Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 146 posts

Re: FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

#41

Post by chrisseaton »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #22

Call me crazy but it's time for a legal definition of news (vs editorial) and then have that definition forced. If false advertising is a faux pas then news that's not attempting to be objective and forthright should be labeled. Most of the so called news / journalism isn't news / journalism any more than Aspartame is sugar. If you can't call Aspartame sugar then consuming content should be forced to be as transparen…

I think most news is pretty much useless without any kind of analysis, and that analysis is effectively editorial.

If I tell you a vote in congress passed, that doesn't really tell me much without saying whether the vote was expected to pass or not, or why, or what the vote passing means, etc. And that's all opinion. Even if you try to present it factually it's all judgement.

Re: FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

#42

Post by tangent128 »

rc_bhg wrote: post #34
kolpa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your proposed definition and how would you apply the test in practice?

"Must not intentionally report false information as truth." Thus, lawsuites would be allowed if your org was found to be intentionally lying. But unless someone can prove you did it intentionally, they have no case. Obviously you can lie all you want if you take the word "News" out of your name.

Willful ignorance offers a pretty big loophole to that definition.

If you don't fact check information, nobody can say you know it's false.

Re: FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

#43

Post by downandout »

I don’t get what the issue is here. I have seen this message on my local television stations. What is missing from the YouTube video is an invitation at the end of that message for viewers to contact the station with any concerns about bias in its own reporting. In fact that is the entire point of the script, and it has been cutoff of the YouTube video, presumably because it appears to be more controversial that way. Oh, the irony!

So a large media company recognized the problem of bias in the media, which could become a business problem if it affects confidence in their news reporting, and invited people to contact them if they noticed this problem creeping into the individual news stations’ reports. Where is the controversy here?

Re: FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

#44

Post by zaroth »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #22

Call me crazy but it's time for a legal definition of news (vs editorial) and then have that definition forced. If false advertising is a faux pas then news that's not attempting to be objective and forthright should be labeled. Most of the so called news / journalism isn't news / journalism any more than Aspartame is sugar. If you can't call Aspartame sugar then consuming content should be forced to be as transparen…

Ok, you’re crazy. A “legal definition of news” is exactly what the first amendment is setup to prevent.

What I think it’s time for is to demand personal responsibility for critically thinking about what you read or listen to.

The state cannot ever be trusted to control what you watch, read, or listen to, full stop. This has only ever ended in disaster, and we’ve known this for centuries.

When people who don’t like what someone is saying call for government to stop that person from speaking, and that person isn’t directly inciting violence, I would kindly ask those people to fuck off. Maybe move to a more totalitarian regime if that’s to their liking.

News, editorials, and political commentary are nothing at all like the ingredient list on the back of your soda can.

Re: FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

#45

Post by rhino369 »

kolpa wrote: post #31
rhino369 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any justification for censoring Sinclair would apply 100 fold to Google or Facebook. Its just not constitutional to ban Sinclair for running pro GOP content.

Sinclair has a government-granted monopoly on the frequencies on which they broadcast. Google and Facebook offer service accessible over the (almost entirely) capacity-unconstrained Internet medium.

And a movie theatre has a government granted monopoly on a piece of land on which they show movies. Doesn't mean you can't just build another one next door.

Facebook has an actual monolopy on an entire market.

Re: FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

#46

Post by chiefalchemist »

rc_bhg wrote: post #34
kolpa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your proposed definition and how would you apply the test in practice?

"Must not intentionally report false information as truth." Thus, lawsuites would be allowed if your org was found to be intentionally lying. But unless someone can prove you did it intentionally, they have no case. Obviously you can lie all you want if you take the word "News" out of your name.

There are rules, regs & best practices (and licenses) for a slew of trades that are not the fourth leg (i.e., Fourth Estate) of a proper democracy. Electricians, plumbers, hair stylists and such come to mind. And while it does not have to be gov based, why not journalism? Can't these (pardon me) meat-heads police themselves?

Aside from news, journalism is another word that needs a proper and widely held definition. A blogger on the internet is not journalism. Lester Holt is not a journalist. Oprah is not a journalist. (Editorial: Shame on you 60 Minutes.)

I agree. It might not stop the lies, but it would draw a much needed line in the sand. Personally, I'm exhausted from trying to rationalize with people who get their information and thoughts from sources they presume are legit news and well-practiced journalism.

Re: FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

#47

Post by [deleted] »

philwelch wrote: post #37
rhino369 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fairness doctrine was hardly ever envoked. Attempting to apply it to a situation like this would not be constitutional. The fairness doctrine was found constitutional when it required a rebuttal to a direct personal attack during an era when there were only 3 stations. But this situation is different. It was never applied to a sitation where a network required "must run" content. At best, the fairness doctrine wo…

The fairness doctrine may not have been invoked or enforced, but stations still did things, to remain in compliance, that they stopped doing afterwards. In particular, right-wing talk radio exploded almost immediately after the repeal of the fairness doctrine.

[deleted]

Re: FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

#48

Post by beckler »

rhino369 wrote: post #30
beckler wrote: post #4

The FCC does have the authority to revoke licenses based on content, but it's rare for them to do so. However, this entire situation is ultimately a consequence of revoking the FCC fairness doctrine. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine ) For example, a news station did have their license revoked by taking a strong stance against civil rights, and violated the fairness doctrine. ( https://en.wikipedi…

The fairness doctrine was hardly ever envoked. Attempting to apply it to a situation like this would not be constitutional. The fairness doctrine was found constitutional when it required a rebuttal to a direct personal attack during an era when there were only 3 stations. But this situation is different. It was never applied to a sitation where a network required "must run" content. At best, the fairness doctrine wo…

If a majority of broadcast stations were owned by a single company, and that single parent company enforced censorship and strong bias about one or multiple issues, would that not be considered an instance of limited channels?

Sure the number of channels is higher, but the amount of information spread is not.

Re: FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

#49

Post by jsgo »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #22

Call me crazy but it's time for a legal definition of news (vs editorial) and then have that definition forced. If false advertising is a faux pas then news that's not attempting to be objective and forthright should be labeled. Most of the so called news / journalism isn't news / journalism any more than Aspartame is sugar. If you can't call Aspartame sugar then consuming content should be forced to be as transparen…

While I agree, I think I'd be saddened by what it would suss out: that people don't really want news.

The sad part would be that even after this, people would still look to the Hannitys, the Maddows, the Carlsons, the Lemons of the world for their news. I understand the reasoning behind it (zero effort way of processing news). Where it does become dangerous is if someone turns a non-news/fake news item into a talking point to deceive the viewer into thinking it is legitimate like the content based on real news items.

I guess the beginning of the end was to allow channels specific to "news" to propagate. In an ever growing fight for ratings, something if we're being honest that shouldn't be a news team's goal, they've had to at best fluff the news or at worst make it controversial for ratings sake. I like CNN and feel them to be fairly "even", but even I have to question the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" nature of constant BREAKING NEWS items that are on their site at any given time and I would imagine is pretty frequent on social media (at least, anything I see shared from CNN seems to have breaking: at the beginning).

Maybe the local news showing national/international news format would be best, but with some kind of regulation to prevent them from politicizing it. Now what that would be defined by, I'm not sure. It probably wouldn't be heavy in ratings though.

Re: FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its ‘must-run’ segments and scripts

#50

Post by delbel »

mabbo wrote: post #20
Covzire wrote: post #14

Right wing media has pointed out the same 'creepy talking point synchronicity' happening in the larger mainstream media for many years. Just like with Cambridge Analytica, certain behavior is only raised by the media as a scandal when amateurs try to the same thing the big boys have been doing for years/decades.

Really? Which news outlets had dozens of news anchors read, word for word, the same script that was given to them by their owners and played as if it was a local independent news story? It's unprecedented. It's not about which politics the story supports, it's about the media and public being manipulated. Ajit Pai's response shows he either doesn't understand that or wants everyone else to think it's about something…

this isn't exactly new. There's videos from Conan showing the same thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLXQ0qbq6jY

In fact it was a regular segment on his show. This was 10 years ago. Further more, during the second Iraq War local new stations owned by Sinclair aired pro war talking points (even NPR read them), word by word.

If you go back to Bill Clinton, there's a video of him doing this and saying how great it is. This was satellite feed that was broadcasted to remote stations, omebody was able to record the feeds and hear all the conversations. It was basically scripted at the local news level.

There's other evidence to but I don't want to get into it on this site, its overwelming and dark. If we can get just one victory against this crap I'll take it.

Post reply on HN