FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts
techcrunch.comThe FCC does have the authority to revoke licenses based on content, but it's rare for them to do so.
However, this entire situation is ultimately a consequence of revoking the FCC fairness doctrine. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine)
For example, a news station did have their license revoked by taking a strong stance against civil rights, and violated the fairness doctrine. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLBT#Opposition_to_civil_right...)
The fairness doctrine was hardly ever envoked. Attempting to apply it to a situation like this would not be constitutional. The fairness doctrine was found constitutional when it required a rebuttal to a direct personal attack during an era when there were only 3 stations. But this situation is different.
It was never applied to a sitation where a network required "must run" content. At best, the fairness doctrine would require at least some dissenting opinion on the issue. The Supreme Court, in upholding the fairness doctrine, said it should never be used to limit speech. That's what critics want to do here, punish Sinclair for running content.
Arguably, the fairness doctrine is no longer constitutional at all. The court's reasoning relied on there being limited channels. That is no longer true. Even on broadcast, there are 20 channels available. If democrats don't like Sinclair, they can go start their own network. When you consider all the other sorts of media available, its just not credible to argue that there is a legitmate concern that people cannot be both sides of an issue.
>The fairness doctrine was hardly ever envoked.
I (a layperson) don't really follow this. It sounds to me like "while the rules were in effect, they were rarely broken".
>an era when there were only 3 stations. But this situation is different.
Lots of station numbers, run by just a handful of owners:
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/07/who-owns-what-on-televis...
OP's point was that Fairness Doctrine was never a hard and fast rule because the FCC was hesitant to actually enforce it due to free speech concerns. Broadcasters were generally willing to cooperate, but they got lots of wiggle room. Plus it was vague and easily sidestepped.
I worry it could do more harm than good nowadays if reinstated. Suddenly anti-vaxxers and people who think climate change is a hoax would have to be given more coverage, for example.
> >The fairness doctrine was hardly ever envoked.
> I (a layperson) don't really follow this. It sounds to me like "while the rules were in effect, they were rarely broken".
It means that the FCC rarely enforced the fairness doctrine unless it was being blatantly abused.
> Lots of station numbers, run by just a handful of owners:
> http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/07/who-owns-what-on-televis....
The fairness doctrine doesn't make sense any more because anybody with a phone can publish their opinions to a global audience. It made sense at the time because media was centrally controlled and very expensive to produce.
If a majority of broadcast stations were owned by a single company, and that single parent company enforced censorship and strong bias about one or multiple issues, would that not be considered an instance of limited channels?
Sure the number of channels is higher, but the amount of information spread is not.
The fairness doctrine may not have been invoked or enforced, but stations still did things, to remain in compliance, that they stopped doing afterwards. In particular, right-wing talk radio exploded almost immediately after the repeal of the fairness doctrine.
I can see why the FCC might be hesitant to get involved with these segments and scripts. However, the Sinclair merger should unequivocally be rejected. This business pattern only becomes an issue once you get monopolies and oligopolies. We need competition and variety in our news sources. Oligopolies are extremely dangerous to our democracy.
It would be very hard to view them as a monopoly in any case if you consider all the other media sources they compete with.
I can’t think of the last time I saw broadcast local news.
Any justification for censoring Sinclair would apply 100 fold to Google or Facebook.
Its just not constitutional to ban Sinclair for running pro GOP content.
Sinclair has a government-granted monopoly on the frequencies on which they broadcast. Google and Facebook offer service accessible over the (almost entirely) capacity-unconstrained Internet medium.
And a movie theatre has a government granted monopoly on a piece of land on which they show movies. Doesn't mean you can't just build another one next door.
Facebook has an actual monolopy on an entire market.
I agree that Facebook is a bigger issue, but you can't just build on more frequency. There's only a small, already claimed amount, that is suitable and allowed for broadcasting tv
TV broadcast frequencies are a far scarcer resource than land.
And yet, there are more TV stations than movie theatres in many towns.
As well as networks, in general, like ABC, etc.
Just because you don't use something doesn't mean a lot of other people don't. TV is still the most popular medium for getting news.
Absolutely it’s popular, especially with older people, but that doesn’t make it a monopoly.
I’m very hesitant to have the government interfering with media, even against right wing clowns like Sinclair.
True. But out of curiosity, how many people live within the "traditional" broadcast influence of Sinclair media properties.
Coupled with Citizens United verdict I agree. Also makes it easier for foreign money to influence our elections. Behind the scenes a foreign government can invest in American companies that buy advertising to change the outcome of an election.
Imagine if a foreign company bought Sinclair.
What makes you think they're not already somehow manipulated by foreign interests? How would you know?
Foreign interests? Domestic interests? I struggle to see the difference when it's all said and done. In either case the spirit of the republic is spat on. In either case, We The People get some perverted version of a gov said to be: of the people, by the people, for the people.
Death is still death whether by foreign cancer of domestic cancer.
If you trust (e.g.) Wall Street more than you trust (e.g.) The Russians then I have a bridge you might be interested in. Given their presumed loyalty - but ultimately the lack there of - the former's violations are relatively worse.
Let's not be naive.
I stand corrected. Foreign or domestic, their interests don't align with the US public at large.
IIRC China recently bought a major Hollywood studio.
Also notice the increase in token Chinese actors in recent blockbusters.
Transformers even had some CCP pandering in the script.
The self-censorship this brings is a real problem.
That's more for making the movies popular in China than for manipulating American attitudes.
It would be blocked. Just last month for example the administration blocked Singapore-based Broadcom from a takeover bid of Qualcomm on national security grounds.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/technology/trump-broadcom...
Not a fan of any of these folks, but if Trump is willing to do a USPS audit pony show just because he's in a kerfuffle with Amazon's WaPo, an international takeover of a large media conglomerate is highly unlikely.
Amazon does not own WaPo. This distinction is important.
How about this, the guy who owns the Washington Post is the founder and a major stakeholder of Amazon.
Of course not. The point is billionaires get into pissing contests by attacking whatever flank or asset is the easiest target.
I don't think you can generalize this to "billionaires". More like "one specific 'billionaire'".
While blocking large foreign buyouts is probably a win for the US I still wouldn't trust the admin to do so reliably. Just throw a few hundred bucks their way.
Call me crazy but it's time for a legal definition of news (vs editorial) and then have that definition forced. If false advertising is a faux pas then news that's not attempting to be objective and forthright should be labeled.
Most of the so called news / journalism isn't news / journalism any more than Aspartame is sugar. If you can't call Aspartame sugar then consuming content should be forced to be as transparent.
> Most of the so called news / journalism isn't news / journalism any more than Aspartame is sugar.
News was never news. It was actually branding by the news industry in the 20th century that duped everyone into thinking that news was objective. If you are interested, go look at what newspapers were in the 1800s. They were propaganda outfits created by wealthy individuals to push agenda. The oldest newspaper in the US ( NY Post ) was a propaganda organization created by Madison to attack Thomas Jefferson and his agrarian ideals. The highest prize in journalism is the pulitzer prize which is named for the founder of yellow journalism.
I think we are better off removing the lie that news is objective and go back to the truth. News is propaganda. I think it'll be healthy for the nation to accept reality rather than blindly accepting an idealized falsehood.
> Call me crazy but it's time for a legal definition of news (vs editorial) and then have that definition forced.
How? That's an impossibility. For example, when CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, WaPo write favorable anti-2nd amendment "news" articles and Foxnews write favorable pro-2nd amendment "news" articles, how are you going to define objectivity?
Are we going to have biased government officials deciding what objective news is? Do you trust obama or trump to decide what is biased and what isn't biased? I certainly don't.
I think all news should contain labeling informing the public that these organizations are all propaganda organizations with heavy biases and let the public consume as they see fit. Just like with cigarettes, alcohol, soda, etc.
I certainly don't want government deciding what is objective.
Accepting the history of media...
This is no different then the replication crisis in science.
If you want to be taken seriously, show your work. Sources, hard data, citations, on the record quotes, analysis.
Otherwise it's just gossip, agitprop, heresay.
Ok, you’re crazy. A “legal definition of news” is exactly what the first amendment is setup to prevent.
What I think it’s time for is to demand personal responsibility for critically thinking about what you read or listen to.
The state cannot ever be trusted to control what you watch, read, or listen to, full stop. This has only ever ended in disaster, and we’ve known this for centuries.
When people who don’t like what someone is saying call for government to stop that person from speaking, and that person isn’t directly inciting violence, I would kindly ask those people to fuck off. Maybe move to a more totalitarian regime if that’s to their liking.
News, editorials, and political commentary are nothing at all like the ingredient list on the back of your soda can.
How do you feel about food labeling laws?
Mentioned in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16834574
But in short, very much pro food labeling. This might have something to do with having two kids with T1D, one who also has celiac.
Nah. The 1st Amendment does not protect shouting "fire" in a movie theater. As coveted as it might be, the 1st A doesn't give license to a free for all of junk food. There are licensing for plumbers, electricians and hair stylists. __None__ of those are essentials to a healthy democracy.
There is also the legal concept of false advertising. If you're saying (objective) "news" and it's (subjective) editorial, then that's clearly false advertising.
This wasn't the most exciting things I ever read, but it was helpful.
"Freedom for the Thought That We Hate" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_for_the_Thought_That_W...
re: "News, editorials, and political commentary are nothing at all like the ingredient list on the back of your soda can."
One, this is editorial pure.
Two, it's also false. We know that you are what you consume. Whether that's what goes in your mouth, your lungs, up your nose, or into your brain.
Is you can't label Aspartame as sugar, then why should editorial being called news be allowed? Context matters.
The "fire" in a movie theater argument is a horse than has been beaten to death for so long, and I seriously doubt anyone who says this phrase knows it's history, or even cares to think for themselves about how much of a cliche it is.
The point is, cliche or not, not all speech is 100% protected 100% of the time. That myth is bigger than the fire myth is cliche.
There are different kinds of speech.
Commercial speech, such as, advertising has less protection than most other forms of speech.
Political speech (AKA news) is the most protected speech.
But News is very much commercial speech as well, if not moreso than political.
A news organization maybe a commercial venture, but news is not commercial speech.
Advertising, product labels, or advertisement signs are examples of commercial speech.
But. You're in the weeds. They saying "we're news" and they're not. It's 90% editorial.
As for the actual content and their right to say it? It's their right. It's protected. But selling snake oil as a cure for cancer? That's the issue.
Who is “they”? You mean the New York Times, right?
But in all seriousness, freedom of the press doesn’t imply it has to be purely factual or completely objective. The press is free to analyze, opine, ridicule, and rile their audience however they decide to. And they can even call it “fair and balanced” or tell me it’s “fit to print” if they want to, because these are subjective terms describing their opinion in a field expressly exempt from regulation.
In other words, about as far from selling a fake cure to cancer as you can get.
Before you use "Fire in a theater" argument, please be aware that quote comes from a Supreme Court decision basically allowing the government to imprison someone publishing anti-war opinion.
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
People that use this quote to justify censorship must be in two camps. Those that are ignorant of the provenance of the quote and how it was and could be misused, and those that know it and are looking to censor as long as the idea bring censored is disagreeable to their own.
With the regularity I see it parroted I very much hope the former is more common than the latter.
As to the proposal of labeling content, who decides what is news and what isn't? The government? What agency and how will that agency be staffed and regulated? What redress does an outlet have if they feel they are unjustly labeled because their opinion differs from that censor board?
What if it's not a government body but an industry body? Many of the same issues apply since the majority will have power over the minority. This particular mode of self-censorship has precedent, as the movie, video game, and music industries created their own censor boards in lieu of government regulation (MPAA, ESRB, RIAA).
> People that use this quote to justify censorship must be in two camps. Those that are ignorant of the provenance of the quote and how it was and could be misused, and those that know it and are looking to censor as long as the idea bring censored is disagreeable to their own.
I don't follow this entire line of thought. As with your parent comment:
>> Before you use "Fire in a theater" argument, please be aware that quote comes from a Supreme Court decision basically allowing the government to imprison someone publishing anti-war opinion.
Is the thought supposed to be "this argument was once used to support a bad thing. THEREFORE, this argument is invalid"? That can't be right.
"THEREFORE, any idea supported by this argument is a bad idea"?
How can the provenance of the argument be relevant?
> Is the thought supposed to be "this argument was once used to support a bad thing. THEREFORE, this argument is invalid"? That can't be right.
No, the “fire in a crowded theater” thing isn't an argument, it's a claim about the law often used as a premise in other arguments.
The problem with that claim is that it's a claim about the application of Constitutional law and limits to free speech in a particular fact pattern that was dicta unsupported by prior case law offered as part of the explanation for a decision which has itself since been overturned as inappropriately limiting freedom of speech in a way directly contrary to the core purpose of the Constitutional protection.
That is:
* It was not a statement of the law grounded in valid authority,
* It wouldn't be valid authority on the law itself even if the decision it was articulated in was valid authority, and
* The case it was articulated in is, in fact, no longer valid authority.
Therefore, any argument which takes it as a premise stands on sand, as the premise is unsupported.
None of your comment makes any sense as a defense of the comments I asked about. They go:
> please be aware that quote comes from a Supreme Court decision basically allowing the government to imprison someone publishing anti-war opinion.
and
> People that use this quote to justify censorship must be in two camps. Those that are ignorant of the provenance of the quote and how it was and could be misused, and those that know it and are looking to censor as long as the idea bring censored is disagreeable to their own.
Nothing about either of those claims would change if Schenck had been written right into the constitution. Schenck would still be a decision allowing the government to imprison someone for sedition, and people using the quote to justify censorship would still tautologously be divisible into those who know the provenance and are looking to justify censorship, and those who don't know the provenance and are looking to justify censorship.
But while both comments would be just as valid in that hypothetical world as they are now, your comment in their defense would be completely wrong. You appear to be defending a point that neither party I responded to was even interested in making. I conclude that those two original comments are worthless, because they have no bearing on anything relevant.
The provenance shows what the argument can be and has been used to justify - censorship of thoughts deemed unacceptable by people in a position of power.
Yes there are licenses to ensure safety and compliance for plumbers, electricians, and hair stylists. And if I understand what I'm reading, some people here calling for similar "licensing" for anyone who wants to report the "news". While I'm in favor of the former, I am strictly and uncompromisingly against the latter.
Freedom of the press, the freedom to report on the news, opine on the news, and editorialize the news, in my mind is sacrosanct. "Incorrectly" reporting the news is not false advertising, and I would strongly hope that any attempt to license, monitor, or censor any news outlets (no matter how ragtag or unpopular) would be shot down hard by the 1st, barring the well established limits around direct incitement of violence.
Ingredient lists are a public safety measure. People with food allergies eat a mislabeled product and they die. People with an allergy to Fox news can change the channel and listen to CNN if they so choose. There isn't a 1st amendment right to sell someone a product (like a can of soda) and lie to them about what is in it.
I can debate the merits of any article from the New York Times, the Washington Post, or even Breitbart. I can debate how much an article in any of those publications seek to neutrally inform, or seeks to present a specific viewpoint, or seeks to outright persuade its readers of what to think. Reasonable people will disagree emphatically in such a debate.
But no reasonable person can disagree that the can of Coke Zero sitting next to me contains; Carbonated water, caramel color, phosphoric acid, aspartame, potassium benzoate, natural flavors, potassium citrate, acesulfame potassium, and caffeine.
Watch 5 minutes of news coverage of Comey's book on each of the major networks. Now tell me which were news and which were editorial. Spoiler alert: It's a rorschach test. Even objective news is not free of characterization and choice of diction which colors the facts being reported. Newsrooms have editors for a reason. Even the choice of which facts to report and which not is an editorial decision which must be made when reporting the news.
So I submit there can be no news that is entirely free and devoid of editorial. To report on Comey's book, you would have to sit in front of the camera and read it from cover to cover in a monotone voice without inflection or facial tic. And even that itself would be a type of performance art with its own editorial value.
For all the claims that fake news is "killing democracy" or "dangerous to democracy" I think the one thing that truly can kill a democracy is violating the 1st amendment and trying to establish some government censor of newscasts, podcasts, books, or vlogs because you think the message is wrong, misleading, dangerous, offensive, propaganda.
So it would be wrong for the media industry - sans the gov - to establish quality control standards? If movies are "self rated" certainly we deserve to be told what's editorial.
While I agree, I think I'd be saddened by what it would suss out: that people don't really want news.
The sad part would be that even after this, people would still look to the Hannitys, the Maddows, the Carlsons, the Lemons of the world for their news. I understand the reasoning behind it (zero effort way of processing news). Where it does become dangerous is if someone turns a non-news/fake news item into a talking point to deceive the viewer into thinking it is legitimate like the content based on real news items.
I guess the beginning of the end was to allow channels specific to "news" to propagate. In an ever growing fight for ratings, something if we're being honest that shouldn't be a news team's goal, they've had to at best fluff the news or at worst make it controversial for ratings sake. I like CNN and feel them to be fairly "even", but even I have to question the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" nature of constant BREAKING NEWS items that are on their site at any given time and I would imagine is pretty frequent on social media (at least, anything I see shared from CNN seems to have breaking: at the beginning).
Maybe the local news showing national/international news format would be best, but with some kind of regulation to prevent them from politicizing it. Now what that would be defined by, I'm not sure. It probably wouldn't be heavy in ratings though.
I think putting the Hannitys and Carlsons on the same level as the Maddows and the Lemons implies a false equivalency. Everyone has an agenda, yeah, but one of those groups is deliberately misleading its viewers.
Um. They're all pretty deliberate. They're all gainfully employed based on one key KPI: ad revenue. They have a target market. They have a narrative. And they work that to the tune of ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.
Death by cancer is still death whether it's Red State death or Blue State death. That's about as equal as it gets.
None of the four you listed quality as news or journalism. One another day we can discuss what they really are, but news and journalists they are not.
What qualifies as news or journalism?
Verified sources, citations, quotes on the record.
Otherwise it's gossip, heresay, agitprop
From what I've seen, and I could be wrong, David Muir seems to deliver in a way that doesn't seem heavy in bias. Admittedly, I don't watch ABC a lot so I don't see a ton of him, but his content seems pretty impartial.
Perfect example. He's nothing more than a talking head. He's reading a script off a teleprompter. He's there - and Katie Couric isn't - because he tests well and the rating are strong.
That doesn't make him a journalist. Nor does it make what falls from his lips news.
Will have to agree to disagree on that one. And I think he's there and Couric isn't is due to Couric at a certain point trying the Barbara Walters track pivoting into the talk show side of things.
But I think him being fairly interchangeable with another journalist is an indicator that his role isn't personality driven like the previously mentioned: he's there to deliver the news and that's essentially it. I think his Gaza Strip/Haiti/etc. work qualifies him as a journalist and from what I've seen of him, has delivered factual news (with varying levels of importance, but realistically, it is unlikely to have hard hitting items daily).
If you have links to the segments mentioned I'd like to watch. Tia
Funny enough, my term papers in grade school come to mind. We were required to take a subject, investigate it, present both / all arguments, and then draw a conclusion as based on the investigation.
Journalists ask questions. Tough question. The hard questions. Taking the narrative of a rumour and/or a "press release" is not journalism. When there's an over-use of "power words" and heavy handed adjectives that manipulate the interpretation, that's not journalism either.
That's the tip of the iceberg.
Maybe it's kinda like porn? I'll know it when I see it?
While I agree they're not all the same or approaching the median at the same rate, my statement was in their propensity towards editorializing. Whereas people view them (well, typically if they agree with them) as newspeople. I was going mostly by personalities that seem to have the largest viewerships, purely anecdotal though, admittedly.
Maddow spins the news just as hard, whether you can/want to see it or not.
Spins news as hard as Hannity and Tucker Carlson?
Yes.
Maddow definitely creates a narrative out of the current events. Hannity is on another level, though, making dishonest use of every logical fallacy in order to push the state directed agenda.
He is one of the "allies" Trump pushes his propaganda through: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/382993-white-hous...
> Trump also urged supporters to watch Fox News host Sean Hannity's show on Wednesday, during which Hannity called for Rosenstein to be fired.
This isn't new. Pulitzer and Hearst practiced "yellow journalism" that wouldn't look a day out of date compared to Fox News. Most news sources in the world and throughout history have had clear editorial biases at the very least.
Even they heyday of "unbiased", "impartial" news was anything but--there just weren't many outlets for people to express dissenting views, and the lack of transparency was shocking at times. For example, Lyndon Johnson once got annoyed at reporters asking him why the US intervened in Vietnam, exposed his genitalia to them, and shouted, "this is why!"
The notion of a kindly old Walter Crokite-esque gentleman telling us the news every night in a fair and impartial way was always an illusion, and it's one that shouldn't be mourned.
Not a new problem. My favorite modern retellings:
"Network" [1978] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/
"De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" [1980] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v2GDbEmjGE
I can't help but observe that substantial movement of pressure and criticism in the US around biased journalism, and fake news is shifting the narrative (or preparing it) for state-controlled media. We thought it was bad before, and social media and independent journalism was supposed to be the underdog here to help usurp those big-corp biases.. but it turned out to be the exact opposite. So whats left? big government to step in and defend us helpless civilians, and make sure we only recieve official state truth. I hope I am wrong.
Universities in the US (and most other countries) need accreditation to be considered universities and to qualify to education grants and the like. That doesn't mean that all universities are state-run, only providing a government-approved curriculum. There's lots of controls you can put in place to limit government control. In the case of university accreditation, the government generally gives the responsibility to a handful of NGOs, along with regional bodies.
I've thought about that idea as well, have some sort of official standard for something to be called news. Requirements about the separation between editorial and objective content, requirements for certain standards of fact checking and confirmation before reporting, etc. If you don't abide by those standards, you don't get official accreditation as a reliable news source. Give it some sort of official seal or recognition so consumers can see that this show or website is trustworthy. Maybe add some tax credits for these sources, or subsidies or grants to give them an additional edge over their competition. We already have the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, maybe we expand the grants made available and provide stricter requirements for eligibility.
All that said, I am ... hesitant about such a system. It would be immensely controversial, and puts a lot more power in the hands of government over the news content Americans watch every day. The only way to assuage my concerns about that is to make the base standards a pretty lower bar, just things about confirming stories and requiring the submission of corrections and redactions when needed. And add in something to protect journalists, so that the government can't revoke a new source's accreditation because they leaked CIA documents about torture or something else embarrassing to the government. Maybe model it more like university accreditation, where accreditation of news sources involves the input from NGOs and regional government entities.
There's also some question about how helpful it would really be: I imagine the people who watch Info Wars aren't going to stop because it doesn't have the government seal of approval. I think you'd need to give a lot in subsidies or benefits to accredited news sources to give them an edge.
A lot of times, I really fail to see the (negative) distinction between an unelected government bureaucracy controlling something like this and unelected corporate entity controlling something like this. Wars were started at the behest of large publishers thanks to yellow journalism starting from fairly early in US history.
6 of one, half dozen of the other.
Hmmm, like China?
How is it like China? The government isn't suppressing speech, they are merely giving recognition to organizations that meet certain standards of journalism. It has no force of law behind it, it's merely to create a public registry of which new sources meet certain standards of journalism. The public is free to look at which sources are certified to make more informed decisions about what news they consume, or they can just ignore it. Hell, it doesn't even need to be done by the government, it could be done by an NGO.
I think most news is pretty much useless without any kind of analysis, and that analysis is effectively editorial.
If I tell you a vote in congress passed, that doesn't really tell me much without saying whether the vote was expected to pass or not, or why, or what the vote passing means, etc. And that's all opinion. Even if you try to present it factually it's all judgement.
True. But it can still be presented as what it is, an opinion. "It is the opinion of this reporter..." or "Based on what we know and the current facts..." Etc.
Better still, "What we don't know is..." The gaps in the analysis are never pointed out. Yes, that makes it opinion. Nothing wrong with that, but then it's not analysis, and certainly not transparent in the journalism sense of the word.
The problem is, stuff with obvious _glaring_ holes gets presented as full-investigated and complete.
I don't know if perhaps we are better off declaring bankruptcy and taking a worse-is-better approach here and not even having the pretence of unbiased media, because maybe it's not possible.
In the UK newspapers basically publicly declare their bias and everyone knows so you make sure you read a left-biased paper as well as a right-biased one.
I don't know if the wire services manage to be completely unbiased?
It's a start. My rub isn't news or editorial per se, but how they are not the same thing. Yet are so often not at all differentiated.
What some thinks (editorial) is not the same as facts, based on investigation.
I hear you, but do you remember CNN Headline News when it started? It was perfect with no analysis needed.
You got facts ... the who, what when, where. No analysis, no spin, no entertainment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGJh8VnHZGw
If someone were to do this today in print, audio or video, I would gladly pay $50 a month. Information only with no opinion or analysis.
That'd be nice. Alas...
"The Media Can Legally Lie" [2003] https://web.archive.org/web/20100421103357/http://www.projec...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre#Whistleblower_lawsui...
I think a broadcaster should be held liable for dispersing any information that is knowingly _or_ unknowingly not 100% true. You might say, "But chilling effects!", but it's high time news chilled the hell out.
The problem is the safe thing to do with that regulations that to try to find truth of substantive claims, but instead tomjudt uncritically relay sourced rumor: it's very easily to be completely factual if everything you report is “So and so says that...” regurgitating official statements from interested parties without attempting to validate the claims the originator is making.
How about we start with the over-use of "leaked"?
For example the new James Comey book was not "leaked." What happened was, the publicist kicked off the marketing campaign and MSM feeding frenzy and hyping begins. The part about the book's author being sacked by the guy he's critiquing is never mentioned.
A real journalist would not use the worded "leaked" as that's not only entirely misleading, it's a lie. Stating the obvious or not, a real journalist / legit news outlet would not make assumption, they would make sure the context is 100% clear.
> The part about the book's author being sacked by the guy he's critiquing is never mentioned.
I've yet to see any news piece on Comey, whether or not the context involved his book, since the firing not mention the firing, and, since the appointment of Mueller, also mention that the firing is widely perceived as instrumental in leasing to the Special Counsel being appointed.
The idea that the coverage of the book never mentions the firing is laughable.
> The part about the book's author being sacked by the guy he's critiquing is never mentioned.
Every bit of coverage I've heard about Comey--both from the last 24 hours about the book, and for the last year--has mentioned Comey being fired every time.
Who should be the final arbiter of "100% true"? Should it be an elected position or an appointed position?
What is your proposed definition and how would you apply the test in practice?
"Must not intentionally report false information as truth."
Thus, lawsuites would be allowed if your org was found to be intentionally lying. But unless someone can prove you did it intentionally, they have no case.
Obviously you can lie all you want if you take the word "News" out of your name.
There are rules, regs & best practices (and licenses) for a slew of trades that are not the fourth leg (i.e., Fourth Estate) of a proper democracy. Electricians, plumbers, hair stylists and such come to mind. And while it does not have to be gov based, why not journalism? Can't these (pardon me) meat-heads police themselves?
Aside from news, journalism is another word that needs a proper and widely held definition. A blogger on the internet is not journalism. Lester Holt is not a journalist. Oprah is not a journalist. (Editorial: Shame on you 60 Minutes.)
I agree. It might not stop the lies, but it would draw a much needed line in the sand. Personally, I'm exhausted from trying to rationalize with people who get their information and thoughts from sources they presume are legit news and well-practiced journalism.
I struggle to name a single source that is not Signifigantly biased. But worse than ever, fewer orgs seem to speak with a single editorial voice. One NYT article will be well sourced and informative, and the next will be raving identity-politics hate-fuel without a single citation or fact. Even distinguishing by outfit is outdated. Perhaps I just need to follow more writers, but I worry of creating my own bubble. Its a tall order.
If you don't create your own bubble, it means you're in one someone else created for you.
Willful ignorance offers a pretty big loophole to that definition.
If you don't fact check information, nobody can say you know it's false.
Yes. Perfect actually. Then if you don't fact check it can't be presented as news.
I think also we could apply the (legal) concept of "reasonable and customary." If say the rest of the (media) industry reported X, Y and Z and you only did Y then that's not reasonable and customary.
No doubt there's grey area. But as it is, we're living in a "brown area" if you know what I mean ;)
I don't think you're crazy; I just think there's an entire constitutional amendment in the way of what you're proposing, and it's one that I would prefer not to repeal or amend.
A large amount of TV news is pure fabrication. The use of green screens, fake sound tracks, fake live shots, etc is just part of the biz. TV news is an entertainment product pretending to be a news product.
FCC doesnt seem like it's protecting consumers. I think if I were POTUS I'd be using this section of its mandate.
"Communications during emergencies and crisis must be available for public safety, health, defense, and emergency personnel, as well as all consumers in need. The Nation's critical communications infrastructure must be reliable, interoperable, redundant, and rapidly restorable."
The honest thing is that the FCC has already shown itself to be a problem by allowing the media mergers and aquisitions in the first place, and the people who made those decisions should be held to account as far as the statue of limitations allows, but also should the institution (preferably by congress).
I'm starting to get really tired of "independent" government agencies being at the heart of root problems.
Were you under the impression that an Ajit Pai-led FCC would be intent on protecting consumers?
I don't think anyone was under that impression. But there are literally no solutions to the Ajut problem that any of us can contribute to.
I think Trump is probably supportive of Sinclair. The promote a pro Trump message and have a conservative bias.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Epshteyn
Boris Alexandrovich Epshteyn (Russian: Бори́с Алекса́ндрович Эпштейн; born August 14, 1982) is a Russian-born American Republican political strategist, investment banker, and attorney. He is currently the Chief Political Analyst at Sinclair Broadcast Group. He was a senior advisor to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for President of the United States, and previously worked on the McCain-Palin campaign. Following Trump's election, he was named director of communications for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, and then assistant communications director for surrogate operations in the administration, until he resigned in March 2017.
TL;DR: The guy in charge of political programming for Sinclair worked for Trump, both on the campaign and in the white house.
This shit is way more serious than I expected.
Torn here. On the one hand, I hate the "must run" items, yet on the other hand, I see this as being a slippery slope if they were to punish as that'd be dictating to a company what is allowed on their stations.
Having said that, two things:
1) I'm glad it was exposed and wish it were highlighted more than it was. This gives viewers the ability to discern how valuable they find the content to know that scripts were dictated to their newspeople.
2) I'm hoping, though doubtful, that this prevents Sinclair from buying up other small market stations as they've shown their hand as to what they'd do with a monopoly.
The problem here that I see is one of "false advertising" If you present yourself as "News", that has certain connotations. Publishing this forced run content without disclaiming that it is not independently sourced journalism IMO violates those connotations
All news is subject to editors/publishers making decisions about what is included, excluded, omitted, broadcast-ed, etc., for political or commercial reasons.
It has always been this way.
I am opposed to punishing Sinclair. In my view it comes down to that we should discourage the creation of large companies in general. They just get too much power no matter what industry.
I don’t get what the issue is here. I have seen this message on my local television stations. What is missing from the YouTube video is an invitation at the end of that message for viewers to contact the station with any concerns about bias in its own reporting. In fact that is the entire point of the script, and it has been cutoff of the YouTube video, presumably because it appears to be more controversial that way. Oh, the irony!
So a large media company recognized the problem of bias in the media, which could become a business problem if it affects confidence in their news reporting, and invited people to contact them if they noticed this problem creeping into the individual news stations’ reports. Where is the controversy here?
I think the problem here is that if Sinclair can coerce these news organizations, what else can Sinclair coerce them to say? What if they were told to say something blatantly false, or to endorse one person over another. It's also not made clear at all in these broadcasts that they're being made to read from a script, which is a perfect recipe for astroturfing[1].
If I own a station, I’m not “coercing” it when I tell that station that it is our corporate policy to advise viewers of certain features that our channel offers. In this case, they wanted to make sure that viewers understand that there is a specific way to contact the station to complain about any bias they feel the station’s own news reports may have, as this has been an issue with the media recently. I see nothing wrong with that, and in fact I think it’s a positive thing. I have to say that I feel better about and more trusting of the local station I have seen that message on than I do about other local news stations, specifically because they have recognized this significant issue and are attempting to address it.
You may own the gear, but you wouldn't own the airwaves.
In fact, you'd only be granted permission to use the public's airwaves to serve the public interest.
Is it not in the public interest to ask people how they feel about your programming, and call their attention to significant problems in our world (such as media bias)?
Rather than file complaints directly with the FCC?
A lot of people, uh, fail to take what Sinclair says at face value.
And why would that be? That message is basically a feedback request. They are attempting to address a legitimate issue that may cause them a decline in viewership and resulting revenues.
It probably stems from an awareness of the broader context within which they issued that must run script.
If, like the Democratic senators who signed the letter, I enjoyed mostly glowing media coverage, I suppose that I would be upset when a company dismisses that glowing coverage as being the result of bias - even if I knew they were correct. But that’s a hardly a reason to abuse your power as a senator to attempt to damage the company that is doing that, especially when they are trying to solve a legitimate problem for the public at their own stations. That’s pretty evil if you ask me.
Do you really believe Sinclair doesn't have the manpower to watch their own programming to check for any 'biases'?
And if you believe they are somehow incapable of noticing biases: how would they adjudicate any complaints they get?
That request for comments is either a McGuffin needed to have a reason for the preceding rant slamming all other media outlets.
Or it's a ploy to get local stations in line with Sinclair's corporate agenda, by asking their viewers to rat them out to headquarters.
How would that even work? Like, sure they could watch their own programming, but the people watching it would come from essentially the same pool of people, with the same set of shared biases, as those who chose to run the story that way in the first place.
Umm...wut? Would you not agree that bias is in the media is a major issue today, and that it may cause a significant percentage of viewers to abandon a given station or website if they see too much of it? Before the 2016 election, I regularly watched CNN and visited its website. Now it’s such a den of partiality and clickbait headlines that I have relegated it to HuffPo status and cannot trust anything I read there, so I simply don’t go there. I’d imagine there are others that feel this way too.
So if I’m a media company and I see complaints about my stations or a decline in news viewership, I’m going to take steps to stop it from happening. Companies often don’t know that they have problems until customers express their opinions about them, and so Sinclair is trying to keep an open dialogue with their viewers. Since when is asking customers how they feel about your service a bad thing?
So you’re saying that media is not biased, that in fact all of the people saying that there is a bias are trying to portray a “false balance”? Have you looked at the CNN homepage recently? If you u don’t see bias there, there’s no point in continuing to discuss this with you.
> I don’t get what the issue is here. I have seen this message on my local television stations.
One message went pretty viral recently, but I am unsure why you are focused on that single message. Many scripted messages are being passed to local stations with the requirement to read the script without informing viewers that it is a script the local newscasters are required to read. That is the issue, not the message itself.
This assault on the journalistic integrity of local news must stop! Before you know it they'll have so many must-runs that I'll never find out if my toaster really is going to kill me.
I have on good authority that everyone who owns or uses a toaster, will in fact die.
Alternative headline: FCC declines to violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Broadcast licenses are granted on the basis of serving the public interest.
With great power comes great responsibility.
It's disturbing the number of people here calling for and defending the need for a Ministry of Truth.
"This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."[1]
Very weird that a consolidated media company would force its viewpoint to be propagated. This is very unlike the rest of the media and a genuinely new phenomenon. /s
(2012) http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-...
If you think that these companies aren't pushing a viewpoint you got another thing coming. Hint: It's pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist, anti-worker, and anti-political dissenters.
I support the decision, Pai even did something similar when Trump went on one his tirades about taking licenses from the large news companies. He even quoted the Democratic Senator Markey is this reply.
Sinclair can easily lose its trust with its viewers let alone its own talent and that can effect change. There is already scripted news out there that presents facts in a similar manner. It all comes down to, who is upset by it?
if Washington politicians are the ones upset then I am not concerned. They already exert such control over the media by simply coercing news to play nice or lose access that we should always be worried when they want to stifle any speech.
Right wing media has pointed out the same 'creepy talking point synchronicity' happening in the larger mainstream media for many years. Just like with Cambridge Analytica, certain behavior is only raised by the media as a scandal when amateurs try to the same thing the big boys have been doing for years/decades.
Really? Which news outlets had dozens of news anchors read, word for word, the same script that was given to them by their owners and played as if it was a local independent news story?
It's unprecedented. It's not about which politics the story supports, it's about the media and public being manipulated. Ajit Pai's response shows he either doesn't understand that or wants everyone else to think it's about something else.
this isn't exactly new. There's videos from Conan showing the same thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLXQ0qbq6jY
In fact it was a regular segment on his show. This was 10 years ago. Further more, during the second Iraq War local new stations owned by Sinclair aired pro war talking points (even NPR read them), word by word.
If you go back to Bill Clinton, there's a video of him doing this and saying how great it is. This was satellite feed that was broadcasted to remote stations, omebody was able to record the feeds and hear all the conversations. It was basically scripted at the local news level.
There's other evidence to but I don't want to get into it on this site, its overwelming and dark. If we can get just one victory against this crap I'll take it.
Remember Journolist[0]? The views of the major news stations and papers have been heavily aligned in one direction for several decades now. Journolist was hard evidence that they colluded in delivering talking points not just among one brand but multiple brands at the same time. Like I said, Sinclair are amatuers to what has, and we have to assume is, going on with most other outlets.
You're confusing the issue. The issue here isn't a bunch of stations being aligned; the issue is the parent company mandating a word-for-word reading of a script that furthers the parent company's interest.
> Remember Journolist?
Journolist had 400 journalists on it.
Sinclair owns 233 entire stations.
All media companies say "we are the best media source", there is nothing weird with that.
It is questionable when a monopoly of unheard of before size is saying "most other media sources are dangerous for our democracy", especially when it involves gaslighting.
I’m not sure why there is all of th controversy. This is not new.