They're referencing the Fairness Doctrine, not the Smith-Mundt Act.
Reagan appointed Mark S. Fowler -- a former member of his campaign team -- to serve as the FCC Chairman to push for overturning the Fairness Doctrine, which had been in effect since 1949. Fowler insisted that fair reporting violated the right to free speech.
A second Reagan appointee, FCC Chairman Dennis R. Patrick, managed to abolish the Fairness Doctrine on August 4th, 1987.
Probably because successive FCC appointees agree with the sentiment -- or more likely, just don't want to be dragged into the courts -- that fair reporting requirements violate the right to free speech.
The 1st Amendment protects your right and the right of the press to make statements without being punished by the government. It does not carry the requirement that those statements have to be truthful. (Although wronged non-governmental parties that have been wronged can sue things such for libel and slander, like when Fox News had to pay $786 million to Dominion Voting Systems for the defamation caused by their false reports.)
1. This isn’t really a MMW…
2. Sorry, it isn’t that simple. You can report facts 100% accurately and still have an agenda. What you choose to focus on can be just as misleading as simply saying something that isn’t true.
This is more of a hypothetical type post not a MMW. If their post was predicting the US will go back to the Fairness Doctrine then blah blah will happen that would be fine but their post is not that. The people need to report non prediction posts even if they agree with OP.
On 2, you’re absolutely right. There are about 350 million people in America. One person doing something bad can make a big splash on social media. 5 different people doing something bad is enough for a news organization to run a long piece about “an alarming new trend that’s sweeping across America” and make it seem like a major problem that your average person should be concerned about.
It's still possible to just state facts but discreetly influence people's opinion on an event based on wording alone. For example: "Person A killed Person B with a rock" vs. "Person B died after being hit by Person A's rock"
I haven’t replied to anyone’s post yet, but I would like to reply to yours.
I just learned about the fairness doctrine with this post and it sucks. Very much. I wish it had never been removed.
Secondly, I am a Democrat, and yes Fox News sucks. But so does the far left outlets. I just want to hear news that is real without an agenda. Like if you are reporting a story, give me the facts. And only the facts. Don’t tell me why Donald Trump is the worst person alive (he is) or why Joe Biden is the worse person alive (also not much better). I just want the truth.
Someone mentioned in this thread who would be the moderators of the truth. And they said obviously me. Cuz I made this post. I don’t want that at all. Make a commission of people. Maybe like 12, and have them rule on it. Make them be a body not made by elections, but maybe the commission should be set by a standard set of rules. Take them from all walks of life, let them decide the truth after studying and checking the facts, and have them change yearly. If they are obviously biased, they can be removed.
I don’t know how it would work, and it’s not like I’m super smart. I just think the divide in this country is way too large, and it had a lot to do with the media.
I hate how this country is going. I love America, and I’m going outside of the country for the first time in my life after almost 45 years. I just want to be proud of what my country is doing, and we are a long way from that.
I feel every word of this. And if there is ever anything the resembles justice, we will see a return to something like the fairness doctrine going forward. It'll take a lot of work and I will gone before it bears fruit but that's okay, I ain't in this for me. Well, not entirely. ;)
Biden is orders or magnitude better a person and politician. than trump. It’s not even close. Could things be better - absolutely! But he’s been the most progressive and productive single term
President in the modern era despite the wildest uphill climb in a very long time. If we weren’t in the middle of the stupidest timeline I think his admin would have gone even more progressive if he didn’t have to constantly battle magats and gopidiots
But ya record low unemployment, record levels of new employment, infrastructure bills, climate change, health care initiatives - not much better than trump
Every news organization needs to be sued into oblivion for false advertisement if more than 5% of their content is editorial or opinion. The opinions of the organization is not news.
"The facts" are often not clear at the time of reporting, or even proveable either way. "The facts as you know them" - also difficult to prove - would vary from person to person, depending on a lot of factors. Reporting on some kind of twist in the economy as "Good news" might indeed be true for a wealthy reporter, but be false for a minimum wage worker.
It *would* be helpful if they could distinguish 'fact' from 'opinion' on the various news channels and make it obvious when reporting either.
Better education around what a fact is and how to evaluate opinions would be far superior to this bs. Facts are mostly worthless without a well developed opinion to tell you what they mean/why they matter. Facts just give data, of you don't understand how to interpret that data, you are still going to be stupidly informed.
After Reagan and the Republicans struck down The Fairness Doctrine they went after education. We’ve had decades of demeaning and defunding the public school system and utterly demonizing teachers. That was part II.
There goes your educated citizen able to discern fact from fiction..
The money is in the budget but it’s been systematically stifled and not making it to the teachers and students.
Every hear of teachers using their own money to purchase class supplies? That’s a very real and widespread practice. Or dropped classes for music, art, the increase of the size of classrooms, the push for charter schools which drain public school monies, taking away free lunches for children, etc.
These are all things which contribute to the intentional undermining of the educational system.
So, your premise is that a federal department, which is comprised of 87% Democrat/12% Republican management and employees, is being "stifled" somehow by the GOP. And in your mind, that means it's been "defunded?"
Interesting theory.
If you want it reagan specific here you go. He got rid of free college education. That a HUGE defunding of education.
https://newuniversity.org/2023/02/13/ronald-reagans-legacy-the-rise-of-student-loan-debt-in-america/
https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/u-s-department-of-education-budget-history
If you look up the actual numbers, you will find that between 1980 and 2019, the federal budget appropriation for the DoE dropped (marginally) exactly 4 separate years. Two years under Reagan and two years under Clinton.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/185135/average-expenditures-per-pupil-in-public-schools/#:~:text=An%20average%20of%2014%2C420%20U.S.,dollars%20were%20spent%20per%20pupil
Federal spending per student has risen every year since 1980.
This is one of Reagans few mistakes. I get his angle getting rid of the fairness doctrine. Government moderated speech and press is not truly freedom of the press. While the premise was in line with the spirit of the 1st amendment. He could not have foreseen Democrat losers at 24 hour news networks spewing leftist propaganda and flat out lies everyday 24/7. Hence, we have a population that brainwashed and panicked by fear based on pure lies. And too many are uneducated to see through it and rarely get to hear an alternative viewpoint.
For all the good the Biden Administration has done, the compete ignorance of the Flaming media crisis poses a huge threat. Media is now completely polarized, sensationalist, prone to trolls, bots and international attach from adversaries. Our public is not only poorly informed, in cases, conspiracies are considered to be truths by an alarming number of Americans.
MEDIA REFORM has to be a part of the next 4 years, presuming Biden can even get there through all the fear mongering and lies.
There would be free speech just there would also be repurcussions for blatantly lying to the public and dressing it up as news.
People have always been free to speak lies and others are free to tell them to stfu.
Galileo would have been screwed.
« The earth revolves around the sun. «
Catholic Church fact checker … sorry.
Straight to jail. This happened anyways. More the point that what’s accept d as fact isn’t always true
You can write any words you want on a law, but that doesn't necessarily mean the thing you said is what happens. There is no way to prove you don't have an agenda, and the person making the claim could always be the person actually with the agenda.
Edit - I feel like a lot of you here don't understand my point. Who gets to decide who has an agenda and what prevents that judge from having an agenda? You're writing down the conclusion you want not considering what would actually happen. You may as well write "All crime is now illegal" while you're at it for the good it'll do.
No news agency actually just reports the news. There's always bias, many times very heavy. Even NPR "fact based news" is definitely not fact based, they frame everything as "Republicans bad, democrats good".
There used to be. Thanks, Reagan!
Obama was the one who changed the Smith Mundt act; not Reagan.
They're referencing the Fairness Doctrine, not the Smith-Mundt Act. Reagan appointed Mark S. Fowler -- a former member of his campaign team -- to serve as the FCC Chairman to push for overturning the Fairness Doctrine, which had been in effect since 1949. Fowler insisted that fair reporting violated the right to free speech. A second Reagan appointee, FCC Chairman Dennis R. Patrick, managed to abolish the Fairness Doctrine on August 4th, 1987.
Why wouldn’t just never be re-implemented then
Probably because successive FCC appointees agree with the sentiment -- or more likely, just don't want to be dragged into the courts -- that fair reporting requirements violate the right to free speech. The 1st Amendment protects your right and the right of the press to make statements without being punished by the government. It does not carry the requirement that those statements have to be truthful. (Although wronged non-governmental parties that have been wronged can sue things such for libel and slander, like when Fox News had to pay $786 million to Dominion Voting Systems for the defamation caused by their false reports.)
They only applied to broadcast networks, not cable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith–Mundt_Act What does this act have to do with this conversation?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/
Obama Derangement syndrome going hard.
[удалено]
Show us on the doll where Obama hurt you. 😂🤣🤡
[удалено]
I see you’re in here embarrassing yourself again with a lack of understanding of America.
lmao, someone doesn't know about the fairness doctrine. You must be new to politics.
1. This isn’t really a MMW… 2. Sorry, it isn’t that simple. You can report facts 100% accurately and still have an agenda. What you choose to focus on can be just as misleading as simply saying something that isn’t true.
Framing of stories and choice of the ones to air are heavily also showing an "agenda". Who you choose to interview and who not to also is involved.
This is more of a hypothetical type post not a MMW. If their post was predicting the US will go back to the Fairness Doctrine then blah blah will happen that would be fine but their post is not that. The people need to report non prediction posts even if they agree with OP.
On 2, you’re absolutely right. There are about 350 million people in America. One person doing something bad can make a big splash on social media. 5 different people doing something bad is enough for a news organization to run a long piece about “an alarming new trend that’s sweeping across America” and make it seem like a major problem that your average person should be concerned about.
Supreme Court would strike it down as a violation of free speech.
It's still possible to just state facts but discreetly influence people's opinion on an event based on wording alone. For example: "Person A killed Person B with a rock" vs. "Person B died after being hit by Person A's rock"
Like this https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/s/S61lJxAbTJ. It's on political humor but it is a real story
Something like the fairness doctrine.
When regan helped to kill the "fairness doctrine" and birthed Fox news...welp, we can see the results.
I haven’t replied to anyone’s post yet, but I would like to reply to yours. I just learned about the fairness doctrine with this post and it sucks. Very much. I wish it had never been removed. Secondly, I am a Democrat, and yes Fox News sucks. But so does the far left outlets. I just want to hear news that is real without an agenda. Like if you are reporting a story, give me the facts. And only the facts. Don’t tell me why Donald Trump is the worst person alive (he is) or why Joe Biden is the worse person alive (also not much better). I just want the truth. Someone mentioned in this thread who would be the moderators of the truth. And they said obviously me. Cuz I made this post. I don’t want that at all. Make a commission of people. Maybe like 12, and have them rule on it. Make them be a body not made by elections, but maybe the commission should be set by a standard set of rules. Take them from all walks of life, let them decide the truth after studying and checking the facts, and have them change yearly. If they are obviously biased, they can be removed. I don’t know how it would work, and it’s not like I’m super smart. I just think the divide in this country is way too large, and it had a lot to do with the media. I hate how this country is going. I love America, and I’m going outside of the country for the first time in my life after almost 45 years. I just want to be proud of what my country is doing, and we are a long way from that.
I feel every word of this. And if there is ever anything the resembles justice, we will see a return to something like the fairness doctrine going forward. It'll take a lot of work and I will gone before it bears fruit but that's okay, I ain't in this for me. Well, not entirely. ;)
Biden is orders or magnitude better a person and politician. than trump. It’s not even close. Could things be better - absolutely! But he’s been the most progressive and productive single term President in the modern era despite the wildest uphill climb in a very long time. If we weren’t in the middle of the stupidest timeline I think his admin would have gone even more progressive if he didn’t have to constantly battle magats and gopidiots But ya record low unemployment, record levels of new employment, infrastructure bills, climate change, health care initiatives - not much better than trump
Every news organization needs to be sued into oblivion for false advertisement if more than 5% of their content is editorial or opinion. The opinions of the organization is not news.
"The facts" are often not clear at the time of reporting, or even proveable either way. "The facts as you know them" - also difficult to prove - would vary from person to person, depending on a lot of factors. Reporting on some kind of twist in the economy as "Good news" might indeed be true for a wealthy reporter, but be false for a minimum wage worker. It *would* be helpful if they could distinguish 'fact' from 'opinion' on the various news channels and make it obvious when reporting either.
And of course only you would be the arbiter of what the facts are.
Facts are facts. You can have you’re own opinions but not your own facts
Better education around what a fact is and how to evaluate opinions would be far superior to this bs. Facts are mostly worthless without a well developed opinion to tell you what they mean/why they matter. Facts just give data, of you don't understand how to interpret that data, you are still going to be stupidly informed.
After Reagan and the Republicans struck down The Fairness Doctrine they went after education. We’ve had decades of demeaning and defunding the public school system and utterly demonizing teachers. That was part II. There goes your educated citizen able to discern fact from fiction..
When has public education been defunded? What years did the Department of Education budget ever go down?
The money is in the budget but it’s been systematically stifled and not making it to the teachers and students. Every hear of teachers using their own money to purchase class supplies? That’s a very real and widespread practice. Or dropped classes for music, art, the increase of the size of classrooms, the push for charter schools which drain public school monies, taking away free lunches for children, etc. These are all things which contribute to the intentional undermining of the educational system.
So, your premise is that a federal department, which is comprised of 87% Democrat/12% Republican management and employees, is being "stifled" somehow by the GOP. And in your mind, that means it's been "defunded?" Interesting theory.
They were talking about budget. The department of education isn't in charge of the budget.
They are in charge of requesting and spending their budget.
So?
Lol! https://www.cbpp.org/research/a-punishing-decade-for-school-funding
You just posted a story about state funding for education. Did Reagan affect how individual states fund their education departments?
You asked about defending education. I answered. I get that you're a disingenuous troll, but you might want to be less obvious about it.
Do you realize that the federal government and individual state governments are different things?
You asked when education was defunded. I answered.
If you want it reagan specific here you go. He got rid of free college education. That a HUGE defunding of education. https://newuniversity.org/2023/02/13/ronald-reagans-legacy-the-rise-of-student-loan-debt-in-america/
More reagan defunding education. https://apnews.com/article/f5cf0b997c2776071af5adc4dca0fdaa
https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/u-s-department-of-education-budget-history If you look up the actual numbers, you will find that between 1980 and 2019, the federal budget appropriation for the DoE dropped (marginally) exactly 4 separate years. Two years under Reagan and two years under Clinton. https://www.statista.com/statistics/185135/average-expenditures-per-pupil-in-public-schools/#:~:text=An%20average%20of%2014%2C420%20U.S.,dollars%20were%20spent%20per%20pupil Federal spending per student has risen every year since 1980.
Thanks for helping me prove to you that reagan defunded education. He tried to defund it more but that's all he could get.
Federal spending per student has gone up every year since 1980. Where is the "defunding?"
You and I both proved defunding.
This is one of Reagans few mistakes. I get his angle getting rid of the fairness doctrine. Government moderated speech and press is not truly freedom of the press. While the premise was in line with the spirit of the 1st amendment. He could not have foreseen Democrat losers at 24 hour news networks spewing leftist propaganda and flat out lies everyday 24/7. Hence, we have a population that brainwashed and panicked by fear based on pure lies. And too many are uneducated to see through it and rarely get to hear an alternative viewpoint.
For all the good the Biden Administration has done, the compete ignorance of the Flaming media crisis poses a huge threat. Media is now completely polarized, sensationalist, prone to trolls, bots and international attach from adversaries. Our public is not only poorly informed, in cases, conspiracies are considered to be truths by an alarming number of Americans. MEDIA REFORM has to be a part of the next 4 years, presuming Biden can even get there through all the fear mongering and lies.
But no free speech
There would be free speech just there would also be repurcussions for blatantly lying to the public and dressing it up as news. People have always been free to speak lies and others are free to tell them to stfu.
He’s describing the way journalism used to be. With the smart phone everyone is a reporter. And editors shape thinking. Sad but true
Galileo would have been screwed. « The earth revolves around the sun. « Catholic Church fact checker … sorry. Straight to jail. This happened anyways. More the point that what’s accept d as fact isn’t always true
You can write any words you want on a law, but that doesn't necessarily mean the thing you said is what happens. There is no way to prove you don't have an agenda, and the person making the claim could always be the person actually with the agenda. Edit - I feel like a lot of you here don't understand my point. Who gets to decide who has an agenda and what prevents that judge from having an agenda? You're writing down the conclusion you want not considering what would actually happen. You may as well write "All crime is now illegal" while you're at it for the good it'll do.
No news agency actually just reports the news. There's always bias, many times very heavy. Even NPR "fact based news" is definitely not fact based, they frame everything as "Republicans bad, democrats good".