Of the handful of times I visit the 'Trending' section of YouTube, I was surprised to see CBS Sunday morning show up on the front. This is my dad's go-to show to relax on Sunday. It features a relatively neutral delivery of information, and a favorite: "moment of nature" where they cut to some wildlife for some time at the end of the show. "A polarized America," the title read. Its reason for being on the Trending page made more sense now, but still worth the watch.
Here, it delves into what we're all too aware of as the 'divide of America' in politics. The bit that interests me the most is the inclination around 4:50 that the divide can be traced to "1987, when the Federal Communications Commission did away with the so-called 'Fairness Doctrine'."
- a former federal policy in the US requiring television and radio broadcasters to present contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance.
I don't buy it. Imagine if that doctrine were in effect today. Every news channel would have to come up with a way to appease that rule. Who would be the arbiter? When it was just the 3 main channels, they all pretty much went the same way. If it's true that the amount of people viewing the main news channels create the divide, based on market share, the country would tilt much more toward the left. The only main channel that goes toward the right is Fox. The conglomerate that owns Fox isn't near as big as the next two biggest competitors. Media ownership wiki I looked up the Fairness Doctrine It only requires that an opposing viewpoint be aired, not that it be given equal time. Under the Fairness Doctrine, I can imagine the networks reporting something like, everyone hates Trump. . . except his family. When I watched it, I didn't focus so much on the fairness doctrine. But maybe this piece goes along with it. I focused on the part with the interview with Sean Hannity (that he is now mad about) that had Koppel saying that Hannity was bad for America because people like him have "attracted people who have determined that ideology is more important than facts." One of the reasons I was less convinced about the fairness doctrine is because Koppel also interviewed the head of the NY Times. He thinks he's being fair. I don't agree. Would the FCC judge it differently? Probably. This piece is even better where Hannity and Koppel agree that journalism is dead and that the opinion page of the paper as analogy for the news channels have become the front page. When people are discarding facts in favor of ideology, that leads to people who are arguing based on emotions instead of facts, which leads to polarization. Magazine shows have taken the place of the news. Without facts in journalism on the major news channels, people don't have a fact based or logic based system to create their own ideology.The bit that interests me the most is the inclination around 4:50 that the divide can be traced to "1987, when the Federal Communications Commission did away with the so-called 'Fairness Doctrine'."
Though I took it for granted when typing the post, I guess it makes sense to write now that I wouldn't think the Fairness Doctrine was the straw that broke the camel's back, one small safeguard among others like the equal-time rule (referred to in the linked wiki) that eroded away to the slippery slope we're at now. On a side note, I'm curious to whether you could expand on this... I'm fairly young and don't understand which 3 channels you're referring to. On-air? On the television? Yeah... I got a giggle out of that bit. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!I don't buy it. Imagine if that doctrine were in effect today. Every news channel would have to come up with a way to appease that rule. Who would be the arbiter?
When it was just the 3 main channels, they all pretty much went the same way.
One of the reasons I was less convinced about the fairness doctrine is because Koppel also interviewed the head of the NY Times. He thinks he's being fair. I don't agree. Would the FCC judge it differently? Probably.
The major broadcast news channels on TV were ABC, NBC and CBS. If you watched any of them, you'd get roughly the same news. They were all sponsored by roughly the same corporations. There's a video of Bernie Sanders in 2003, talking to some high school students about politics. (How does he not look younger 14 years ago? Was he born old? At least he's not aging at all. :p) He was talking about how the news media has a slanted view of the news. It's the news that the major corporations want to tell you. One of the main channels was owned by GE at the time. He was talking about how GE only wanted people to hear its version of events. At that time, he told the students to watch Fox News once in a while to get a different perspective. Today, if you watch CBS this morning, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News on the same day, you could think you're living in different countries. A couple weeks ago, Fox News was concentrating on a story of a 14 year old girl who claimed she was raped in the school bathroom by a 17 year old man and an 18 year old man who were illegal immigrants and going to school with her. Fox News reported that the 18 year old had a criminal record while CNN claims he does not. None of the other news channels aired that story that I saw. CNN has a print story about it with a very different narrative than Fox News. The story has morphed into the girl allegedly giving consent. Different media outlets have widely differing views on what they want to stress in the news. Polarization is caused by people watching different narratives with different agendas. As a side note, comedy is the same. I was watching an interview with 2 of my favorite media people, John Dickerson and Stephen Colbert. When asked what news they read daily, Colbert mentioned the Reddit front page, HuffPo, NY Times, CNN (all of Trump's fake news sources) and a slew of liberal media. Apparently, none of his jokes come from the other side.On a side note, I'm curious to whether you could expand on this... I'm fairly young and don't understand which 3 channels you're referring to. On-air? On the television?