- In the past, the truth about a social or political event was whatever the newspaper or the TV news said it was. But now that anyone can publish their views, the process of arriving at the truth is a lot more complicated — and even more important.
Funnily enough I just read about the court case that Fox News argued that "... under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves" and won. I mean, I knew Fox was biased but I did not realize that they are able to legally lie on air and call it news. I am not sure how this goes on unchallenged by anyone considering how much damage to democracy they are doing. Is it just that nobody that has any power has noticed?
I don't think that legally anyone could challenge it. I may think that its reprehensible behavior but how does it not fall under the protection of free speech? Unless it poses a clear public threat, it's protected, right? Should tabloid magazines be illegal? Woman gives birth to half dog, half alien baby -Illegal?
I am not saying that they should be disallowed from broadcasting - that's both unenforceable, and pure censorship. I am saying that they should not be able to call their broadcasts 'news'... but I suppose that's one tiny step away from censorship of anything the people in power may dislike. And libel laws are not an answer, they have terrible effects on the press in UK as far as I know. Apparently Canada has a law that states that a news channel may not "broadcast false or misleading news", and that was a reason why FOX could not get a license there. If the FCC can fine a television channel hundreds of thousands of dollars for swearing on air, or for a nip slip during a concert performance in the name of "public decency", should it not also be able fine a channel if it receives complaints about factually incorrect information being broadcast? After all, that is far more harmful than a swear word. It could be framed as a public safety issue - if a station broadcasts something highly alarming, yet believable, after many years of propaganda and being trained to disbelieve anything that "mainstream media" say - how many people will believe it? I don't know I suppose there is no easy answer. There are consumer protection laws designed against medical quackery (though also insufficient as far as I know)... But there does not seem to be a safe way to guard people against malicious information, since definition of it as malicious is so subjective, and it can be so easily manipulated to be turned against valid sources as well. I guess the only way is to rely on organizations that educate and inform people and run counter-disinformation campaigns. FOX & their ilk have their listeners convinced that "leftist media" lies anyway though, so it seems almost hopeless, since any counter-propaganda will fall on ears already predisposed to disbelieve anything disagreeing with what FOX broadcasts. I'm personally very impressed with how very "evil-mastermind" level it is.
I don't think we differ very much in our opinion regarding this. I just think that any sort of laws stipulating what you can say are dangerous. Making it illegal to call something that is subjective or even false "news", in my opinion, is a form of censorship. Buyer beware. If you want to be an idiot then by all means watch Fox news and MSNBC and take it as gospel as opposed to the entertainment that it is.
I don't think we "could" trust them. The Gulf of Tonkin is a great example of the old guard failing at being trusted. There was little choice but to trust them. That doesn't mean we could trust them categorically.In the not-too-distant past, Shirky said, we could look to trusted media oracles like former TV anchor Walter Cronkite to determine what the truth was about any given media event, but that was only possible because there were so few sources of media or journalism at the time.