stessier wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2023 12:03 pmYour thesis, if I understood, was that Fox had to be stopped from lying because it hurt democracy. That Europe had laws in place that did such things and their democratic life was better for it. I say Brexit is a fine example that your thesis sucks. People lied about the effects of Brexit and the populace was duped all without the help of news organizations. Constraining news organizations did nothing but take away their ability to express themselves in ways that would have been protected here. That is not a fair trade. It's not the organizations that are the problem - it's the people.
Not really the thesis. My thesis is that responsible oversight could have dissuaded Fox from the most outrageous behavior. Or more expansively prevented the consolidation that gave them so much power in the first place (as explained below).
You see moderating. I see a wolf hiding in sheep's clothing. How long until they look at that 12% and think the majority could be theirs if they moved more in that direction. MAGA shows that it can happen in the blink of an eye.
Maybe. But there are predictions based on data and predictions based on hunches. I prefer the former.
Did you actually read what they wrote? I went through a half dozen in comparison to the US - it is not exactly a scientific analysis worthy of further study. It seems to be more an indicator of mono-cultures vs. multi-cultures.
I am aware of what they wrote. Their rankings to me are based on a framework that reflects a reality that a free press doesn't exist solely because the government can't interfere. It exists when opinions aren't constrained by governments, private organizations, intimidation/violence against reporters, and misinformation. That is what they are weighing. It isn't about mono vs multi-culture.
I think it's illustrative to decompose why I think we are in ~40s range based on their rankings. They seem to be pointing at a real problem which is media concentration. We've allowed private companies to control speech and ignore the spread of disinformation. This is due to the government taking a complete hands off approach to their one power here - preventing monopoly power. That was probably the most fundamental front line defense if we accept that regulating content is off-the-table. First in radio, then in OTA tv markets, and then cable. All along we had warnings that they had begun injecting overwhelming amounts of misinformation and flat out lying into the public sphere. "We" ignored it to the point the political system broke down. However, now we're seeing reporters occasionally attacked/bullied by police, intimidated by far-right thugs, etc. We're seeing a wholesale attack upon truth here in the US and in the end our approach didn't work.
I don't think there is any realistic argument we did not fail at this and my point all along is that holding onto our values so tightly they ignore reality is ultimately what has potentially doomed us. Again we had a system that worked much like nation's in Europe until the Reagan era where they rolled back the fairness doctrine. Only one piece of the puzzle but the start of a wholesale effort to build a propaganda function. Subsequently the government through the last few decades watched as media oligarchs like Murdoch, Redstone, Eisner, et. al. compressed the vast majority of public speech into 5-6 companies. We also saw local news organizations bought up, consolidated, gutted, and left to slowly wither away.
