Msnbc/ge Lib Media Bias... Er, Again

[clibinarius]

Check out "Orwell Rolls in his Grave" its a hard-hitting critique of the News Media, with a lot of content from Charles Lewis, former 60 Minutes Producer. As he points out, the Media has some hard boundaries, but reporters who would indict the Media System aren't employed as reporters, they're weeded out quite early in their careers. Thats why there is a distinct line between coffee house paper reporters and major media outlet reporters. The documentary pumps several rounds of buckshot right between the shoulder blades of big Media and talks about the transition and what legal steps had to be taken to get the media to the point its at. The big one was overturning the Fairness Doctrine. Fox News wouldn't legal in the early 80s. It couldn't exist. The Fairness Doctrine prescribed that if an opinion was offered on the air, there had to be an equally qualified person to offer the opposing opinion. I would go so far as to say if the Fairness Doctrine was still in force, we wouldn;t have gone to war in Iraq. Its easy to sway public opinion when the news outlets are in lockstep giving the opinions that are in the interests of big business.

Another pregnant point is that the accusation of liberal bias in the media exists to paint Americans into a conservative corner. If the Media has a liberal bias, where does a person stand who has a more liberal opinion than the Media? They are a crackpot...a radical. That means the media can move to the right and sweep the moderates over to the right as well. At least in theory.

Fox News would be legal due to the fact Cable's regulations aren't the same. FCC standards don't apply to cable and are enforced voluntarily by networks themselves. Cable stations don't want to be dropped or have regulation applied. There's a very coherent argument as to why this is: Primarily, the government owns your UHF and VHF stations as well as FM and AM radio stations, but not the cable stations and the internet. Fox News itself would have been legal 30 years ago if the technology applied. What would be illegal is the current AM radio format.

As far as the war in Iraq, I doubt it. I was screaming at people in my high school about Saddam's capabilities based on even what the media said and how its utter nonsense, and people didn't want to listen. Besides, there was the fairness doctrine back in the 1960s, and that didn't stop Vietnam. Thus the idea that if the fairness doctrine was in place it might've prevented the war in Iraq is faulty on these premises: First, the fairness doctrine has never prevented war. Second, the fairness doctrine would not apply to most TV and the internet. Third, the application of the fairness doctrine to private-owned stations that weren't broadcast on goverment transmitters would definitely be deemed unconstitutional without a proper law as it violates protections of private property as well as the first amendment.

The problem isn't that reporters who report are weeded out; the problem is that they're often pessimists and not fun fans and thus not as stupidly motivated. The people who make it usually are impressed by the red carpet shit and feel at home in it. Its an insanely cultural problem. Criticism of it makes you culturally uncool, a cynic or a pessimist. The unfortunate reality is reality itself doesn't make people money. First and foremost, the media isn't this cynical body out to exploit everyone into some political agenda. Its there to make money, and they'll do that by telling their audiences what they want to hear. If Fox News reported liberally, a lot of their audience would simply get up and leave. The point of Fox News isn't to control, its to sell. Fox News gets conservatives in their audience better than anyone else, and they're thus somewhat successful.

What also must be considered with Fox News is just how bad the ratings are. They're really not very important in the grand scheme of things, and the fact that every liberal on here seems to think they are in my view is evidence of just how good Fox News is at marketing. Similarly, conservatives complaining about MSNBC are doing the same thing by and large. By even making a big deal out of Fox News as a big deal (as opposed to just another inaccurate, poorly rated News Outlet) makes it seem more significant; I'm not saying people shouldn't respond to Fox News statements, I'm saying when they do, they should keep in mind of how few people hear them in the first place and then think about whether or not its worth giving Fox News more exposure, and how it could be done without giving the moribund network life support to keep getting advertisers.

If you really wanted to break these guys, deregulate (or reregulate) cable. Current cable regulations basically say if you want Comedy Central, you must get Fox News too essentially. If you went a la carte, no one would buy this trash except people who would buy other trash in the first place. The current regulations allow for no actual competition and force you to buy gigantic packages if you want just one network. I see no reason I have to buy Fox, MSNBC, CNN, MTV if I just want Comedy Central, anyway. Under normal circumstances, this would be a violation of anti-trust laws.

[TheScotsman]

....
What also must be considered with Fox News is just how bad the ratings are. They're really not very important in the grand scheme of things, and the fact that every liberal on here seems to think they are in my view is evidence of just how good Fox News is at marketing. Similarly, conservatives complaining about MSNBC are doing the same thing by and large. By even making a big deal out of Fox News as a big deal (as opposed to just another inaccurate, poorly rated News Outlet) makes it seem more significant; I'm not saying people shouldn't respond to Fox News statements, I'm saying when they do, they should keep in mind of how few people hear them in the first place and then think about whether or not its worth giving Fox News more exposure, and how it could be done without giving the moribund network life support to keep getting advertisers.

...

Ya, they have bad ratings, almost 2:1 average over #2 cnn.
Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for August 04, 2009

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,331,000 viewers
CNN – 603,000 viewers
MSNBC –403,000 viewers
CNBC – 185,000 viewers
HLN – 294,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 2,850,000viewers
CNN— 999,000 viewers
MSNBC –1,007,000 viewers
CNBC – 181,000 viewers
HLN – 548,000viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC –344,000 viewers
CNN –184,000 viewers
MSNBC –122,000 viewers
CNBC – a scratch w/ 52,000 viewers
HLN- 117,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 735,000 viewers
CNN – 284,000 viewers
MSNBC –319,000 viewers
CNBC – 62,000 viewers
HLN – 207,000 viewers

35-64 Total Day
FNC – 631,000 viewers
CNN – 288,000 viewers
MSNBC – 201,000 viewers
CNBC – 91,000 viewers
HLN – 152,000 viewers

35-64 Prime Time
FNC –1,323,000 viewers
CNN – 445,000 viewers
MSNBC –477,000 viewers
CNBC –97,000 viewers
HLN –285,000 viewers

The problem with an attempt to regulate cable is that the signal is considered private property. It is directional, and encrypted on both uplink and downlink. The downlink is via privately owned satellites, to only decrypt-able by authorized receiving stations. If it's a public signal, it cannot be encrypted for the financial benefit of a corporate entity. Attempts to silence the other side just proves the fault of a policy. Any true liberation would want all sides to broadcast whatever they would like. You are free to listen, or not.

Look at chavez seizing broadcasters that say something he doesn't like. If that is what you want in the USA, then you would fall clearly into the socialist category if for no other reason than that alone.

[clibinarius]

To an extent I agree. I think the current regulations stink though and deregulation is in order. All I want is comedy central. The way cable is regulated, I can't do that. I'm surprised at you defending the way cable is packaged. There's no incentive for the satellite companies to offer real competition because they only have one cable company to compete against. To say my reform is socialist is outright absurd. The current system is socialist, but that's not quite the problem. The current system is full out corporate welfare.

And those ratings suck. There's 300M people in this country. In China, the lead broadcast gets over 25% of the national population. Here, Fox News gets less than 1% of the country. No matter how you slice it, those ratings are piss poor and only good compared to the other cable networks, who have even worse ratings. I didn't say CNN or MSNBC were good. As you should know with me, pointing to another murder and said "He murdered more people than me" doesn't get you off the hook. Pointing to other cable channels and say "They can get more old people watching"-their ratings still stink. I know its a favorite tactic of Ann Coulter to say "Yeah, conservatives are in fact douchebags, but its OK because liberals are worse!"-no, its not OK unless you tolerate mediocrity. Besides, it doesn't get those ratings because its Socialist in China, oh no. They have Fox News there too. You wouldn't recognize Chinese Fox News-"Down with the Capitalist Swine America!" I think if conservatives knew the game Rupert was playing in China, he'd lose his audience here.

[FiveSpeedF150]

"Fairness Doctrine"?

News flash kids, Life isn't fair.

[TheScotsman]

To an extent I agree. I think the current regulations stink though and deregulation is in order. All I want is comedy central. The way cable is regulated, I can't do that. I'm surprised at you defending the way cable is packaged. There's no incentive for the satellite companies to offer real competition because they only have one cable company to compete against. To say my reform is socialist is outright absurd. The current system is socialist, but that's not quite the problem. The current system is full out corporate welfare.

And those ratings suck. There's 300M people in this country. In China, the lead broadcast gets over 25% of the national population. Here, Fox News gets less than 1% of the country. No matter how you slice it, those ratings are piss poor and only good compared to the other cable networks, who have even worse ratings. I didn't say CNN or MSNBC were good. As you should know with me, pointing to another murder and said "He murdered more people than me" doesn't get you off the hook. Pointing to other cable channels and say "They can get more old people watching"-their ratings still stink. I know its a favorite tactic of Ann Coulter to say "Yeah, conservatives are in fact douchebags, but its OK because liberals are worse!"-no, its not OK unless you tolerate mediocrity. Besides, it doesn't get those ratings because its Socialist in China, oh no. They have Fox News there too. You wouldn't recognize Chinese Fox News-"Down with the Capitalist Swine America!" I think if conservatives knew the game Rupert was playing in China, he'd lose his audience here.

Aye, I must give you the demographics. I do, however, think that is the same for all of them. Look at the advertisers on any news channel. It's ED pills, lawyers, heart meds, power chairs. Ann coulter is no better, or worse than van jones calling conservatives assholes. I don't need to listen to chinese news, we have michael "no balls" moore, Oliver "the fist" stone, Bill "the prez's buddy" ayres, The president's spiritual leader... rev "damn america" wright, all right here in Amerika. I don't need a translator to hear anticapitalist rantings of crazy people. It's hard to find a centerist in the lot! To the other side of murdoch we have Immelt. You know, the CEO and Chairman of GE, parent company of NBC/pms-nbc... and advisor/friend to the president. You remember GE, that is the company running private for-profit prisons, the ones making the wind turbines, health-care equipment, and is planning on running the carbon credit exchange. A CEO that close to the president, and you want me to believe NBC is not biased. Please, that is insultingly silly. Don't point to a "conservative" and say, see, they are nuttier... there are enough wankers to go around.

I don't defend cable, especially in a market with single giant companies. I would totally support deregulation, or maybe something more akin to the AT&T breakup, eliminating a company from doing anything but one medium, and only that business. I was pointing out the legal aspects of trying to stomp on opposition speech carried on the medium. After all, there was air America, except no one listened, the advertisers bailed, and it failed. obviously the public didn't like it. Since competition failed, the progressives want to eliminate that which they can not openly compete against.

Comedy centeral, as in the channel, or CSPAN?


Agreed on the Corp welfare. But then I thought we were on a hellbound train with bushleague's first bailout for the cars, TARP, yada, yada.

[clibinarius]

To an extent I agree. I think the current regulations stink though and deregulation is in order. All I want is comedy central. The way cable is regulated, I can't do that. I'm surprised at you defending the way cable is packaged. There's no incentive for the satellite companies to offer real competition because they only have one cable company to compete against. To say my reform is socialist is outright absurd. The current system is socialist, but that's not quite the problem. The current system is full out corporate welfare.

And those ratings suck. There's 300M people in this country. In China, the lead broadcast gets over 25% of the national population. Here, Fox News gets less than 1% of the country. No matter how you slice it, those ratings are piss poor and only good compared to the other cable networks, who have even worse ratings. I didn't say CNN or MSNBC were good. As you should know with me, pointing to another murder and said "He murdered more people than me" doesn't get you off the hook. Pointing to other cable channels and say "They can get more old people watching"-their ratings still stink. I know its a favorite tactic of Ann Coulter to say "Yeah, conservatives are in fact douchebags, but its OK because liberals are worse!"-no, its not OK unless you tolerate mediocrity. Besides, it doesn't get those ratings because its Socialist in China, oh no. They have Fox News there too. You wouldn't recognize Chinese Fox News-"Down with the Capitalist Swine America!" I think if conservatives knew the game Rupert was playing in China, he'd lose his audience here.

Aye, I must give you the demographics. I do, however, think that is the same for all of them. Look at the advertisers on any news channel. It's ED pills, lawyers, heart meds, power chairs. Ann coulter is no better, or worse than van jones calling conservatives assholes. I don't need to listen to chinese news, we have michael "no balls" moore, Oliver "the fist" stone, Bill "the prez's buddy" ayres, The president's spiritual leader... rev "damn america" wright, all right here in Amerika. I don't need a translator to hear anticapitalist rantings of crazy people. It's hard to find a centerist in the lot! To the other side of murdoch we have Immelt. You know, the CEO and Chairman of GE, parent company of NBC/pms-nbc... and advisor/friend to the president. You remember GE, that is the company running private for-profit prisons, the ones making the wind turbines, health-care equipment, and is planning on running the carbon credit exchange. A CEO that close to the president, and you want me to believe NBC is not biased. Please, that is insultingly silly. Don't point to a "conservative" and say, see, they are nuttier... there are enough wankers to go around.

I don't defend cable, especially in a market with single giant companies. I would totally support deregulation, or maybe something more akin to the AT&T breakup, eliminating a company from doing anything but one medium, and only that business. I was pointing out the legal aspects of trying to stomp on opposition speech carried on the medium. After all, there was air America, except no one listened, the advertisers bailed, and it failed. obviously the public didn't like it. Since competition failed, the progressives want to eliminate that which they can not openly compete against.

Comedy centeral, as in the channel, or CSPAN?


Agreed on the Corp welfare. But then I thought we were on a hellbound train with bushleague's first bailout for the cars, TARP, yada, yada.

I think you misunderstand why I brought up Chinese News: Insane news is brought to you by Fox! Its Fox, as anti-American as you could get. As far as the rest of the Chinese media, the only point here was if the Conservative base knew what Fox was up to in China, they'd be absolutely disgusted.

Yes, old people are the only ones watching the news. That's my point. I know the demographics. Its a bunch of old people, and nothing else.

Did you hear me saying Van Jones is a good person? I think the main problem I have with it is it goes well into the narrative that Obama is a socialist...frankly, its someone Obama has surrounded himself with that he should've stayed away from. Also, the reason I haven't brought up Moore, Ayers and Wright is there's been no real reason to. Wright is a preacher, and one that's made his comments. Ayers essentially is a textbookwriter, and Moore is a filmmaker. I don't think you hear me praising any of them. Pointing to these people once again is like the murder argument. I don't think NBC is completely biased (or for that matter), but if it is, I don't give a shit. They're both companies interested in making a profit. CNBC isn't liberal, for starters. CNBC is pretty incompetent if nothing else. I don't think Fox is completely biased; the problem I don't have with these things is bias, its retardation. I walked by a laundrimat running a Sean Hannity commercial essentially accusing the president of brainwashing youth and frankly, that's disgusting and nutty. You'd be complaining if the media accused Bush of the same thing. In reality, its unacceptable.

Air America failed also because liberals don't take to the medium and its a stupid idea: Most people who'd be interested in "New Radio" aren't as young, and young people don't listen to radio. I heard repugnant anti-American shit on that network, so it by default will turn off nearly every single person except a borderline communist that's old enough to want to listen to it in the first place.

The cable system was set up in the 80s, really, under Reagan. Fine, Democratic Congress. Its still another example of Republicans and Democrats selling out most Americans. Bailout? I think corporate welfare from the 1980s should be very rethought. Then again, Cablevision's been moribund for years, and Time Warner nearly went bankrupt.

As far as MSNBC, I'm sure anti-trust issues could somehow apply if there is a conflict of interest. Yes, GE wanted Obama to win. But why use a medium no one watches such as MSNBC if you want to reach people instead of NBC? Too obvious? Pro-Obama rhetoric on MSNBC might gain Obama 1M votes tops. On Fox, 2M. You tell me, in an election where most people are watching with the way they're going to vote how this makes a difference? MSNBC is like a child starving for attention. So is Fox, the "Most Powerful Name in News" (I don't want powerful news, I want good news).

My point still remains: These networks still don't matter nearly as much as people make them sound. All these loudmouths...5% of America pay attention to them, tops. And bringing up other names...once again, you don't see me praising them.

Frankly, saying MSNBC has a liberal bias is about the same to me, philosophically, as saying shit is brown. Occasionally you might find it change color, but at the end of the day not only doesn't it matter and it still stinks. Edited September 9, 2009 by clibinarius

[Rani]

Does anyone but me find it extraordinary that politics and even the discussiion of politics has become reduced to the point of name calling? What is this, third grade?

Every single person on this earth including our leaders is a mixture of positive and negative qualities. You might dislike what they do overall, but it's unlikely you're going to hate absolutely everything they do. Law of averages alone indicate each leader is going to do something we like. People running around acting llike the worst toddlers yelling "He's a socialist! He's going to ruin everything!" isn't helping a damn thing. The rhetoric doesn't worik for me because personally I don't care if he's a socialist if he play an influencial force is fixing the mess we've gotten ourselves into. "He's pro-abortion" someone else yells! His stance on abortion has no effect on me. I decide for myself if abortion is a valid option for myself and nobody else. Quit with the "everybody has to have exactly the same beliefs I do or they're worthless" bullshit.

I want one thing out of my government that I already know I'm not likely to get. I want a streaming camera in the both houses so I can log in at any time and see who's actually saying something worth listening to and who's acting a fool. I want the website to include matters and bills up for consideration and be able to cast a poll ballot on those subjects that is sent to my representatives based on my zipcode and voter registration number. And I want to be able to see what the majority of my fellow citizens voted and whether or not the final vote from our representative was in line with what we wanted so that if it isn't we can fire the son of a bitch at the next election.

Who really gives a rats ass about anything other than our representatives actually representing us and acting accordingly? The rest of it is just coming across as thrid grade name calling, jealousy and slander. I didn't like my boss. I got over it. He did some good things and gave me a reason to drink a lot more tequila now and then. I didn't stand around with my coworkers calling him names. And I discovered in hindsight that he was one of the best things that could have happened to my work life. So grow up and get over it already!

'Rani

[Sonthert]

Well, ya know, I gotta tell ya, I don't buy the private property argument. You can say that the power lines are private property of the power transmission companies, but its not that black and white...nor should it be. They can and should be heavily regulated in the interests of the American people. News should have standards, broadcasters need to have laws that limit or control their behavior. Some processes that are democratic are detrimental to democracy and need to be outlawed. If you went to a polling place on election day and claimed your freedom of speech allowed you to tell people who they should vote for, standing over a person's shoulder as they voted, you would not be well received. Clearly the 1st Amendment can't apply in this case to preserve democracy. In the case of the Cable Media, too, when people are being given false information and slanted opinions, it threatens democracy. Democracy is not an absolute, it can not be applied unswervingly. Misapplying it can be detrimental.

I still disagree with you. Obviously false, highly questionable material was foisted off on the American people prior to the War in Iraq. Information that any informed person could have easily refuted. Vietnam at least had a larger sense of information attached to it and people could listen to opposing points of view and determine their opinion based on the information at hand. The Cable News culture has bred Americans who don't listen to opposing points of view for consideration. Not that they didn't exist in the 60s, too, but seemingly people are more closed off to listening to information. So maybe it didn't matter, but if we can, as a people justify going to war, lets not say, after the fact "we were given wrong information and made a mistake." That is unacceptable and it was the mantra of the Bush Administration. The American people figured it out, too.

The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine and a number of other laws still affects network non-cable stations...so what? Even if it doesn't apply to cable (which it should), it affects network broadcast stations. They can be a counterweight.

I'm sick of listening to "Its for the ratings...its what people want to watch." People need information, accurate information. They might not want it as frequently, but when they want or need it, its there and reliable. This should be the watchphrase for Cable News "Unreliable".

What kind of deregulation are you talking about? Conservative/Republican deregulation is an abysmal failure...I don't think I'm in favor of it from its recent track record. We need more regulations and oversight, not fewer. If an idiot can stand there on Fox News talking about taking down Citgo Billboards because of their affiliation with Venezuela, then we don't need deregulation. Most of the "regulations" protect the average American, a few protect the upper end of society. Deregulating business requirements benefit big business. In some cases, the regulations are absurd and screw everybody...but nobody talks about deregulating those (Like Payroll Taxes for Employees)....they only talk about deregulating things that will make big business more profitable.

[Svaals]

I still disagree with you. Obviously false, highly questionable material was foisted off on the American people prior to the War in Iraq. Information that any informed person could have easily refuted. Vietnam at least had a larger sense of information attached to it and people could listen to opposing points of view and determine their opinion based on the information at hand. The Cable News culture has bred Americans who don't listen to opposing points of view for consideration. Not that they didn't exist in the 60s, too, but seemingly people are more closed off to listening to information. So maybe it didn't matter, but if we can, as a people justify going to war, lets not say, after the fact "we were given wrong information and made a mistake." That is unacceptable and it was the mantra of the Bush Administration. The American people figured it out, too.

As much as I hate what the cable news networks have done to the media atmosphere, I can hardly blame them for the result; they do after all exist not to inform, but to make a profit. I think most of the fault lies on the American people, even though many of us may not want to shoulder the blame. Americans want things spoon-fed to them. When a story breaks, people want to know why it applies to them. The problem is, Americans don't want to think for themselves, and they're more likely to listen to news that breaks down each point with editorials.

The "cable newz" networks are obviously exploiting the demand to make a profit at the expense of journalistic integrity and the American public. Regulative agencies such as the FCC should have been more strict with mass editorialization of the news, and I still think that any opinion report should be marked as an editorial. There is a demand for it, though, and that blame falls on us.

[Sonthert]

I don't disagree completely, Svaals. I would say one of the fundamental purposes of any ostensibly democratic government is to protect OR provide basic services that are too large for the average person to have any say in to be in the best interests of the average citizen. If we agree that democracy is preferable to a police state, then those services would be organized in a manner thats consistent with sustaining democracy. This is not the case with Cable Newz. For democracy to exist, it must feed from a well-informed and educated populous. A free access to information people NEED to make informed decisions is essential in an ostensibly democratic society, therefore, I would have to define it as a basic service. The Cable Newz programs do not foster this in any degree. First off, because the information is not free, but as long as free information exists and is easily accessible, this is a moot point. I don't know if basic cable is still free or not. If it is, this would qualify to some degree. Second off, because the information is "Editorialized" and does not separate facts/information from opinion, which was explicitly segregated de jure by the Fairness Doctrine. The United States continues to fail in this regard. You can blame the citizens if you want to, and you'd be right, but its jointly the responsibility of the government, so they shoulder the blame, too. Moreso, because it is their job to do these things and they have failed miserably.

I think the flaw in the logic, here Svaals, is that journalists know better what people need to know than the people themselves do. Thats their job. If you want to know what your legal position is in a traffic accident, you ask a lawyer. If you want to know about a medical problem, you ask a doctor. People have gotten to a point where they assume (since they are on the decrease) that anybody can be a journalist or that it takes little skill. This is false. People, for the most part, don't know what information they need or how it should be presented. When you're in your lawyer's office, do you critique how he gives you his opinion of your legal position? Do you criticize a doctor when he tells you to stop eating so much salt because of your blood pressure? Of course not. They are experts, they are giving you important information. You might not listen to your doctor and keep shaking the salt maraca on your steak, but thats what living in a free society is about. Same for journalists. On the other hand, if the doctor told you that his thoughts that Palestinians should be exterminated by the Israelis, you'd be free to criticize him. He has no room to offer the opinion. Nor should journalists. They are there to present facts and information about Humanity and the Universe and the Planet around us. Mostly pertaining to the United States of America. This is their area of expertise. If they offer an opinion, there needs to be an alternate outlet to question their opinions (And there was...before the Fairness Doctrine was Abolished). Commentators that are unchecked or allowed to offer opinions without recourse are detrimental to democracy. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had the same general system of Media as Cable Newz. One person stood up there, giving opinions, and didn't allow for dissent. One fateful day, Hitler started talking about the Jewish Menace and talking about The Final Solution, it was all based solely, purely opinion...and nobody was allowed to offer an opposing opinion. People got caught up in the wake and the Final Solution grimly marched forward. Cut forward to the War in Iraq. Same thing. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Terror. Mushroom Clouds. Nuclear Weapons. Mobile Biological Weapons Facilities. How many of you out there heard that U.N. seven months prior had categorically stated that Iraq had no WMDs? When the U.S. made their case for the UN to support the US war in Iraq, the UN called the evidence "Unconvincing." Bush says we're not going to let the UN dictate foreign policy to us. Bash the UN, giving accurate information.

At some point, there is truth. There may be 'Truth', too, but who cares? 'truth' is all that matters. When free people can be shielded from the truth, then they cease to be free. The tragedies that have occurred under Police States are all too real, but what Police State can survive in the light of truth? Police states thrive and survive on lies, rumor, propaganda, innuendo and opinionated commentators. The opinionated commentators would claim they have the right to offer their opinions the way they choose to. I disagree. They represent an anti-democratic (or one that has been traditionally used in an anti-democratic) ideal. Fuck the Cable Newz. If it was good enough for the Soviet Union, it ain't good enough for me.

[Svaals]

I think the flaw in the logic, here Svaals, is that journalists know better what people need to know than the people themselves do. Thats their job. If you want to know what your legal position is in a traffic accident, you ask a lawyer. If you want to know about a medical problem, you ask a doctor. People have gotten to a point where they assume (since they are on the decrease) that anybody can be a journalist or that it takes little skill. This is false. People, for the most part, don't know what information they need or how it should be presented. When you're in your lawyer's office, do you critique how he gives you his opinion of your legal position? Do you criticize a doctor when he tells you to stop eating so much salt because of your blood pressure? Of course not. They are experts, they are giving you important information. You might not listen to your doctor and keep shaking the salt maraca on your steak, but thats what living in a free society is about. Same for journalists.

I agree. I want the facts from a doctor and a journalist. If I'm unsure how that those facts apply to me, then I will seek an opinion. Journalistic opinions are not inherently bad, but as you pointed out, the FCC has failed to keep opinion separate from factual news. It just happens that unsolicited opinions in the media are motivated by a drive for viewers. The result here is that those opinions are presented by appealing to emotional instincts rather than logical thought. So the flaw in logic is that there is no logic.

Logic is what separates us from instinctual creatures we find in the wild. However, when one plays on our instincts to affect our views, logic is usually thrown out the window. We trust instincts more than logic, however sad that may be. Failing regulative agencies are to blame for our current situation. However, our education system and our nature itself are also part of the problem.

In order to solve many of our most difficult challenges, we're going to have to overcome our primitive nature, and embrace logic as the defining tool that makes us human.

... Sorry, got a little off track there.

[gaia.plateau]

Wait, wait. Did someone call China a socialist country?

[clibinarius]

What kind of deregulation are you talking about?

The deregulation I mean is to end the state sponsored monopolies in the hands of private companies. I want competition for cable companies and channels. I don't want to have to buy YES Network for a few bucks a month to watch Comedy Central. I don't want to be forced to buy one company's digital decoders for every TV in my house. This is different than the usual "Deregulate" argument, which means "Ease" the regulations so people can do what they want or sell assets to private firms to get more tax revenue. This is a matter of antitrust exemptions.

As far as Fox News goes, I think you're missing my point. Cable TV might give the "News" to 2% of the country. If you add in your AM Talk radio, 7% (though the numbers are supposedly higher, I doubt they are), 10% tops. This wouldn't have made a huge impact on the war. Furthermore, the fairness doctrine is rather unenforceable on "New Media" unless you think things like blogs and hell, this message board, should be regulated. More people are getting news from New Media, and there's no indication at all the trend is reversing. If you brought back the fairness doctrine, you might've had resistance to the war, but I submit, the fairness doctrine didn't stop Vietnam, Granada, Operation Ajax, Korea, Cambodia, or, really, anything else. What it did do was it gave people who couldn't afford big time commercials and people with deep pockets the ability to pull the nonsense they do now.

If you want to make the news news, it has to be profitable. The current cable setup means that if someone wants something, everyone MUST buy it. Your cable bill pays for Fox News and MSNBC, whether you like it or not. That means its not profitable to actually get a real audience, since a bulk of the money comes from subscriber fees in the first place. If you deregulated cable to where there was competition, people would buy the stations they wanted, and you would have a massive amount of them that would have to rely on advertising revenue rather than subscriber fees since few would subscribe. From there, you'd see a decline of advertisers. Then you'd see all the big blowhards starting to lose a lot of money on all networks since there'd be no money to pay for them, unless people felt like continuing to take massive losses.

Once again though, cable falls outside the boundaries of FCC rules. Now, if you want to expand the FCC, go for it. I for one don't like censorship. Political fairness might be one thing, but I don't want obscenity to be involved in something that isn't a public company. Mind you, if you paid just for the stations you wanted, you'd have a lot more power over what the networks aired. If you don't like what they broadcast, dumb the channel. Then advertisers won't advertise because there'd be fewer to advertise too. Subscriber fees and advertiser payments would go down. Its common sense. The problem with this model is, for people who want 300 channels, their bills would go up, and prices for things would go up individually. It would also put a bunch of people out of business, but mostly at channels you pay for but don't want, like Fox or MSNBC if you dislike the other two.

Its not so much what the people want to watch, anyway, as much as there's no profitable alternative. That's my point. It gets subscriber fees because political hacks demand it and don't realize it jacks up everyone's rates, and advertiser payments because it can theoretically reach more people. There's not one incentive to provide real news. There's plenty of incentive not to do that. A lot of that stems from the fact that there's no real competition with cable at all-everyone is entitled to the same non-competitive packages. What must be done is the incentives must be changed. In my opinion, a lot of it is that the regulations are the exact same as the deregulation you complain about: The government essentially gives away what is questionably a public asset to a select group of corporations in a territory to run themselves at a predetermined rate.

A reason I don't think the Fairness Doctrine should apply is simple: First, the government doesn't own the stations. This IS private property. Even if the government owns the cable lines, they might not own the FIOS lines, or the satellites. Second, the fairness doctrine for TV applied to a world with really two channels: NBC and CBS. In a world with HUNDREDS of different channels, it doesn't really apply, though VHF and UHF still has limited usage on government transmitters-by that standard, regulation should be in order, mostly because its already free and not everyone gets a chance to make money off it though the state owns it. Why is it fair that NBC can own Channel 4 and I can't? Because they have more money? Uh, I think its the people's. We can tell NBC to take a hike. In fairness, government controls and deregulations over transmitters have given the false impression that the government doesn't own the transmitters. They do, and thus, should be subjected to government regulation.

I understand the point people want to scapegoat news outlets for everything. They've failed to do their civic duty of reporting the news. Almost all of that, in my view, comes from a set of laws that does not reward actual news coverage, but instead rewards noise. Nearly all media regulations are at best outdated, and regardless if one is a conservative or liberal, libertarian, fascist or communist, I think everyone except those that have made millions off the laws can agree the current laws have failed. Thus, deregulation is literally in order as I think the laws must be outright dismantled since they do nothing but make the people who have the influence money. I see no possible way to regulate TV to make it good. The fairness doctrine won't change the fact that non-name calling news still stinks. It'll only put people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity out of business, and frankly, that's a very slim minority that's already an amen group to their ideologies in the first place. There's a lot of people that want to scapegoat Fox News, but in my opinion, all they've done is use the system to their advantage. The system is thoroughly regulated. I don't see any way to regulate it well.

I don't even see why the government allowed private companies to build up these monopolies instead of having state run cable companies in the first place...you essentially started with cable companies in the state of the "deregulation" you complain about. A disaster from day one. Nor do I believe its right to nationalize them, because they haven't broken any laws that I know of, they followed the laws given. If they had broken the laws to get to their position, then yes, by all means, nationalize since they'd be illegal entities to begin with. In the case of the cable companies, that's not the case.

An effect of this deregulation would mean the end of Time Warner, Cablevision, Comcast, and would severely hurt Verizon and DirecTV because all these companies rely on the current no-serious-competitioin rule. That this would happen doesn't make me cry one bit, since these companies became big off government sanctions.

I'll put it this way: Have you ever asked yourself that, if you want cable, you have a choice really of one company and one package, and thought where your money goes and how its spent? YOU pay for Fox News. YOU pay for MSNBC. YOU pay for the crap you see every day. And why doesn't the government step in? BECAUSE THEY CREATED THE DAMN SYSTEM. Deregulation away from monopolies is the only way. Apply the antitrust laws and stop granting exemptions.

[clibinarius]

And the main reason to me ratings matter is ratings show just how pointless arguing about the effects of cable news is: No one is out there watching. Nobody. Their influence is only there because everyone is forced to receive them and pay for them. No one's watching. Talking about how Fox News is destroying the country is a joke because no one's there to actually see it. That's the point I'm making here. I don't know how else to say it. No one really cares about Fox News, but everyone knows its there and has an opinion about it. I think that's the point you're missing. 2M people is next to nothing; one could argue that more people respond to David Duke nationally than Fox News. David Duke is a lot more dangerous. Why don't you say David Duke is destroying the country?

I am saying outside of economics, David Duke probably reaches more people, if not domestically, then globally. That alone should put the real reach of Fox News into perspective. More people voted for David Duke in elections than watch CNN. Just think about these things before you keep saying how big and bad these networks really are. Edited September 10, 2009 by clibinarius

[Sonthert]

Well put gentlemen, well put.

Clib, I would disagree with you. These companies choose to be in the market of the Media. We have the right as citizens of the United States to demand that they comply with laws and regulations that benefit the people. News doesn't have to be profitable. It has been and should continue to be the responsibility of the media companies to provide it...if they want to be in business in the United States. They make money in other areas, lose money in news. So what? If they don't like it, they can go to some other country with their media.

The FCC should regulate cable. The laws regarding profanity are absurd, but if its what a majority of Americans want, so be it. If the FCC wants to take a autocratic approach to it, I'm not as in favor of it, but they should go back to standard of not allowing the mentioning of god, Jesus, Allah or other religious references. These things have no place on public airwaves. There is no conceivable way that all religions can be satisfied by allowing some of their mythology in. The Pagans want to talk about the Mother Goddess, the Satanists want to talk about sacrificing animals, the Islamic extremists want to talk about killing Americans. Once you make a distinction and say "Your religion counts, and theirs doesn't", you violated the 1st Amendment. Religion shouldn't be allowed on public property...it can't be without making distinctions and approving of some religions and poo-pooing other religions. I digress here, though...the FCC should regulate all forms of communication...if there is a reason to regulate radiowave broadcasts (either TV, CB, radio or whatnot), then the same reasoning must apply to cable. What would have happened if radio stations argued "This is private property, we can broadcast on any frequency we want to at any power we want to." Pandemonium. Stronger stations broadcasting over weaker ones. Probably little programming would make it through the radio. The underlying point I jumped over is, whatever logic the people used to agree that air waves should be regulated must apply to cable as well. Private property or not. Like I said, technically the power pole outside your house is private property. The government still regulates every single aspect of the electricity running along it as well they should.

There are three choices when it comes to a private industry that are of public importance:

Complete, intensive regulation (NRC and nuclear power plants, the FCC and Radio Stations)
Deregulation/Reregulation
Socialization

Deregulation from the Reagan era to present day is a study in complete and utter failure. Enron, S&Ls, the Home Lending Industry, etc. There a number of industries that have been deregulated where nothing happened in terms of prices or services. Why play a lose-break even game? There is no point. So, anytime somebody says "deregulation" the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I think what you might want, Clib is extensive regulation. Laws prohibiting bundling of cable packages, etc.

Socialism? In some cases, its a good idea, I can't think of any stuff that demands socialization in the United States at this point. The socialized services we have (Fire, Police and Water) are pretty good.

So the third possibility (unless I missed an option?) is strong, complete regulation, which I lean towards in any case where there are problems with the industry.

Its an oft used bromide that the government fucks up everything they have a hand in. I don't agree with this. If you say any industry where the companies are allowed to run free and unfettered gets fucked up, I agree with. Look into the events surrounding the privatization of Paraguayan water supplies in Cochabamba for a good example of this (Thank you, World Bank ).

If it matters, I would rate the following entities, on a scale of 1-10, in terms of their ability to administer something well. World Bank/IMF 2, The US government 7 (Downgraded from a 9 circa 1940 or so), Private Enterprise in the United States of America 5, the UN 6, the U.S. Military 3 (Downgraded from a 7, circa 1940). Amnesty International, other Non-Profits 4. I would put my trust in the FCC and the rest of the U.S. government to regulate Cable and airwaves before I would a trust private enterprise or any other large-scale organization. Maybe we could even eliminate the "liberal bias" on cable.

I think the FCC should also step in and regulate the internet...keep it "green" and corporate free.

I am also surprised nobody has mentioned PBS in anything more than in passing. It is the socialized arm of the Media. See here, its easy to see a "liberal bias" only because telling the truth and conveying information without editorial would seem to be the most severe form of liberal bias...perhaps radical. Thats why Al Jazeera and the BBC are seen as radical, too.

I have never understood how the US media can talk about a surgical air strike while Al Jazeera is showing pictures of injured women and children from the same air strike. Liberal bias in the U.S. media? Please, get your head out of your ass. I think thats why the US media has gone to almost never mentioning Israeli atrocities (and rarely mentioning Palestinian atrocities). The American people only see "Dead People" and the US government likes supporting Israel. All the war and bloodshed just makes Americans not want to have anything to do with the situation. No liberal bias there...

I would say that warmongering would be the opposite of liberal bias and I see a lot of warmongering in the U.S. Media. Sure PBS is boring, sure real news is boring. I agree. Don't watch it. Nobody made you watch it. If you want to be entertained, watch something else. That doesn't give Media companies the right to butcher news and information vital to our liberty and freedom so they can boost their ratings to increase its entertainment value.

[clibinarius]

Clib, I would disagree with you. These companies choose to be in the market of the Media. We have the right as citizens of the United States to demand that they comply with laws and regulations that benefit the people. News doesn't have to be profitable. It has been and should continue to be the responsibility of the media companies to provide it...if they want to be in business in the United States. They make money in other areas, lose money in news. So what? If they don't like it, they can go to some other country with their media.

You're right, they chose to be in the market of the media. They were complying with laws and regulations, in fact, laws and regulations allowing for no competition in exchange for building wire.

That's the point I'm trying to make: They followed the law. It wouldn't be right to nationalize them. The laws and regulations don't benefit the people here. I don't think its the responsibility of the media company to provide anything responsible, just follow the laws. It'd be nice, but I don't see why they deserve the anti-trust exemptions. Pull the regulations allowing for the super-status of cable companies. You're basically demanding a bunch of regulations that, thanks to the ways laws were set up, would be rather unconstitutional. The cable companies get the right to shop for what stations they can put on their networks; why don't we since we pay for the feed?

I don't think you realize how much the laws here are pro-corporate, as well as the FCC. The FCC has always been pro-corporate. Regulating the internet, aside from it being rather unenforceable due to the fact you can do anything anywhere on it, would if you compare it to the media be not too dissimilar than just corporate handouts, which is what regulations have been. I mean, we've never had competition over the air or over the cable lines. People talk about a glory day of news, but there still was a lot of opiniongiving and donating airtime to Liberace's "Bachelor" love life, trying to find out when he'd get a bride. Television News sucked then, too, only the difference is people have fonder memories of everything back then. How did Walter Cronkite not give editorials? Fine; it was better than today. When you have 70 years to figure out how the government is going to prop you up, you have time to learn. You want regulation to "Green" it up, but the regulation to the media in my view only makes it worse.

I don't think the fairness doctrine, however, was one of those things which made the media worse. I question its effectiveness. I cite the fact "Kennedy was a liberal" and "Nixon was a conservative" as failures to educate as neither are true, especially on the modern spectrum, as well as the fact the regulated media again didn't stop Korea, Vietnman, the bombing of cambodia, Bay of Pigs, Operation Ajax, Operation Cyclone, even the Iranian Hostage crisis as profound evidence regulation of the media has NEVER led to positive results via foreign policy. When it came to a lot of the culture when Cronkite said "The war was lost" it didn't matter anymore to people who wanted to believe that/did believe that what the opposite viewpoint would say; they believed the war was lost from that point forward. Fine; I can stomach a fairness doctrine. The question is, could the supreme court when it comes to cable? (Since cable companies played by the law...probably not). Could you stop me from saying whatever I want on the internet? (No-though I might be stopped from saying it here). I don't think the internet's needed regulation; its gone fine without thus far in my opinion.

On top of it, we don't create monopoly newspapers. Why should we have monopoly television channel providers? I would compare this to the incoming media bailout, which conservatives will scream and yell about as will probably liberals. The reality is the newspapers overleveraged, overexpanded, had awful business models. I say, let the New York Times go out of business. They're responsible for the news going to hell IMO. The New York Times gets more reading it than CNN gets in ratings. Why not regulate them? I mean, look at some of their column throughout the years: It ranges from Bill Kristol (who I'm SURE you love) to Haniyeh of Hamas. They don't have to invite the opponents of what these guys say to write for the paper, equal space. There's no limit to the amount of prepackaged AP/Reuters stories they can buy, either. Why can't we treat cable stations the same way as print media, let it sell itself on the open market and let it crash and burn the way magazines go out of business regularly? The government doesn't set up monopolies on bookstores, and can even run a public library system I think with much success. In the realm of cable there's zero real competition. You probably think competition (via the public option) would be good for health insurance? Why is discarding the wretched regulations that still exist on television media a bad thing? Fine; pass a new fairness doctrine for all I care. Pass a constitutional amendment. At the end of the day, I doubt it will make any difference. Internet media, print media all act as dysfunctional in most cases as TV media. And fine, somehow miraculously apply it to them. It is hard to regulate competence. When you say "Responsibility" you might be right in practicality, but good luck writing a law that won't get overturned.

I would point out that David Duke got more votes than CNN gets viewers. David Duke wouldn't be corporate putting out his propaganda. How is David Duke not more threatening to Fox News, when he clearly reaches more homes internationally, let alone probably domestically? I don't believe in even regulating David Duke; on the internet, most people have the ability to respond to any charge made against them. Perhaps evidence of an enforcible regulation would be to enforce the libel laws and slander laws already on the books. If someone says something like "George Bush is psychotic" on the air, as was said mind you by Randi Rhodes, she should be forced to defend that by lawsuits. However, people don't have the time to sue everyone. There is however a system in place that is supposed to prevent this. A regulation I would support is "Any statement over media that violates statutes and torts regarding slander or libel could be investigated as a criminal offense."

Besides, another problem with the FCC, Nixon had a way of getting people fired he didn't like and abusing mechanisms of power. I don't like that the government would be able to break individuals it doesn't like simply because a politician doesn't like them.

On top of it, the currently regulated system WORKS for Republicans and Democrats alike; they get elected; they get the time, they get the coverage, they get the money. There's no incentive to regulate their advantage away.

Please explain to me why the current set of regulations is a good thing, please. And furthermore, explain how you could successfully regulate the media without the supreme court stepping in. I'm at a profound loss to see how the current set of regulations is good (Its allowed for profound badness to be in the news) and I think the FCC has been enforcing things. I don't think you can violate the contracts also that have already been signed with people who've been abiding by the law. What could be done in my opinion is to not renew contracts for monopolies (I see no problem with that in fact). While under normal circumstances I'm for regulations-laws-to have civil behavior, when it comes to the media as well as sports, both gained antitrust exemptions in the 1980s. An antitrust exemption also applies to healthcare. It refers to energy too.

Guess what? Natural Gas is $3/BTU, but Con Ed still feels like gouging its customers, Indian Point constantly is having trouble, and electricity only goes up here, never down, despite the fact the bubble is mostly deflated on energy with the exception of oil. Healthcare's anti-trust exemptions have caused no competition, which both the Republicans and Democrats talk about, though both sides have different solutions to the problem. Sports cable networks come into your home for several dollars a month if you want cable, sports stadiums are built with taxpayer money in the US, and taxpayers are generally not rich enough to go to the games anymore since its amazing how much money these billionaires can make by getting the government to pay for its bills. In all these sectors, its glaringly obvious the current regulations are utter failures. The bailing out of GM makes sense to me; they make infrastructure and military equipment. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone else deserves a bailout. GM however to my knowledge didn't have an antitrust exemption. The antitrust exemption is a form of regulation, and that's the main regulation I'm talking about. The reason I'm not for deregulation of healthcare completely is people will DIE if the free market is left to ration care by supply and demand without subsidy. This is definitely NOT the case with media, sports or energy. I would add, the deregulations that you call disasterous nearly always allowed for monopolies to spring up, state sponsored ones at that, be it in markets, which has driven up price; the deregulations I would just instead of calling deregulation are better defined as reregulation, and by that standard a lot of deregulation doesn't actually exist. The problem with regulation is usually the ability to have good regulations, effective regulations. Sometimes less is more, sometimes more is less. In the case of the current FCC regime, if everyone has the ability to connect to the internet, filtering out obscenities somehow seems...stupid. That child could get on the computer and be bombarded with all sorts of nasty things (and I would contend IS bombarded with it). The FCC is a dinosaur which only rewards those that play their rules for the owners. It doesn't serve the people anymore.

Regulation that's constitutional I think would be a great thing. But the government also needs to clean up regulatory agencies; they've missed nearly every scandal there's been in the last 40 years somehow. The successes of the FCC, FDA, DEA, ATF, SEC has allowed for Talk Radio but people get offended at some nipple, the legalization of all sorts of penis enlargement pills (which the FCC allows to be advertised) which might cause horrible side effects while denying the possibility to use other drugs such as Tianeptine which have a demonstrated effectiveness towards their conditions which is already legal in Europe (They did a heck of a job regulating COX II Inhibitor medications too; vioxx anyone?), the DEA has done a bang up job limiting drug use in the country (which I think nearly every study indicates is worse than it was before the War on Drugs), the ATF proved so competent at Waco and preventing the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the SEC caught Worldcom, Madoff, Healthsouth, the current specuative bubble on energy, Enron, AIG, and the list goes on and on.

I'm not saying we don't need watchmen and police officers. Our first priority should be improving their effectiveness. Giving an incompetent FCC more money, more jobs and more power...you know, that scares me not because I don't want regulation there but because they don't deserve it. If you cut back on regulation and regulative bodies themselves and forced them to work for a living instead of being cozy with those they're trying to regulate, you might see something effective pop up. If people know they're going to get raises for being screwups in the regulatory industry, what incentive is there to enforce good regulations?

In the case of cable, cable's been reasonably compliant with many of the regulations. The regulations are that bad. If a law is bad, or regulation, whatever you want to call it, it should be taken off the books. After all, marriage was once regulated to be between a two people of the same race. I think deregulation here was good. I support gay marriage. That would be a further measure in deregulation. The "Deregulation" since Ronald Reagan hasn't been deregulation at all, but simply changing the law to create state sponsored monopolies given to campaign donations. The thing about good regulation, its hard for anyone to make a profit off it except the people, so it doesn't donate to political campaigns and doesn't get people elected. Honestly, I don't think real reform will be possible until the stock market crashes back down to reality with sane private and public debts, P/E ratios and the like. Only then will politicians look to people for support since they'll still have votes, but their old backers won't have money anymore (and the people will be sufficiently angry and looking to scapegoat people for their bad investments anyway). Mark my words; good regulation on cable will come when the cable industry wholesale goes out of business and no longer can stand in the way of it. Its sort of like financial reform: Obama and Bush could've taken all these companies by the balls such as Goldman and said "You can fix yourselves or perish continuing to legally steal money"-instead they give out trillions of dollars after receiving millions from them, then threaten regulation which the lobbying effort is paid for by money the government handed out to them. There was an opportunity to create real reform in the financial industry by basically holding a proverbial gun to the firms head and saying "Sign, or let the invisible hand pull the trigger" and we didn't do that. If you look at the carry trade and the speculation of all sorts of assets, these morons haven't learned their lesson and we're doomed to have the same type of crash again (Its not a matter of if, its a matter of when). We sort of did that with GM and people were complaining about the violation of contract law (I think at that point the government should've said "Ingrates: Here, fine, we won't get involved. Have fun losing your shirts!"). And now, the government that's elected itself off financial industry money, that institutes financial industry policies, that essentially lets the federal reserve incredible expensive campaign money-you really want to give the government more power over media without much more pressing reforms such as...investigating those who broke the law and making sure it doesn't happen in the same form again, or attempting to since it'd be impossible to completely prevent things from repeating?

I mean, real unemployment is over 17% according to DoL. We're in, in my opinion, what is a depression; whatever recovery we have, its unlikely we're going to see that number below 10% any time soon. Based on the way people are acting, you'd never know it. The government right now is perhaps the biggest idiot in this mess, pretending that we've "recovered" because we've reentered positive growth thanks to government spending (though its still 1/4th of a million lost a month in the jobs market, and tons of foreclosures everywhere and defaults). I will not support giving government more authority on anything until it realizes just how serious its position is. Its only doomstay and the pessimistic outlook anyway if you think prices and the economy should be completely out of touch with reality. The correction on financials will be good for the country; it'll keep the government more honest, it'll give people a better idea of what they have, and it'll correct a lot of financial imbalances and excess cash in the hands of people who really aren't productive (I for the life of me can't figure out why Alex Rodriguez makes that much more money than Barack Obama or George W. Bush did). It'll be a painful change for nearly everyone, but if you think about it, that's the change nearly everyone wants but no one's willing to face. Even today, the media celebrates the avoidance of a great depression. Unemployment, real unemployment, will be above 20% by the end of the year, and the reported will probably be 10%. How is that not a depression?

[Sonthert]

Whoa. whoa, whoa. Easy big guy.

Only my first paragraph was in regards to your post.

Lots of information here, I'll parse through it:
'

You're right, they chose to be in the market of the media. They were complying with laws and regulations, in fact, laws and regulations allowing for no competition in exchange for building wire.

True, I'm not denying that. There are rules and regulations that they are beholden to. We have the power to make new laws that are in our best interests. We don't necessarily have to bend over and take it in the backside for their agreement, we can meet in a middle ground somewhere. Their agreement doesn't entail giving them carte blanche to do whatever they feel like. There are laws, laws can be changed. The people of the United States have a right, nay a duty to make the laws of the United States through their elected representatives. If we don;t like how the deal is going down, we have the right to change it. I'm not talking about kicking them out and taking their cable lines by any means.

That's the point I'm trying to make: They followed the law. It wouldn't be right to nationalize them. The laws and regulations don't benefit the people here. I don't think its the responsibility of the media company to provide anything responsible, just follow the laws. It'd be nice, but I don't see why they deserve the anti-trust exemptions. Pull the regulations allowing for the super-status of cable companies. You're basically demanding a bunch of regulations that, thanks to the ways laws were set up, would be rather unconstitutional. The cable companies get the right to shop for what stations they can put on their networks; why don't we since we pay for the feed?

Laws change. I think it is their responsibility. If it isn't, it should be.

Please don't mischaracterize what I'm saying. I didn't mention nationalization in any regard nor do I believe in it in this case. If you insist on being technical, perhaps we're talking about renationalization. Perhaps not. Thats a last resort. First, we make inroads and get them to comply. They need to be licensed in the same manner as regular TV stations for the same reasons. If they fail to be doing a public service in the final analysis, they need to be replaced by somebody who is. They make money at it, fine, if the don't fine. I'm not talking about profitability. I'm talking about freedom and democracy and the corrosive elements that decay liberty. It is a celebrated mantra that when the old guys aren't getting the job done, we replace them with new guys that will get the job done.

As a side point, I think they should have some additional laws governing the conduct of politicians. The average cop on his beat has more rules and regulations governing his actions than the senator and the congressman. Since millions of people depend on those individuals and how they perform (or sell out) their jobs, the laws regarding their conduct should be certainly more expansive and more stringent. Of course, propose this to a politician and you'll get resistance. Its not their decision to make. Its ours. They work for The People. They will hem and haw and some might even tell you that it can't be done. This is false. They might say corruption is a reality, its been around forever and it will be forever. Also false. I may be a fool, but death is certain, being free is not. Our government can be reigned in and represent the people again, I believe this.

Unconstitutional? I've read the Constitution of The United States of America from cover to cover over a hundred times. The greatest instrument of justice and democracy in existence (With a close second going to Robert's Rules of Order). I have yet to read anything about cable companies or companies of any kind in there. You and I both know why. The Supreme Court can come along and go "Oh yeah, the 14th Amendment applies to Corporations, too." Absurd. That wasn't in the mind of The People (And I am using that in the specific sense the Framers used it) when the Amendment was drafted. Its a blatant, red-faced perversion of democracy. Supreme Court Decisions can be changed by subsequent Supreme Courts. I would hold, and I feel confident that any of the Framers if present would agree, that the rights conferred on The People in the Constitution do not apply to corporations. I would go further (although I can't even postulate what the framers would think about it) to say that corporations are without rights, they are subject to the Laws of the United States and perhaps the whims and tides of law in the United States.

I don't think you realize how much the laws here are pro-corporate, as well as the FCC. The FCC has always been pro-corporate. Regulating the internet, aside from it being rather unenforceable due to the fact you can do anything anywhere on it, would if you compare it to the media be not too dissimilar than just corporate handouts, which is what regulations have been. I mean, we've never had competition over the air or over the cable lines. People talk about a glory day of news, but there still was a lot of opiniongiving and donating airtime to Liberace's "Bachelor" love life, trying to find out when he'd get a bride. Television News sucked then, too, only the difference is people have fonder memories of everything back then. How did Walter Cronkite not give editorials? Fine; it was better than today. When you have 70 years to figure out how the government is going to prop you up, you have time to learn. You want regulation to "Green" it up, but the regulation to the media in my view only makes it worse.

Do I realize how many are pro-corporate? Yes.

Was the Media better thirty years ago? Absolutely. Can we get back to it? Possibly.

The implicit assumption in each of your statements is that the government is incapable of or the people are incapable of bringing about change. I don't believe this. I think "They" want you to believe it, though.

OK, Walter Cronkite, gave editorials. Matters not. The Media did a better job then than they do now. Thats the salient point here. The rules and regulations that limited them and prevented them from appealing to their own worst standards have been eliminated. Can we just reinsert the rules and regulations? Sure. Why not? They were constitutional in 1970, they should be constitutional now since the Constitution hasn't changed in that time period.

I don't think the fairness doctrine, however, was one of those things which made the media worse. I question its effectiveness. I cite the fact "Kennedy was a liberal" and "Nixon was a conservative" as failures to educate as neither are true, especially on the modern spectrum, as well as the fact the regulated media again didn't stop Korea, Vietnman, the bombing of cambodia, Bay of Pigs, Operation Ajax, Operation Cyclone, even the Iranian Hostage crisis as profound evidence regulation of the media has NEVER led to positive results via foreign policy. When it came to a lot of the culture when Cronkite said "The war was lost" it didn't matter anymore to people who wanted to believe that/did believe that what the opposite viewpoint would say; they believed the war was lost from that point forward. Fine; I can stomach a fairness doctrine. The question is, could the supreme court when it comes to cable? (Since cable companies played by the law...probably not). Could you stop me from saying whatever I want on the internet? (No-though I might be stopped from saying it here). I don't think the internet's needed regulation; its gone fine without thus far in my opinion.

Perhaps you're too young. It did make a difference. A big one.

You are right, the Media never prevented any of those things. In some cases, it may have even polarized and galvanized people's positions. Absolutely true. Fortunately, thats not the Media's job one way or the other. They might have in some sense had the job thrust upon them, but its not theirs explicitly. Nor should it be. People my age are thinking about this completely differently here, honestly. The job of the Media is to keep us informed. They did that in 1970. Not perfectly, but as humans do things...as well as possible. They don't do that now. The Media's job isn't to affect change or policy...its to inform The People. It is true that public policy is sometimes nudged one way or the other by the media...and it has been for some time since the Federalist Papers were written. On the other hand, when you say the media can't or hasn't affected policy or events in the United States and use it as a base of criticism or as a point of comparison, I must object.

On top of it, we don't create monopoly newspapers. Why should we have monopoly television channel providers? I would compare this to the incoming media bailout, which conservatives will scream and yell about as will probably liberals. The reality is the newspapers overleveraged, overexpanded, had awful business models. I say, let the New York Times go out of business. They're responsible for the news going to hell IMO. The New York Times gets more reading it than CNN gets in ratings. Why not regulate them? I mean, look at some of their column throughout the years: It ranges from Bill Kristol (who I'm SURE you love) to Haniyeh of Hamas. They don't have to invite the opponents of what these guys say to write for the paper, equal space. There's no limit to the amount of prepackaged AP/Reuters stories they can buy, either. Why can't we treat cable stations the same way as print media, let it sell itself on the open market and let it crash and burn the way magazines go out of business regularly? The government doesn't set up monopolies on bookstores, and can even run a public library system I think with much success. In the realm of cable there's zero real competition. You probably think competition (via the public option) would be good for health insurance? Why is discarding the wretched regulations that still exist on television media a bad thing? Fine; pass a new fairness doctrine for all I care. Pass a constitutional amendment. At the end of the day, I doubt it will make any difference. Internet media, print media all act as dysfunctional in most cases as TV media. And fine, somehow miraculously apply it to them. It is hard to regulate competence. When you say "Responsibility" you might be right in practicality, but good luck writing a law that won't get overturned.

I agree to an extent, but you seem to think the government has a dark hand guiding some of these things. They don't. This is the result of competition. The government has little control in the matter.

You and I see this differently. I see the American people making the government work in their best interests again. Whether its the President, the Congress or the Supreme Court. I agree its jacked up, I agreechanges are needed. I don't see your glass ceiling of static Facist regimes, however.

I would point out that David Duke got more votes than CNN gets viewers. David Duke wouldn't be corporate putting out his propaganda. How is David Duke not more threatening to Fox News, when he clearly reaches more homes internationally, let alone probably domestically? I don't believe in even regulating David Duke; on the internet, most people have the ability to respond to any charge made against them. Perhaps evidence of an enforcible regulation would be to enforce the libel laws and slander laws already on the books. If someone says something like "George Bush is psychotic" on the air, as was said mind you by Randi Rhodes, she should be forced to defend that by lawsuits. However, people don't have the time to sue everyone. There is however a system in place that is supposed to prevent this. A regulation I would support is "Any statement over media that violates statutes and torts regarding slander or libel could be investigated as a criminal offense."

I don't think we need any more criminal laws on the books. I think if they want to go sue somebody, they can. David Duke for President...Civil Liberties abound!

Besides, another problem with the FCC, Nixon had a way of getting people fired he didn't like and abusing mechanisms of power. I don't like that the government would be able to break individuals it doesn't like simply because a politician doesn't like them.

I concur. We let it get to this point. It just takes enough people to want to change it. There hasn't been a coup d'etat...its the same government that used to work fine.

On top of it, the currently regulated system WORKS for Republicans and Democrats alike; they get elected; they get the time, they get the coverage, they get the money. There's no incentive to regulate their advantage away.

Sure there is. We elect people who aren't crooked. They represent the will of the People or they get a new job. We do need a few more parties though. I think there's a provision for adding new ones somewhere in that Constitution...

[clibinarius]

I am saying the government is powerless at the present time due to the constitution and the current laws on the books; you can argue laws can change. Great. Let's see those changes, and a constitutional amendment if needed. We don't have the power to write discriminatory laws, even if most of the population approves of them. That would violate pretty much every civil rights law and act on the books: In fact, the anti-slavery amendments to the constitution have been applied to businesses, and has been a major stumbling block in the way of legislation.

And yes, our corruption is massive. We have a $300M president right now. Maybe Obama didn't pocket the money, but he certainly wants to be president (otherwise he could resign). John McCain raised over $100M too. This IS corruption, whether you like it or not. Our elections are decided by $1 Billion worth of bribe money now that gets funneled back mostly into the media. This is the same media that can't do shit competently. You could fund a lot of charity with all that money, maybe even give a struggling community real stimulus. Instead, it goes to pay millionaires and billionaires without real competition. What third party could compete with this? Bloomberg? Why, he just donates to himself...he could afford it. Thanks to him, our traffic is terrible and the budget is a mess. BUT HE HAS THE ECONOMIC EXPERTISE TO GET US OUT OF THIS CRISIS HE HELPED CREATE AND IS NON-PARTISAN. So Bloomberg decides to buy an office commanding one of the largest standing armies in the world (NYPD). Delightful. Obviously the current campaign finance laws have failed. I say, scrap them. Deregulate. What's the point of keeping SOX on the books? McCain-Feingold? You know...all those depression era regulations which seemed to have worked...a lot of them could be put back on the books immediately. Why is the government unwilling to apply working regulations?

Note: SOX isn't campaign finance, but I think a classic example of reforms that have completely failed, eh Dick Fuld? Edited September 11, 2009 by clibinarius

[SynysterPhoenix]

Cant we all just get along?

[Rani]

I am saying the government is powerless at the present time due to the constitution and the current laws on the books; you can argue laws can change. Great. Let's see those changes, and a constitutional amendment if needed. We don't have the power to write discriminatory laws, even if most of the population approves of them. That would violate pretty much every civil rights law and act on the books: In fact, the anti-slavery amendments to the constitution have been applied to businesses, and has been a major stumbling block in the way of legislation.

And yes, our corruption is massive. We have a $300M president right now. Maybe Obama didn't pocket the money, but he certainly wants to be president (otherwise he could resign). John McCain raised over $100M too. This IS corruption, whether you like it or not. Our elections are decided by $1 Billion worth of bribe money now that gets funneled back mostly into the media. This is the same media that can't do shit competently. You could fund a lot of charity with all that money, maybe even give a struggling community real stimulus. Instead, it goes to pay millionaires and billionaires without real competition. What third party could compete with this? Bloomberg? Why, he just donates to himself...he could afford it. Thanks to him, our traffic is terrible and the budget is a mess. BUT HE HAS THE ECONOMIC EXPERTISE TO GET US OUT OF THIS CRISIS HE HELPED CREATE AND IS NON-PARTISAN. So Bloomberg decides to buy an office commanding one of the largest standing armies in the world (NYPD). Delightful. Obviously the current campaign finance laws have failed. I say, scrap them. Deregulate. What's the point of keeping SOX on the books? McCain-Feingold? You know...all those depression era regulations which seemed to have worked...a lot of them could be put back on the books immediately. Why is the government unwilling to apply working regulations?

Note: SOX isn't campaign finance, but I think a classic example of reforms that have completely failed, eh Dick Fuld?

Bloomberg, like every other savvy financier, is making a fortune off this economy. There's no percentage in them fixing it. I'm hoping the angst over health care reform will make everyone more politically active. If we start yelling a whole lot more, maybe they'll actually start listening. I wrote a scathing email to CBS News this morning because they brought on an "expert" to discuss the President's speech and what did she do? Rehash all the old rumors and misrepresentations. She didn't say a damn thing that matched with what was actually said last night. So we have idiots in charge coupled with gross negligence on the part of the media. I swear, I win the lottery, I'm buying a bloody island and getting the heck out of Dodge.

'Rani

[gaia.plateau]

Re: this page so far.

Is anyone else thinking that precision is the better part of articulation?

[Sonthert]

Please explain to me why the current set of regulations is a good thing, please. And furthermore, explain how you could successfully regulate the media without the supreme court stepping in. I'm at a profound loss to see how the current set of regulations is good (Its allowed for profound badness to be in the news) and I think the FCC has been enforcing things. I don't think you can violate the contracts also that have already been signed with people who've been abiding by the law. What could be done in my opinion is to not renew contracts for monopolies (I see no problem with that in fact). While under normal circumstances I'm for regulations-laws-to have civil behavior, when it comes to the media as well as sports, both gained antitrust exemptions in the 1980s. An antitrust exemption also applies to healthcare. It refers to energy too.

Guess what? Natural Gas is $3/BTU, but Con Ed still feels like gouging its customers, Indian Point constantly is having trouble, and electricity only goes up here, never down, despite the fact the bubble is mostly deflated on energy with the exception of oil. Healthcare's anti-trust exemptions have caused no competition, which both the Republicans and Democrats talk about, though both sides have different solutions to the problem. Sports cable networks come into your home for several dollars a month if you want cable, sports stadiums are built with taxpayer money in the US, and taxpayers are generally not rich enough to go to the games anymore since its amazing how much money these billionaires can make by getting the government to pay for its bills. In all these sectors, its glaringly obvious the current regulations are utter failures. The bailing out of GM makes sense to me; they make infrastructure and military equipment. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone else deserves a bailout. GM however to my knowledge didn't have an antitrust exemption. The antitrust exemption is a form of regulation, and that's the main regulation I'm talking about. The reason I'm not for deregulation of healthcare completely is people will DIE if the free market is left to ration care by supply and demand without subsidy. This is definitely NOT the case with media, sports or energy. I would add, the deregulations that you call disasterous nearly always allowed for monopolies to spring up, state sponsored ones at that, be it in markets, which has driven up price; the deregulations I would just instead of calling deregulation are better defined as reregulation, and by that standard a lot of deregulation doesn't actually exist. The problem with regulation is usually the ability to have good regulations, effective regulations. Sometimes less is more, sometimes more is less. In the case of the current FCC regime, if everyone has the ability to connect to the internet, filtering out obscenities somehow seems...stupid. That child could get on the computer and be bombarded with all sorts of nasty things (and I would contend IS bombarded with it). The FCC is a dinosaur which only rewards those that play their rules for the owners. It doesn't serve the people anymore.

Regulation that's constitutional I think would be a great thing. But the government also needs to clean up regulatory agencies; they've missed nearly every scandal there's been in the last 40 years somehow. The successes of the FCC, FDA, DEA, ATF, SEC has allowed for Talk Radio but people get offended at some nipple, the legalization of all sorts of penis enlargement pills (which the FCC allows to be advertised) which might cause horrible side effects while denying the possibility to use other drugs such as Tianeptine which have a demonstrated effectiveness towards their conditions which is already legal in Europe (They did a heck of a job regulating COX II Inhibitor medications too; vioxx anyone?), the DEA has done a bang up job limiting drug use in the country (which I think nearly every study indicates is worse than it was before the War on Drugs), the ATF proved so competent at Waco and preventing the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the SEC caught Worldcom, Madoff, Healthsouth, the current specuative bubble on energy, Enron, AIG, and the list goes on and on.

I'm not saying we don't need watchmen and police officers. Our first priority should be improving their effectiveness. Giving an incompetent FCC more money, more jobs and more power...you know, that scares me not because I don't want regulation there but because they don't deserve it. If you cut back on regulation and regulative bodies themselves and forced them to work for a living instead of being cozy with those they're trying to regulate, you might see something effective pop up. If people know they're going to get raises for being screwups in the regulatory industry, what incentive is there to enforce good regulations?

In the case of cable, cable's been reasonably compliant with many of the regulations. The regulations are that bad. If a law is bad, or regulation, whatever you want to call it, it should be taken off the books. After all, marriage was once regulated to be between a two people of the same race. I think deregulation here was good. I support gay marriage. That would be a further measure in deregulation. The "Deregulation" since Ronald Reagan hasn't been deregulation at all, but simply changing the law to create state sponsored monopolies given to campaign donations. The thing about good regulation, its hard for anyone to make a profit off it except the people, so it doesn't donate to political campaigns and doesn't get people elected. Honestly, I don't think real reform will be possible until the stock market crashes back down to reality with sane private and public debts, P/E ratios and the like. Only then will politicians look to people for support since they'll still have votes, but their old backers won't have money anymore (and the people will be sufficiently angry and looking to scapegoat people for their bad investments anyway). Mark my words; good regulation on cable will come when the cable industry wholesale goes out of business and no longer can stand in the way of it. Its sort of like financial reform: Obama and Bush could've taken all these companies by the balls such as Goldman and said "You can fix yourselves or perish continuing to legally steal money"-instead they give out trillions of dollars after receiving millions from them, then threaten regulation which the lobbying effort is paid for by money the government handed out to them. There was an opportunity to create real reform in the financial industry by basically holding a proverbial gun to the firms head and saying "Sign, or let the invisible hand pull the trigger" and we didn't do that. If you look at the carry trade and the speculation of all sorts of assets, these morons haven't learned their lesson and we're doomed to have the same type of crash again (Its not a matter of if, its a matter of when). We sort of did that with GM and people were complaining about the violation of contract law (I think at that point the government should've said "Ingrates: Here, fine, we won't get involved. Have fun losing your shirts!"). And now, the government that's elected itself off financial industry money, that institutes financial industry policies, that essentially lets the federal reserve incredible expensive campaign money-you really want to give the government more power over media without much more pressing reforms such as...investigating those who broke the law and making sure it doesn't happen in the same form again, or attempting to since it'd be impossible to completely prevent things from repeating?

I mean, real unemployment is over 17% according to DoL. We're in, in my opinion, what is a depression; whatever recovery we have, its unlikely we're going to see that number below 10% any time soon. Based on the way people are acting, you'd never know it. The government right now is perhaps the biggest idiot in this mess, pretending that we've "recovered" because we've reentered positive growth thanks to government spending (though its still 1/4th of a million lost a month in the jobs market, and tons of foreclosures everywhere and defaults). I will not support giving government more authority on anything until it realizes just how serious its position is. Its only doomstay and the pessimistic outlook anyway if you think prices and the economy should be completely out of touch with reality. The correction on financials will be good for the country; it'll keep the government more honest, it'll give people a better idea of what they have, and it'll correct a lot of financial imbalances and excess cash in the hands of people who really aren't productive (I for the life of me can't figure out why Alex Rodriguez makes that much more money than Barack Obama or George W. Bush did). It'll be a painful change for nearly everyone, but if you think about it, that's the change nearly everyone wants but no one's willing to face. Even today, the media celebrates the avoidance of a great depression. Unemployment, real unemployment, will be above 20% by the end of the year, and the reported will probably be 10%. How is that not a depression?

In terms of your first four paragraphs, I agree. I am not arguing that regulations are currently good. Coincidentally a media that has reduced the transparency of government so people are less able to follow whats going on with the government regulating or deregulating things, gets major changes in regulations to benefit them. There was a law that prohibited a company from owning more than 5 radio or TV stations and no more than three in the same market. Or something like that. Removing that law allowed monopolies to form, just like you said. Coincidentally, the FCC vote, followed party lines. Democrats opposed (2), republicans in favor (3). Clear Channel comes to mind. People are less able to practice oversight with the current Media in the US. If there is a liberal bias in the media...how come the republicans are the ones championing the legislation that helps out media? Are the republicans the liberals now? The Media 25 years ago talked a lot more about what was going on in Congress and the Commissions than they do now. People had more information on what was happening in government.

In terms of your last paragraph, I believe that when growth goes positive, then its the "end" of the recession. The Great Depression actually ended in 1932-1933 when growth went positive. Conditions still sucked, people were still desperate, but these are just the definitions. There of course was a second recession in 1936-1937 to add to the misery. Same thing here. The recession may be "over" but it doesn't mean that people are dancing in the streets. Things are still pretty bad.

In terms of marriage, I was thinking about this very subject a couple of days ago. Marriage was and should be a religious construct. Somewhere a long the line, the government started poking their noses into the whole thing and adding benefits to the religious bond. Tax breaks, a legal default heir in case of death, spouses not being able to testify against each other in court, etc. If a church wants to ban gay marriage, go ahead. Its not the right of government to stick their noses in it. If the government wants to get into the game and make their version of marriage, then it should be open to same-sex marriages. Note I changed terms. The thing being debated isn't "gay marriage" thats a conservative propaganda terminology. Its properly about same-sex marriage. Two people can be of the same gender, want to spend their lives together and not be gay or have sex. If having sex was legally necessary for the sustenance of a marriage, the divorce rate would approach 90+% The religious version of unions should be prepared to lose their legal rights, too, though. If a married man dies without a will, he is intestate. His wife is not entitled to the estate. There is no implied right in the case of severe injury in terms of making a medical decision, these things would have to be separately spelled out separately. There would be no tax breaks for married couples.

To me, the religious people want to declare who can and can't be married, but they want all the perqs that the government has conferred on married couples. Follow the 1st amendment, have a legal distinction between the two. Then the churches can go around gay-bashing all they want, but in no way should there be a "superior" status to the religious institution like it is now. The civil version should be the more legal rights involved one. So, I would tend to disagree with you here, regulate marriage even more to observe the 1st Amendment.

[Sonthert]

Re: this page so far.

Is anyone else thinking that precision is the better part of articulation?

Vague, apocryphal. Would you care to elaborate?

"Only the Enigma knows, but he doesn't answer questions, he merely poses them."

[clibinarius]

A depression isn't well defined. The recession in the depression ended, the depression did not. There's no technical definition that's accepted of a depression I'm aware of...

Aside from that, the deficit hole this year is about $300-400B a quarter, which is 2-2.7% a quarter. If this is not subtracted from GDP, it means for the recession to be genuinely over, this number must be subtracted or economic growth must be at or greater than those numbers. It is not. On a balance sheet, assets might increase, but so do liabilities and not equity.

I would define a recession as the point where the country sees an uptick in liabilities and a downtick in equity. I believe that's the way its meant to be calculated, and assets ignored (as in the end, they're convertible to cash and equity in some form). Basically, it is analyzing the right side of the accounting equation, instead of looking at the left side and hoping the number gets larger. The left side doesn't matter.

Relevant formula for those who don't know it: A = L + E (or A = L + SE). Edited September 14, 2009 by clibinarius

[gaia.plateau]

Re: this page so far.

Is anyone else thinking that precision is the better part of articulation?

Vague, apocryphal. Would you care to elaborate?

"Only the Enigma knows, but he doesn't answer questions, he merely poses them."

I take the applied quote as a profound compliment, being of the position that questions, and not answers, lead us to truths. "Any man who knows a thing knows he knows not a god damned thing at all."

This most grateful discernment posited in cheerful brevity, I shall acquiesce to your quite reasonable request with the very foremost junction of my verbiage, insofar as it may be engendered in accordance with my own prescription of precision, of which it should be duly noted was scribed for the salient effect of cordial lightening, such as it may categorically escape from hypocrisy or platitude.

Too long; didn't read.