Which used to be the rule, but the rules weren't quite bulletproof enough so now Sinclair and a handful of others own far more news outlets than they should by a better metric. I'm not saying there's anything illegal about it, but I think it should be fixed.
But I also think that if someone made their fortune in industry, they probably shouldn't own newspapers. It's so much conflict of interest... it seems like sometimes it can be okay, but only if there's a really well enforced legal firewall between the interests of the owner and the news reporting. That's hard to manage if the owner isn't disconnected from decisions about what to fund or whether to promote staff critical of them.
There could be a middle ground, but if we can't define what rules constitute a fair middle ground it seems to just get worked around until effectively a few private voices dictate an awful lot of the spin applied to stories.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-censorship-conference-ce...
The HN discussion:
Anyone who's opinion exists outside of the current groupthink is forced to leave these big platforms. It makes it harder for the average person within this group to express themselves because these platforms make it easy. But many will and new platforms will form outside of big tech. These new platforms will have time and space to rethink how they operate and perhaps they will bring in a new era of consumer control.
Plenty of dissenting folks using non-traditional outlets like podcasts and YouTube that have an audience that rivals or is larger than legacy media.
Of course, this would not be possible in China where any dissenting voices would quickly be extinguished.
China is more extreme, and more explicit about the link between politics and media, but it's broadly speaking the same system.
PS: this is especially true of countries like the UK, where extremely stringent and abusable libel laws regularly cause financial troubles for small presses that upset powerful people.
We even learn at school that no writing can be objective since humans write them but what matters is to identify ideological stances and read enough subjective angles to have at least an opinion on where stakeholders stand if not "the truth"?
Do you really think that people who write about politics can ever resist the urge to try to shape politics?
Why would a government journalist be any better?
Another threat is foreign ownership of media. In Poland, where public media is explicitly controlled by whatever ruling party happens to be in power, there was recently a big media circus around introducing some media investment restrictions by foreign companies. Over 80% of Polish media are foreign owned, much of it in German hands, but not only. Best of all, it's not presented as representing the interests of those countries or groups. That's a huge problem for national security and a symptom of the neocolonial control the country is under (Piketty once described Poland as "foreign-owned"). Recent media brouhaha was triggered by an American media company (owned by Discovery). It's one thing to read about another POV. It's another to have foreign interests presented as your own and concealing their true nature. The Western media meanwhile routinely convince the Western public that anything against Western oligarchic interest in that region is fascist and other favorite epithets. They groom the public to view what's happening in a way that is untrue and benefits oligarchs. Colonialism still exists. We just call it other things now.
Also, divisiveness is not the primary problem, but downstream. If we focus on division, we risk throwing truth under the bus, especially in this climate of subjectivist "narratives". We are vulnerable to saying "to heal divisions, we must accept a common narrative". Heh, sorry, nope. That's the tyranny of the lie and the narrative makers (hence the foaming at the mouth by those who are losing control of the "official narrative"). The only thing worth uniting around is something true and something capable and worthy enough to function as a unifier. You need enough in common to create a workable society where coexistence and cooperation are possible. If we can't find something like that, then sorry, but you have no viable society.
In other words: polarisation is useful when it's transient. Some issue causes people to divide and work out some consensus, and then divisions die down. A persistent divison that becomes its own end is destructive.
Actually, doesn’t China do that? It paints it’s people’s struggles as them vs the rest of the world. Maybe they don’t need political competition because the CIA gets the blame for many of its domestic problems.
Yeah, but what's the system efficient about? Not figuring out correct solutions - the internal competition demands both sides to define themselves in terms of doing/believing the opposite to what the other side does/believes, so the system is just doing a random walk. The way I see it, it's primarily efficient as a way to grow the market - ever-increasing campaign budgets and ongoing political shouting matches are just funding advertisers and news agencies.
That can be balanced-out with other media outlets voicing other side.
And... not attacking China's great political unification, having and using politics to censor out a lot of government corruption that ultimately hurts its own people... doesn't look great
(no 'political balance-of-power' + no freedom-of-speech/press + no-election: the government officials can de facto do whatever they want, from small things like accepting bribes for not noticing fake-food factories, to uh... ok I'll stop now.
> That can be balanced-out with other media outlets voicing other side.
It's entirely possible to counter balance something with a lie, neither the original or response being the truth, which doesn't help inform the viewers either.
The problem with putting them in the same sentence is that it equates them, in the same way "very fine people on both sides" did.
Being sent to a reeducation camp, keeping a billion plus population exposed only to propaganda, a total lack of free speech, and openly disappearing people (like Gedhun Choekyi Nyima of Tibet) is not in the same bracket as any of the other ills you were mentioning.
The same things are present in both the chinese and American societies, under different names. Eg. The US prosecuted the "war on drugs" to house a ton of political prisoners and ensure they cant vote, and that their families cannot become wealthier without adopting the party line. The Facebook moderation team remove your direct message to a friend is not materially different from the government moderation team removing your wichat direct message to a friend. American society disappears people too; for an obvious example, you can look at the people painting red hands on their faces
The problem is trusting government. I don't trust either parties here so I would lean toward a for-profit system with heavier regulation.
It looks like the Fairness Doctrine is no more? Anyone have better knowledge here than I do who can give some background?
From what I kind of know it used to require broadcasters to dedicate programming to actual factual news in order to use govt spectrum. Also dictated journalism ethics like letting subjects comment.
Also seems like this deregulation was the impetus for (what i consider dangerous and harmful) alt reality 'news' like the murdoch empire and Alex Jones characters.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/everyth...
No, BBC today is a bad example. BBC 50 years ago, I don't know.
I don’t pay for TV license (out of principles) and I’m annoyed I cannot legally watch SpaceX launches live on YouTube.
Meaning having all the correct facts, and information, will not fix polarization, only societal evolution
This goes back to the Enlightenment, and has historically been considered a good thing when contrasted to state or church doctrines.
Happy to help.
Completely unsubstantiated nonsense claim.
> China has the opposite configuration where the state controls all information and you'll be re-educated if you say the wrong thing loud enough.
Alarmist gobbledygook.