In my opinion, with the Fairness Doctrine in place, Fox News doesn’t launch and half the country’s brains don’t get rewired into being mouth-breathing knuckle draggers. “The Brainwashing of my Dad” on Prime explains this very well.
I’d feel like the news would be actual news not just another PR machine for one political ideology or another. Sure we’d still see them bring out guests who are deep leaning but they’d have another to balance it out and I’d like to imagine people could actually debate political ideas instead of just screaming at each other.
As I understand it the fairness doctrine was appealed because it’s technically unconstitutional for the government to tell the media what is/isn’t true and what they should/shouldn’t report. The circle jerk in here wants to paint it as some nefarious happening that benefitted one party when both parties were/are on board.
Not substantially different because the fairness doctrine only applied to federally licensed over-the-air broadcast TV/Radio stations and never applied to cable/satellite programming, and definitely could not be applied to the internet or social media.
Ongoing enforcement of the fairness doctrine might have slowed down the advance of partisan media slightly, but not by much.
I don’t think it would have been THAT different. Legacy media hasn’t been particular relevant for a couple decades now, and social media would have proliferated the widespread algorithmic brainrot all the same without any regulation especially among the kind of voters who are so easily…persuadable (read: gullible).
But those fairness rules as far as I know only regulated the airwaves, not the (yet to be invented) internet. The world of the fairness doctrine (with 7 channels for everyone) is long gone, not just the rule itself.
Nowadays you can choose any media source that agrees with you from the get-go or even a collection of them and never be exposed to a “wrong” opinion or even know it exists.
Lastly and ironically, the “giving equal time” thing may have backfired by now since one party decided more than a decade ago that lying about basically everything under the sun was their go-to strategy, and legacy media especially never figured out how to deal with it even after a god damn decade they still fall for it every single time. I got so tired of stations like NPR failing to call it out I stopped listening entirely.
So the question remains: would the fairness doctrine and similar have mattered at all if one party decided to just…lie lie lie and the “journalists” as they call themselves don’t ever cross-examine them on it as they’ve proven incapable of doing. At that point all you have is a platform for falsehoods: would such regulations save anyone from that? Doubtful, because such regulations assume people act in good faith and that’s a mistake.
The main problem would remain, though it may not be as amplified.
And that main problem is that people are remarkably poor at going through information.
You look at the printing press coming to Europe, and we always imagine this a good thing. And it was, broadly speaking in the long run.
In the shorter run, it led to hundreds of years of religious wars, werewolf hunts, and witch trials.
We don’t think about these things because it’s counter-intuitive. But people could and did, write utter horseshit about those psychos over the hill who are doing horrible things to these saintly people just like you. Things that probably never happened, but took on a life of its own. So you end up sending a force over to avenge this, and then more murder, and counter-revenge and on and on all spurned on by the fact that though people can read, they’re not literate enough to understand the actual context.
And the same is true with the supernatural, which spikes with literacy.
And here we are today with an internet doing the exact same thing.
A more balanced media would certainly help, I think. But it would not resolve the issue entirely.
I’ve always felt that all you need is Chyron (the feeder on the bottom) that is a specific height ratio, unhidden that says ‘OPINION’ or ‘EDITORIAL COMMENT” when non-NEWS is taking place. That news being held up to journalistic standards that exist today to prevent libel and slander. 7/8 of your cable “news” content would go away.
It would have slowed down conservative AM Talk Radio and specifically Rush Limbaugh, but would not have changed the course of history. The movement already had all the things in place (John Birch society, Nixon, Goldwater, Reagan, Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition and others had already set things in motion).
Some folks say if the Fairness Doctrine hadn’t been killed, we might not be where we are now. The fragmentation, the algorithm wars, the culture of outrage… it might never have metastasized. Some even go deeper: they say the Doctrine was abolished on purpose, because a unified, informed public is the government’s biggest threat. The more divided we are, the easier it is to keep us locked in separate cages, fighting shadows instead of asking real questions.
While the Fairness Doctrine was a factor, in my personal opinion Bill Clinton signing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and deregulating broadcasting leading to the massive consolidation of the media marketplace was a bigger factor in bringing us to where we are today. Of course, the internet then made broadcast media of secondary importance… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
Probably never would have gotten idiots like rush limbaugh blasting stupidity across the airwaves, since the revocation of the fairness doctrine directly led to the rise of talk radio.
but also, even cable news networks today do their own version of the fairness doctrine sometimes, with damaging effects, like having a panel of experts consisting of one climate scientist and one climate change denier in order to “fairly show both sides” of the argument.
It might have slowed down some of the origins of the hard right crazies like Limbaugh and Beck, just as important was Reagan’s pact with Roger Ailes to supply a disinformation network disguised as news. It’s as important to ask what would it be like if Reagan hadn’t been elected, granting citizenship to Murdoch, and empowering the christian fascist movement to become a political force for evil.
If they had extended it to cable and electronic media, i.e. modifying it as needed, we would be much better off. Fox News wouldn’t exist in its current propagandized form.
Fairness Doctrine should have been expand to protect the integrity of news media.
As an aside, Citizens United should never have been allowed. Those two decisions have made an enormous impact on the course of US’s trajectory into authoritarianism.
It’s funny hoe portrait claim fox news wouldn’t be a thing, even though it had nothing to do with cable. Even if it had fox atleast dosent black ball people because they showed up on CNN like CNN does to people showing up on fox.
Yeah you will probably get talked over but they sis atleast allow the other side to talk vs pure propaganda like leftwing media loves to do..
The left had pundits across various stations withe nearly an identical line ” sharp as a tack” when referring to biden. How are you going to only bitch and moan about the opposition station?
Reddit its self is full of this nonsense. It just took the Harris campaign paying people to make it appear like she was going to win on this site. The same thing with pro Palestine money and constant claims of genocide even though total deaths haven’t accounted for 1% of the population and if that is what they wanted it could easily account for 2-3 in a single month.
Yea. Don’t put that on the FCC. that was Reagan. Reagan fucked is twice. Trickle down economics and repeal of the fairness doctrine leading to entertainment like Fox News
What seemed like a small decision 40 years ago leads to the brainwashing of the American populous to the point that we are cheering for a guy that’s burning it all down.
All the top comments assume the fairness doctrine wouldn’t have evolved to include things like cable, social media, etc. If we had a fairness principle in media (or any commitment to the idea that information is valuable and disinformation / misinformation are problems), then we could theoretically have had some version of the approach that applied to newer technology as well.
Significantly less polarized but probably on the same over all trajectory. There are a number of inflection points that may have happened very differently with an enforced fairness doctrine but it’s impossible to say what the ramifications actually would be
A better question is what it would look like without the apportionment act of 1929. Congress and the electoral college would be completely different and it would be significantly harder to win the electoral college while losing the popular vote.
Lowkey feel like the whole media game flipped after that. Once they dropped the Fairness Doctrine, it was open season—no one had to show both sides anymore, so it just turned into straight-up opinion and hot takes. Now we got news channels basically acting like hype men for whatever side they’re on. Kinda wild how that one move probably helped spark all the division we’re dealing with now.
It was the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that fucked is. Deregulation, consolidation, and the complete mono/duopoly of radio and TV stations some folks now live under came from that. Sinclair? That act let them become what they are. Allowing folks to own multiple stations across multiple mediums in the same market? That law allows it.
“The Brainwashing of my Dad”(2015) gets into this. It was definitely the step that broke as we tumbled into fascism. Once the propaganda firehose was turned on there was no going back.
Zero difference at all as SCOTUS would have ruled it unconstitutional to tell companies what speech the government approves of. It was generally known at the time that it couldn’t withstand judicial review.
The degradation of the Republican Party largely started with Nixon, and ethics, honest and respectful dialogue eroded further infer Ronald Reagan. It was the Reagan administration who laid the foundation of the toxic right wing hate media that we see and hear today. That is when the Fairness Doctrine was dismantled.
Individual Republican hate activists such as Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, etc destroy respectful dialogue from the Republican Party.
Today, we are all witnessing full on dictatorship tendencies from their Communist sympathizing leader and his cult followers.
We witness toxic, hateful discourse every day in right wing hate media. Contrast that to the better days of icons such as Walter Cronkite. America needs those days back! I’m now an independent voter, and I have many friends from all parties. We all agree quality discourse is best. The Fairness Doctrine should most definitely be restored and fair discussions, not slanted propaganda, should be the norm once again.
Not much if at all. The fairness doctrine didn’t mean you had to have exact equal time of a mirror image of views. You could have a news story, or someone with some opposing viewpoints but not super strong ones. Like Rush Limbaugh and offset him with Joe Manchin.
Fairness Doctrine and Citizens United are used by the left as an “excuse” or “reason” they lose. These things aren’t as powerful as people make them out to be.
People keep thinking that the Fairness Doctorine had something to do with the truth, or facts. It absolutely did not. Literally the only thing it did was guarantee equal time for opposing views, and there are views that 100% should NOT be given equal time. We do not need to hear from flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, or white supremacists as much as we hear from reasonable people. It doesn’t help anything at all.
The middle holds for a little longer but the dam always breaks. Also the irony is there is no progressive agenda until the centrists start losing elections. Clinton was pretty boring until Gingrich and the GOP took over the House. There is no gay marriage, no trans acceptance, being “woke”, etc. unless Democrats lose working, lower class Whites.
We tracked pretty closely with the timeline to the Civil War. The various compromises only delayed the inevitable clash of two sides with irreconcilable differences.
Comments
In my opinion, with the Fairness Doctrine in place, Fox News doesn’t launch and half the country’s brains don’t get rewired into being mouth-breathing knuckle draggers. “The Brainwashing of my Dad” on Prime explains this very well.
I’d feel like the news would be actual news not just another PR machine for one political ideology or another. Sure we’d still see them bring out guests who are deep leaning but they’d have another to balance it out and I’d like to imagine people could actually debate political ideas instead of just screaming at each other.
Trump would have like a 5% approval rating.
As I understand it the fairness doctrine was appealed because it’s technically unconstitutional for the government to tell the media what is/isn’t true and what they should/shouldn’t report. The circle jerk in here wants to paint it as some nefarious happening that benefitted one party when both parties were/are on board.
It would be much more thoughtful and decent.
Not substantially different because the fairness doctrine only applied to federally licensed over-the-air broadcast TV/Radio stations and never applied to cable/satellite programming, and definitely could not be applied to the internet or social media.
Ongoing enforcement of the fairness doctrine might have slowed down the advance of partisan media slightly, but not by much.
I don’t think it would have been THAT different. Legacy media hasn’t been particular relevant for a couple decades now, and social media would have proliferated the widespread algorithmic brainrot all the same without any regulation especially among the kind of voters who are so easily…persuadable (read: gullible).
But those fairness rules as far as I know only regulated the airwaves, not the (yet to be invented) internet. The world of the fairness doctrine (with 7 channels for everyone) is long gone, not just the rule itself.
Nowadays you can choose any media source that agrees with you from the get-go or even a collection of them and never be exposed to a “wrong” opinion or even know it exists.
Lastly and ironically, the “giving equal time” thing may have backfired by now since one party decided more than a decade ago that lying about basically everything under the sun was their go-to strategy, and legacy media especially never figured out how to deal with it even after a god damn decade they still fall for it every single time. I got so tired of stations like NPR failing to call it out I stopped listening entirely.
So the question remains: would the fairness doctrine and similar have mattered at all if one party decided to just…lie lie lie and the “journalists” as they call themselves don’t ever cross-examine them on it as they’ve proven incapable of doing. At that point all you have is a platform for falsehoods: would such regulations save anyone from that? Doubtful, because such regulations assume people act in good faith and that’s a mistake.
More like Canada, universal healthcare and decent political dialogue.
Fair and balanced.
We would not have the half dead maga idiots running around.
Probably better, but it’s hard to say.
The main problem would remain, though it may not be as amplified.
And that main problem is that people are remarkably poor at going through information.
You look at the printing press coming to Europe, and we always imagine this a good thing. And it was, broadly speaking in the long run.
In the shorter run, it led to hundreds of years of religious wars, werewolf hunts, and witch trials.
We don’t think about these things because it’s counter-intuitive. But people could and did, write utter horseshit about those psychos over the hill who are doing horrible things to these saintly people just like you. Things that probably never happened, but took on a life of its own. So you end up sending a force over to avenge this, and then more murder, and counter-revenge and on and on all spurned on by the fact that though people can read, they’re not literate enough to understand the actual context.
And the same is true with the supernatural, which spikes with literacy.
And here we are today with an internet doing the exact same thing.
A more balanced media would certainly help, I think. But it would not resolve the issue entirely.
It might have led to more balanced media coverage and less partisan polarization.
I’ve always felt that all you need is Chyron (the feeder on the bottom) that is a specific height ratio, unhidden that says ‘OPINION’ or ‘EDITORIAL COMMENT” when non-NEWS is taking place. That news being held up to journalistic standards that exist today to prevent libel and slander. 7/8 of your cable “news” content would go away.
There would have been something instead of nothing to push back against the internet disinformation machine.
Trump may never have been elected, or even run at all.
The country’s politics would probably also be dramatically different.
Imagine if a Trump appointed FCC could decide what counted as “fair.”
Citizens united is what fucked everything up
It would have slowed down conservative AM Talk Radio and specifically Rush Limbaugh, but would not have changed the course of history. The movement already had all the things in place (John Birch society, Nixon, Goldwater, Reagan, Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition and others had already set things in motion).
Some folks say if the Fairness Doctrine hadn’t been killed, we might not be where we are now. The fragmentation, the algorithm wars, the culture of outrage… it might never have metastasized. Some even go deeper: they say the Doctrine was abolished on purpose, because a unified, informed public is the government’s biggest threat. The more divided we are, the easier it is to keep us locked in separate cages, fighting shadows instead of asking real questions.
I’m lost y’all
I think about this a lot. And, the de-regulation that allowed one company to own more than just a few stations.
While the Fairness Doctrine was a factor, in my personal opinion Bill Clinton signing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and deregulating broadcasting leading to the massive consolidation of the media marketplace was a bigger factor in bringing us to where we are today. Of course, the internet then made broadcast media of secondary importance… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
Why did they do that, btw? Was that part of the general trend toward deregulation?
Faux News, would be Faux Conservative Propaganda Entertainment
A lot more civil
I don’t think anything would change.
With today’s access to an over saturated media environment the fairness doctrine is almost moot.
The spirit of the doctrine was to allow different viewpoints on controversial subjects.
I guess if was in effect against say MSNBC they would have to allow a conservative pundit to offer their opinion on matters.
Probably never would have gotten idiots like rush limbaugh blasting stupidity across the airwaves, since the revocation of the fairness doctrine directly led to the rise of talk radio.
but also, even cable news networks today do their own version of the fairness doctrine sometimes, with damaging effects, like having a panel of experts consisting of one climate scientist and one climate change denier in order to “fairly show both sides” of the argument.
It might have slowed down some of the origins of the hard right crazies like Limbaugh and Beck, just as important was Reagan’s pact with Roger Ailes to supply a disinformation network disguised as news. It’s as important to ask what would it be like if Reagan hadn’t been elected, granting citizenship to Murdoch, and empowering the christian fascist movement to become a political force for evil.
We would be driven closer to socialism than what we are today.
Then you wouldn’t have Sean Hannity talking about how Trump tariffs are “actually good.”
If they had extended it to cable and electronic media, i.e. modifying it as needed, we would be much better off. Fox News wouldn’t exist in its current propagandized form.
Fairness Doctrine should have been expand to protect the integrity of news media.
As an aside, Citizens United should never have been allowed. Those two decisions have made an enormous impact on the course of US’s trajectory into authoritarianism.
It’s funny hoe portrait claim fox news wouldn’t be a thing, even though it had nothing to do with cable. Even if it had fox atleast dosent black ball people because they showed up on CNN like CNN does to people showing up on fox.
Yeah you will probably get talked over but they sis atleast allow the other side to talk vs pure propaganda like leftwing media loves to do..
The left had pundits across various stations withe nearly an identical line ” sharp as a tack” when referring to biden. How are you going to only bitch and moan about the opposition station?
Reddit its self is full of this nonsense. It just took the Harris campaign paying people to make it appear like she was going to win on this site. The same thing with pro Palestine money and constant claims of genocide even though total deaths haven’t accounted for 1% of the population and if that is what they wanted it could easily account for 2-3 in a single month.
Yea. Don’t put that on the FCC. that was Reagan. Reagan fucked is twice. Trickle down economics and repeal of the fairness doctrine leading to entertainment like Fox News
What seemed like a small decision 40 years ago leads to the brainwashing of the American populous to the point that we are cheering for a guy that’s burning it all down.
Most Americans don’t know what that was, or that it was abolished 😐
All the top comments assume the fairness doctrine wouldn’t have evolved to include things like cable, social media, etc. If we had a fairness principle in media (or any commitment to the idea that information is valuable and disinformation / misinformation are problems), then we could theoretically have had some version of the approach that applied to newer technology as well.
No Faux News!!
I don’t know but i would love to find out
After watching the documentary The Brain Washing of My Dad, I’m much better informed on this topic than I was previously. Highly recommended.
Fox News in it’s present form would have never been allowed to exist!
Significantly less polarized but probably on the same over all trajectory. There are a number of inflection points that may have happened very differently with an enforced fairness doctrine but it’s impossible to say what the ramifications actually would be
A better question is what it would look like without the apportionment act of 1929. Congress and the electoral college would be completely different and it would be significantly harder to win the electoral college while losing the popular vote.
Lowkey feel like the whole media game flipped after that. Once they dropped the Fairness Doctrine, it was open season—no one had to show both sides anymore, so it just turned into straight-up opinion and hot takes. Now we got news channels basically acting like hype men for whatever side they’re on. Kinda wild how that one move probably helped spark all the division we’re dealing with now.
It was the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that fucked is. Deregulation, consolidation, and the complete mono/duopoly of radio and TV stations some folks now live under came from that. Sinclair? That act let them become what they are. Allowing folks to own multiple stations across multiple mediums in the same market? That law allows it.
“The Brainwashing of my Dad”(2015) gets into this. It was definitely the step that broke as we tumbled into fascism. Once the propaganda firehose was turned on there was no going back.
Zero difference at all as SCOTUS would have ruled it unconstitutional to tell companies what speech the government approves of. It was generally known at the time that it couldn’t withstand judicial review.
The degradation of the Republican Party largely started with Nixon, and ethics, honest and respectful dialogue eroded further infer Ronald Reagan. It was the Reagan administration who laid the foundation of the toxic right wing hate media that we see and hear today. That is when the Fairness Doctrine was dismantled.
Individual Republican hate activists such as Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, etc destroy respectful dialogue from the Republican Party.
Today, we are all witnessing full on dictatorship tendencies from their Communist sympathizing leader and his cult followers.
We witness toxic, hateful discourse every day in right wing hate media. Contrast that to the better days of icons such as Walter Cronkite. America needs those days back! I’m now an independent voter, and I have many friends from all parties. We all agree quality discourse is best. The Fairness Doctrine should most definitely be restored and fair discussions, not slanted propaganda, should be the norm once again.
The legendary Walter Cronkite announces historic moon landing.
Little to no difference. The media was 100% able to be incompetent both before and after that.
The fairness doctrine forces the news to give equal weight to both sides. Equal weight between sanity and utter insanity is still insane.
Not much if at all. The fairness doctrine didn’t mean you had to have exact equal time of a mirror image of views. You could have a news story, or someone with some opposing viewpoints but not super strong ones. Like Rush Limbaugh and offset him with Joe Manchin.
Fairness Doctrine and Citizens United are used by the left as an “excuse” or “reason” they lose. These things aren’t as powerful as people make them out to be.
Man, you guys are really just taking high voted comments on political posts and submitting as your own eh
Bot question.
People keep thinking that the Fairness Doctorine had something to do with the truth, or facts. It absolutely did not. Literally the only thing it did was guarantee equal time for opposing views, and there are views that 100% should NOT be given equal time. We do not need to hear from flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, or white supremacists as much as we hear from reasonable people. It doesn’t help anything at all.
The middle holds for a little longer but the dam always breaks. Also the irony is there is no progressive agenda until the centrists start losing elections. Clinton was pretty boring until Gingrich and the GOP took over the House. There is no gay marriage, no trans acceptance, being “woke”, etc. unless Democrats lose working, lower class Whites.
We tracked pretty closely with the timeline to the Civil War. The various compromises only delayed the inevitable clash of two sides with irreconcilable differences.