Comment on How does Chuck Schumer still have a job?
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 4 days agoPeople give the fairness doctrine too much credit; First it’s partially responsible for the current mentality of all opinions matter no matter how stupid. But more importantly it only ever applied to broadcast TV and Radio, not cable or satellite, or the Internet. So it never would have applied to Fox News, for instance.
fishy@lemmy.today 3 days ago
It’s not a silver bullet, but it was a very useful way to ensure people didn’t become radicalized by just listening to one side lie constantly. There’s a reason why Reagan and Nixon wanted it gone, and we’re living through the repercussions of not having it now; radicalized far right extremists everywhere and in control of the government. Also, we could have made updates to expand it or introduce new legislation to curb extremism on other platforms.
Definitely far from perfect but better than our current reality.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
On the contrary, lots of people were radicalized by hearing people like new age healers given the same airtime as medical doctors.
It’s taken 20 years to fail at making the publicly funded internet a utility. The purpose of the doctrine was to govern publicly owned airwaves. I strongly believe it would have been and is impossible to expand the FCCs jurisdiction to include privately owned networks. I also strongly believe that the current administration would abuse the fuck out of these regulations.
fishy@lemmy.today 3 days ago
Yet here we are, with some people believing vaccines cause autism and the far right extremists to boot. I personally would’ve taken more idiots harming themselves with their new age junk than what we got.
Don’t misunderstand, I agree it absolutely wouldn’t have been a catch all and even in its time it lacked the teeth to do much but at least it was something. It combined with a stronger education system could’ve prevented a lot of what we’re dealing with now.