You are operating a newsroom or, let’s say, a commentary room. Somebody accuses you of bias in how you decide what to publish.
You deflect: Of course different media organizations have different perspectives; each to its own. Sometimes, too, we choose what to run less rationally than the Platonic philosopher-journalist would demand.
Bias is everywhere, inevitable.
Which makes the only cure maximal freedom of speech and openness of discourse. The answer to deficient speech is better speech, not either direct or indirect government censorship.
Nevertheless, the FCC has proposed to “investigate” the selection process of newsrooms.
Any such investigation is necessarily biased from the get-go against freedom of speech and press. Even if it never gets to the regulation stage, the investigation itself constitutes interference. It is impossible for anyone being asked formal investigatory questions by the FCC to be unaware that the questioner has the power of government behind him.
How, for example, is a conscientious employee who respects the rights of his boss supposed to answer this loaded question: “Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?”?
FCC commissioner Ajit Pai reports that this is one query being considered as part of a “Critical Information Needs” study to determine how stories are selected, “perceived bias,” and how responsive a newsroom is to “underserved populations.”
Pai, who opposes the project, says: “The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.”
Or not covering others.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “The FCC’s Press Bias Fix”
The whole notion of the airwaves being communal property, to be managed in some fantasized aggregate interest, was effected to censor opinion. Before the FCC, courts began applying homesteading principles to the ownership of airwaves, to hold that a broadcaster could claim exclusive use of some range of frequencies in some area, by being first to put them to use.
The state should no more regulate the content of broadcast journalism than it should regulate the content of newspapers.
Yes, I know that NBC and ABC and CBS and whatever other commercial broadcast networks one might consider are delivering perversions of the news. But likewise, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, and other print/web periodicals are delivering perversions of the news.
Whenever the political left sees a gate, they move to become gate-keepers; and when the political right discovers left-wing gate-keeping, they move to seize or displace the gates controlled by the left. The correct response is to keep both of these horrible tribes (and any new tribe that might in theory arise) from using the state to protect their positions of social power, and thus to allow new, alternative sources to challenge these perversions.
“Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?”? Isn’t that why a news operation has an editor? It looks like someone wants conformity in news, something like a Pravda. We can learn a lot by reading and viewing different news sources. What they choose to cover or not cover shows us their priorities. Our job as consumers is to educate ourselves and choose the best and most varied news sources available.