fairness doctrine, to be reinstated, would just be overturned by the supreme court, anyway. I just think it's funny that the article is about Obama officially taking the stand against the Fairness doctrine, and yet they're still suggesting that it's some kind of ploy in his "dictatorship".. Have any of these people been awake for the last 8 years??
 
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Cleon said:
You can't complain about restricting free speech in one case, and then endorse the restriction of free speech in another.

Well, you can, but that would be hypocritical.
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Really? So if I oppose censorship of political expression, but I also think it should be illegal to incite an unruly mob to violence, then I'm a hypocrite? Perhaps you didn't mean precisely what you wrote.


Edit: Of course, the biggest idiocy in the fairness doctrine is the idea that there are only two sides to every controversial issue. How many people have to subscribe to a view in order for it to merit equal time? What percent of the population? What if there are five or six different mainstream points of view on a particular issue? If NPR does a program on the holocaust, must they give equal time to holocaust deniers? If not, why not? More importantly, who would be deciding what views merit equal time and which are "not mainstream"? And last but not least, how on earth are you going to convince anyone with a functioning brain that abuse of such power isn't all but inevitable, or that any attempt to enforce such an ill-conceived rule wouldn't be a giant cluster****?

Edit of the Edit: I don't want Cleon to think that my edit is a response to him (or her) in particular. I am aware that he (or she) does not support the fairness doctrine. I just didn't see any reason to post twice in a row.
 
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BenBurch said:
Off topic, but remember that a radio station does not own the frequency it is on. The PUBLIC owns that. We allow, that is license, a station to use that bit of the Commons, and they have a duty to use it in the public interest.

We mean to see to it that this happens, or the license will be stripped.
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Please define "public interest". Is censorship in the public interest?
 
Who owns the airwaves is just rationalization to justify doing it. Normally people around here would see through this sort of thing and stand against it. It's muddying the waters. It's trying to turn it from an argument about censorship into other side issues to find a reason to justify doing it. The ultimate outcome is known, and obviously desired by some. But they try to hide that desire by bringing up these side arguments... it's the height of intellectual dishonesty Ben. It exposes what you really feel and want. You wouldn't be trying to justify it unless you felt it was fair or the right thing to do. But the ultimate outcome is censorship, and you know it. So stop wasting out time with "who owns the airwaves" ********.
 
Well, for a long time, we had this "fairness doctrine", and, you know, the commies didn't win, the nazis didn't win, and we didn't have the obvious crazy-rightwing skew to the most popular news channels, either.

But what's interesting is that I don't see any REAL effort to start a new "fairness doctrine", only a completely dishonest, spiteful spew of sheer hatred from Faux News.
 
jj said:
Well, for a long time, we had this "fairness doctrine", and, you know, the commies didn't win, the nazis didn't win, and we didn't have the obvious crazy-rightwing skew to the most popular news channels, either.

But what's interesting is that I don't see any REAL effort to start a new "fairness doctrine", only a completely dishonest, spiteful spew of sheer hatred from Faux News.
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Build a stable of liberal Limbaughs and the problem is solved it is "the Fields of Dreams" precedent. You mention most popular News channels but only list "faux" news as an example. Why is that?
 
jj said:
Well, for a long time, we had this "fairness doctrine", and, you know, the commies didn't win, the nazis didn't win, and we didn't have the obvious crazy-rightwing skew to the most popular news channels, either.
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It's either right or wrong however. It's either constitutionally valid, or not.

Having done it before is irrelevant. We have done lots of things before that we later realized to be 'wrong'.

How exactly does that mean that it was correct or constituitionally valid? It doesn't.

And your take on the current news being "crazy-righwing" skewed is simply your own opinion.

But what's interesting is that I don't see any REAL effort to start a new "fairness doctrine", only a completely dishonest, spiteful spew of sheer hatred from Faux News.
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I agree to some extent. There does not seem to be a strong effort for it. I'm only arguing on the merits of it, for the sake of discussion, but also to disuade those who seek to justify it. If you aren't seeing many on the left call for it, and justifying it, you aren't looking very hard.
 
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Texas said:
Build a stable of liberal Limbaughs and the problem is solved it is "the Fields of Dreams" precedent. You mention most popular News channels but only list "faux" news as an example. Why is that?
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So, I see that you at least espouse a form of Gresham's law, ignore the tragedy of the commons, and then have to engage in contextual extraction to not make a point.

Let's see. Limbaugh clearly has no ethics, has been caught cheating, lying, breaking laws, and should, by the justice meted out to us not-rich people, be in jail for a long time for his oxycontin crime. Where is he? On the air, forgiven by the "law and order" lunatics he preaches to.

Now, you espouse that "liberal" types should abandon ethics, and lie, cheat, and engage in violations of the law, emulating Limbaugh? Really? Why? Do you want to drag liberals down to his level? Why do you want to turn liberals into liars and cheats? That's what it means, exactly what it means, to "build a stable of liberal Limbaughs".

And that, then, would turn "news" into a cartoon farce, and we wouldn't have any news unless we watched the BBC (a conservative organization often tarred here as liberal) or the CBC. Is this the outcome you desire?

If so, why?

Oh, and I forgot, where is the evidence that Obama is actively seeing a "fairness doctrine"? You know, the thing that Bull O'Really is spluttering insanely about...
 
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jj said:
So, I see that you at least espouse a form of Gresham's law, ignore the tragedy of the commons, and then have to engage in contextual extraction to not make a point.

Let's see. Limbaugh clearly has no ethics, has been caught cheating, lying, breaking laws, and should, by the justice meted out to us not-rich people, be in jail for a long time for his oxycontin crime. Where is he? On the air, forgiven by the "law and order" lunatics he preaches to.

Now, you espouse that "liberal" types should abandon ethics, and lie, cheat, and engage in violations of the law, emulating Limbaugh? Really? Why? Do you want to drag liberals down to his level? Why do you want to turn liberals into liars and cheats? That's what it means, exactly what it means, to "build a stable of liberal Limbaughs".

And that, then, would turn "news" into a cartoon farce, and we wouldn't have any news unless we watched the BBC (a conservative organization often tarred here as liberal) or the CBC. Is this the outcome you desire?

If so, why?

Oh, and I forgot, where is the evidence that Obama is actively seeing a "fairness doctrine"? You know, the thing that Bull O'Really is spluttering insanely about...
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Well Randi Rhodes and Al Fraken and Mile Malloy with Air America has shown what a lack of ethics and honesty produces. In other words it results in bankruptcy. When liberals can produce a product that even liberals can stand to listen to then they will be successful in the arena of ideas. So far they have utterly failed in that quest.
 
jj said:
Why do you want to turn liberals into liars and cheats? That's what it means, exactly what it means, to "build a stable of liberal Limbaughs".
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Yeah, 'cos he couldn't possibly have just meant 'popular and professionally produced and managed talk shows'.

jj said:
And that, then, would turn "news" into a cartoon farce,
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How much actual 'news' content is on talk radio anyway?

jj said:
and we wouldn't have any news unless we watched
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Watch radio? Either you have some fancy new digital radio or you are doing it wrong.

jj said:
the BBC (a conservative organization often tarred here as liberal)
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Conservative? Hah!

jj said:
or the CBC. Is this the outcome you desire?
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Yes. He desires the destruction of the entire US news industry.

jj said:
If so, why?
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I'm guessing that it would be for the lulz.

jj said:
Oh, and I forgot, where is the evidence that Obama is actively seeing a "fairness doctrine"?
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Is Texas making that claim?

jj said:
You know, the thing that Bull O'Really is spluttering insanely about...
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If it's Bill O'Reily (you made a couple of spelling mistakes there) that is making the claim, then why don't you ask him for his evidence? You can call him on this number.
 
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