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Comment by simion314 | Hacker News Reader

Quick question, most countries have laws on how media should work, like what can you put on public TV at what hours, how to mark certain content, rules that demand to always provide both sides perspective and punishments if you don't follow the rules, like removing your TV license. Did we allow this new media to just ignore our laws and publish one sided fabricated news? Maybe is finally the time to block stuff that is not media, or force them to label their content as "fiction/fabrication"

And someone will say "what about XYZ?", yes label Xyz fiction too if it does not follow the rules. With national media that exists physically here you can have the justice system give them big fines if they for example fabricate bullshit about a person/company but if this media is some freelancers far away the justice will never reach them so we should do something before we reach the scenario in Idicracy

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> rules that demand to always provide both sides perspective

Not sure what country you're referring to, but there's certainly no such rule in the US, Australia, or the UK. In the US it would be unconstitutional.

The UK at least has legislation which applies during elections and referendums (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-co...).

Good point.

That doesn't force covering "both sides" of every issue though, in the way people often mean by "fair and balanced" in these discussions, where every issue needs to have a counterpoint aired.

The UK election rules are more about ensuring all the candidates for election get some representative airtime, and that overtly political advertisements are labelled as such during the election period, so a channel is not allowed to promote one party and completely block out another, or be monopolised by advertising funds. (There's also a very short quiet period just before the voting takes place.)

If all parties generally agree on something, the opposing view to that is unlikely to get much airtime, even if someone not running for office would really like to talk about it.

>Not sure what country you're referring to, but there's certainly no such rule in the US, Australia, or the UK. In the US it would be unconstitutional.

So in US you can say on newspaper or TV things like "Bob did X" and Bob can do nothing about it? I thought the at least justice can demand Bob to be paid damages and the newspaper/TV to show a retraction. I mean are you free to denigrate people in US with no consequences? If yes, let's ignore US and focus on countries where we demand media to act like professionals, to have a code and rules and to pay if they broke it, pay damages if they damage people etc.

In the US, there are slander and libel laws that you can be sued for if you print something that is untrue. But if you are a public figure or entity, you have to prove not just that an untruth was printed but also that it was done with "actual malice".

Which country were you referring to specifically? I don't know any that require presenting both sides of a political issue as a general rule.

I am from Romania, our constitution is mostly based on France if I am not mistaken, maybe you can translate this https://www.lighthousecommunications.ro/blog/tot-ce-trebuie-...

there is the obligation that if you presented false acuzations(not opinions) about someone you are forced to give this person the right to present his defense, also the editors of the news are responsible for the things they published.

So you are not forced to invite both sides when presenting general news, this is the journalist code though, to always ask the other side for a comment.

I remember about this TV channel that was a pile of shit and got tons of fines and finally was closed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OTV_(Romanian_TV_channel)

At least going by the Google translation of the article you cited, I doubt that any of these broadcasters would be required to carry RT under this law. This is more about slander and libel, not about giving every political viewpoint equal airtime. So I guess the answer to your original question is, "no, we did not allow new media to ignore our laws." Because there are no laws enforcing the mechanisms you contemplated in your original comment.

As far as giving the other side the opportunity to comment, the news networks are falling all over themselves to give Russia the opportunity to comment. They would all love to have frank, on the record discussions of this issue with Russian officials. That's different than broadcasting Russian propaganda though.

Sorry for confusion, there is no law to give all possible political ideas equal air time.

Is about preventing fake facts being presented , you will pay if you do that and you are forced to admit it like a TV channel will have to present "Our channel was fined with XYZ for the content we published at date because we did ABC"

Since bad behavior costs you money and you have to publicly admit when you were wrong and you have to also show affected parties response you will think a few times before you present something, maybe if you are not sure you label it "we cannon confirm X" .

But the issue with this constitution rules is that are old and do not specify the internet, IMO is a good idea to have media follow an good code of conduct and punish them when they repeatedly fail to do so, they are professionals not teens on reddit

The US actually does have regulations that requires that, although it’s fairly weak:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule

This rule has actually had a notable effect in the current election cycle: https://www.newsweek.com/fccs-equal-time-rules-prompt-statio...

The regulation requires equal access for political candidates during an election, which is substantially different and weaker than the claim I was rebutting.

It is certainly weak, but I think it meets the above-quoted description.

It only applies in certain cases, and only guarantees access to a minimal degree, but it is more than nothing.

The quote was:

> rules that demand to always provide both sides perspective

This regulation does not satisfy the "always" part of the quoted description. In fact the regulation does not even reach the standards of "most of the time" or "often." If the description had been, "in certain rare cases," then this regulation would have satisfied it, but then the whole comment would have made no sense w.r.t. the banning of RT.

> most countries have laws on how media should work

Much of how the internet works reflects its origin in the United States where freedom of speech is a paramount value. In America, the notion is that it's better to combat lies with the truth than with repression.

In the era of Fake News and The Big Lie, this value is being stretched thin. It may be that we'll need rules to restrict the spreading of untruths, perhaps a labeling system as you suggest. Even so, I think it will be very hard, if not impossible, to craft laws of that sort without building an edifice for repression.

At least some punishment or force them to comply with the basic rule "

If you put false/wrong information on first page like Bob did Y. then justice can force you to put on the same first page a retraction like "We are sorry, we were wrong, Bob did not did X" and pay Bob damages.

So if some TV channel or Internet media thing says shit like "Masks do not help with Covid" they will have to pay a fine and publish "Masks can help with Covid in this cases "

The issue remains with extrnal media like from China and Russia, they can refuse to follow the local laws and then we can label them, maybe tax them and use the money to support local news/media related universities.

> The issue remains with extrnal media like from China and Russia > we can label them

There is already the "The Foreign Agents Registration Act" in the US.

And Russia had recently copy-pasted it into their laws, which had caused a massive internal shitstorm and a heavy criticism from the West.

It was a fun moment of hypocrisy to watch.

Should "we" force you to label your posts as "activism" rather than "information" or "discussion"?

HN can auto-label all our posts by default as personal opinions but if they can detect I am a MS/Apple/ employee they can auto-label me with that, if I am part of some group they can label me with "member of this group". Transparency if fine with me.

Like for food, label what is inside, if you want the "media" label you should be an actual journalist and follow the laws and the media code of conduct, otherwise we can give you a different label more appropriate.

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