FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
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...)
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.
Sure the number of channels is higher, but the amount of information spread is not.
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...
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I can’t think of the last time I saw broadcast local news.
Its just not constitutional to ban Sinclair for running pro GOP content.
Facebook has an actual monolopy on an entire market.
I’m very hesitant to have the government interfering with media, even against right wing clowns like Sinclair.
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.
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.
If you don't fact check information, nobody can say you know it's false.
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 ;)
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.
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.
6 of one, half dozen of the other.
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.
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.
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?
What some thinks (editorial) is not the same as facts, based on investigation.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
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).
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?
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.
> 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.
Commercial speech, such as, advertising has less protection than most other forms of speech.
Political speech (AKA news) is the most protected speech.
Advertising, product labels, or advertisement signs are examples of commercial speech.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That doesn't make him a journalist. Nor does it make what falls from his lips news.
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).
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?
Otherwise it's gossip, heresay, agitprop
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.
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.
"Network" [1978] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/
"De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" [1980] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v2GDbEmjGE
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"The Media Can Legally Lie" [2003] https://web.archive.org/web/20100421103357/http://www.projec...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre#Whistleblower_lawsui...
"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.
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.
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.
It has always been this way.
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?
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.
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?
In fact, you'd only be granted permission to use the public's airwaves to serve the public interest.
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.
With great power comes great responsibility.
(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.
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.
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.
Journolist had 400 journalists on it.
Sinclair owns 233 entire stations.
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.
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.