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The Unfairness of the Fairness Doctrine
After a video appeared at YouTube of John Kerry saying he wants to revive the fairness doctrine, the Heritage Foundation responded with a video of their own. If you want to watch both videos and read my thoughts on the Fairness Doctrine, please click here. There is also an interesting discussion going in the comment section of the post.
50 Responses to “The Unfairness of the Fairness Doctrine”
I didn’t watch the Heritage video, it’s like lookin at Medusa. All this BS about the FD, in the old days the radical Left didn’t get TV shows and radio air time, the FD typically allowed for dissemting opinions on local TV news as 30 second editorial comments. A new FD won’t harm the “Dittoheads”, it could harm WASP affirmative action benefactor Tucker.
Rudi is, as usual, wrong on the facts.
In the “old days” the effect of the fairness doctrine was to eliminate political programming altogether. Because station owners had to fear the wrath of activists no matter what they did to try to provide “balance”, most of them chose to avoid political programming entirely.
Of course, that is exactly the goal of the new effort to revive the “fairness doctrine”. Those who lost the market race for political programming want to enlist the government to do their censorship for them while putting a misleading label on it. Hardly new in the annals of American political history, especially to anyone who has seen how “fairness” rules get applied on college campuses.
Most of them? In the old days (under the fairness doctrine) there were really only three of them. CBS (Face the Nation) ABC (This Week with David Brinkley) and NBC (Meet the Press).
A pretty lousy job of avoiding political commentary wouldn’t you say?
Wow. Look at that thing in your car, Davebo, it’s called “a radio”. That is the target of the current fairness doctrine advocates — they want to shut down talk radio because they think it is too effective in supporting their political opponents and the Air America debacle showed that they are unable to compete without using government power to tip the scales in their favor.
Oh, and there was a reason that those shows all wound up on Sunday morning — it was because they got such low ratings.
Political radio didn’t start because the Fairness Doctrine was revoked. It’s been around a long time.
And the reality is that the explosion of talk radio was the direct result of people abandoning AM stations for the new fangled FM stations. They had to come up with something.
Air America did indeed bust. I guess there just isn’t a big demographic of people willing to purchase all natural penis enlargement potions or work from home and get rich schemes among progressive Americans.
Seriously, Madison Ave. knows how to target a market segment.
Davebo, your comment was edited to remove material in violation of the comment policy.
Talk about ideological blinders!
When you cut through the BS, this is about money.
Just like one gets only the justice one can afford, some would like to restrict access to airwaves according to what one can afford. Free speech than, also, becomes available according to how much of it you can buy.
BTW, those who argue by pointing to what they didn’t like about the old days reveal that this is not about free speech. It’s about their free speech only.
If the old days weren’t satisfactory, fix them by imporvement. Making the new days unsatisfactory in different ways just replaces one problem with another. But, I suspect his is really about the rpoblem of choice, about power.
Moneyed interests get a lot more justice, free speech and influence in Washington than any ordinary individual. It boils down to enhancing the personal liberties of some by trampling on the personal liberties of others.
That doesn’t come within smelling difference of fairness.
The concept of fairness is taught to toddlers. It should not be that hard to swallow for adults.
To watch how eagerly some are willing to reduce every principle to its purchasable quantities is heart-breaking.
It is simply a case of not being able to win in the marketplace fairly, so they want special rules to compensate for their shortcomings.
It is, in its own way, another form of censorship. Forcing a particular type of speech to be carried is in effect the same as restricting speech – the choice of what to say, and when to say it, is taken away by government mandate.
Actually, Austin, the real effect of the “fairness doctrine” was not even to “force a particular type of speech to be carried” but rather to dissuade station owners from risking ANY political content AT ALL. It was simply too risky, given the fact that any balance will appear imbalanced to someone, resulting in massively expensive legal costs at license renewal time.
It is important to keep in mind that the goal here for “fairness doctrine” advocates is not to balance conservative talk radio, it is to shut it down. It isn’t kind of like censorship, it is exactly like censorship.
AR-
Another way to restrict free speech iis to make people buy it.
Jason – I didn’t say it was like censorship; I, too, said it WAS censorship, in another form.
Whether the ultimate effect is your scenario, mine, or some combination of both, it is the control of political speech by the government, which is supposed to be verboten.
Same reason I support the recent Wisconsin ruling (and think McCain-Feingold should be completely overturned), BTW.
Why should politicians be able to spend as much money as they want and can raise up on political ads up to election day on their message, but others cannot?
Dom – not quite sure where you are going there.
Newspapers aren’t free. Cable and satellite TV is not free. Broadcast may be, bit you still have to buy a TV. Same for radio.
Free speech is not a monetary concept, but an ideological one.
Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. ~Abbott Joseph Liebling
The Constitution grants the federal government no role in determining the content that is to be on radio, television, or the internet.
It really is that simple.
And at the risk of being flagged for piling on after the whistle, I will also add your sentence above also means Doma can’t take TCO’s tax dollars to pay for your new radio station.
However, George Soros’ phone number is…….
I admit I got emotional.
The free speech excuse for every conflict over power just makes me a little crazy.
Free speech, like justice, has become a monetary concept, and that’s exactly what inflames me.
I am not disputing that there were problems before.
I am saying that ignoring ‘fairness’ as a concept altogether will just lead to new problems.
The result would be replacing one flawed situation with another What is really about whose politics should get more air time is disguised as a free speech issue.
I would like to go back to the drawing board to look for what’s fair to everyone. The indluence of big money in politics or access to airwaves is unfair at the outset, as far as I’m oncerned.
(CO – I’m including Soros here, so you can stop with the insinuations)
Market forces don’t always work in the interests of consumers. Cheapest is not always best. There was a good reason why the concept of ‘the public interest’ played such an important role in how the media were conceived.
Corporations use ‘consumer demand’ to dodge responsibility for their influence. They are responsible for their leadership positions no less than for their profit margings, but this part of the equation has become obsolete in today’s discussions.
Corporate responsiblity is no less valid as a concept than individual responsibitly, IMO. That’s not how things work today, however, and by ignoring the concept of fairness, some are enshrining the worst of corporate and other big money influences.
There is no better example of the dangers of equating money with free speech that Washington.
Just look at all the free speech lobbyistis have.
The problem that I don’t think you are seeing is that every party in power believes theirs is the “public interest”. So once you empower the government to define what political speech is in the “public interest”, you will inevitably see activists and governments favoring their side while seeking to use the power of government to suppress the other side, all in the name of “public interest” or “fairness”.
Seriously, the advocates for the revival of the “fairness doctrine” haven’t even bothered to be subtle on this one. They want to shut down conservative talk radio because they believe conservative political beliefs are by definition against the “public interest”.
And I think that kind of thinking is highly dangerous. I think if people took off their partisan blinders for a few moments and divorced the issue from their feelings about Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, they would agree.
Think of it this way — just move the discussion back 5 years. Would you have wanted the Bush administration’s FCC circa 2002 to be empowered to grant or revoke licenses based on their subjective assessments of whether the stations were acting “in the public interest” in their political commentary? Don’t you think that any station that played the Dixie Chicks might have been threatened with an expensive re-licensing process by some “patriotic” activist? Would you even really trust this administration to resist the urge to directly use that kind of loose, subjective power to reward its supporters while suppressing its critics? If not, how can you ask that conservatives trust embittered leftist activists and/or a future Democratic administration with the power to raise re-licensing costs or even deny licenses altogether based on their subjective interpretations of “fairness” or “public interest”?
Jason,
I think your last comment gets at the core of the issue. The simple fact is that “fairness” does not have a universal definition. The right and left wingers have very different notions about what “fair” is.
And if one was truly interested in “fairness,” I assume one would have to give equal time not just to right and left or point and counterpoint, but for all views on a particular topic. So we would have a 30 minute Rush Limbaugh program followed by 30 minutes of Al Franken, followed by 30 minutes from the Libertarians, followed by 30 minutes from the Socialists, followed by 30 minutes from the fascists. Where does “fairness” end? Despite the right vs left rhetoric we often engage in, there is a tremendous diversity of political thought in this country and to be fair would require equal time to all of it.
Even so, the resurrection of the “fairness doctrine” by prominent liberals at this point in time pretty much definitively shows it has little to do with a desire to promote a “fair” exposure of views on the airwaves.
A return of the Fairness Doctrine would replace markets or even money with organizational strenght as a method of determining what is heard. Groups like Moveon.org could easily use their organizational strenght to bury a radio station with complaints when they air conservative opinions and bouy a radio/televiion station with praise when it airs liberal view points.
That way NPR will stay on the air in a Fairness Doctrine dominate media market but Rush would be driven off of most radio station who could not survive financially while fighting off the liberal activist class.
I think this issue is more complicated than just free speech versus censorship.
On the one hand I don’t want the government deciding what should be on the radio, but on the other, I don’t want monopoly on the public airwaves.
Are there any other countries that deal with this issue in an effective way?
Yes, the United States. The U.S. currently allows political speech on the airwaves without any government discrimination either for or against particular viewpoints. Stations are allowed to embrace any programming for which they can identify a substantial audience.
Jason,
I really don’t care much what other adcocates of the “Fairness Doctrine’ want. In fact, I haven’t followed this issue very closely. I know that I really want fairness, even for those whose politics I abhor.
I’m as worried about government intrusion as anyone, but that leaves me stuck between the governement and big money. I have a better chance of keeping governemtn in line than big money interests. At least government is said to have an accountability factor, whereas money interests hold themselves accountable only to making more money.
‘Consumer demand’ is not working, and you may argue that consumers get what they deserve. I cna’t be that passive, however. Sheep need shepherds, and societies need guiding principles.
Big money should not be our shepherd, and sheep should be herded away from posonous grasses.
That’s why I think we need to go back to the drawing board. Fix, improve, or come up with something new entirely. Just don’t throw out concepts like fairness.
The arguments about ‘equal time’ center on pointing out what problems they have encountered or may incur in the future. Problems are for fixing, however. What doesn’t have problems? The biggest danger lies in throwing out everything that has problems. We’d be left with a pretty bare cupboard. with that manner of thinking.
I feel like I’m fighting for the soul of the country, that part that money can’t buy.
And what happens when more than 90% of those stations are owned by the same person or corporation? You know, like Clear Channel.
A big corporation doesn’t necessarily have to worry about making a profit on radio, if they think their pro-whatever message is worth the loss.
“The U.S. currently allows political speech on the airwaves without any government discrimination ”
Yes, but you have to buy access to political speech on the airwaves. So, then corporate censorship becomes as likely as government censorship.
Chris –
90% of those stations are owned by the same person or corporation
To quote you – prove it.
AR-
Chris posed a legitimate ‘what if’ question.
Clear Channel doesn’t own anywhere close to that amount in any market. Chris’ scenario is, like almost all of Chris’ scenarios on any topic you want, a complete fiction.
I just don’t see any evidence from those who claim that a grave market failure currently exists. Yes, conservative talk radio is dominant in the talk radio market, but it is hardly true that liberal perspectives can’t be found. In fact, the most liberal outlet other than the defunct “Air America” (which failed because of very bad programming, not any conspiracy of station owners — there were TWO Air America stations here in the Twin Cities) is National Public Radio, which is even subsidized by the government.
And doma, I don’t reject concepts like “fairness”, I reject the ability of the government to ever mandate them. I especially reject the idea that the government could ever mandate them by withholding licenses from those it deems “unfair” or by subjecting station owners to expensive lawsuits at the whim of partisan activists.
Clear Channel does control something like 70% of Rock Radio… but it was a hypothetical.
90% is a high number but it could happen.
Who would have imagined 200 years ago that one of our more trusted sources of news (NBC) would be owned by a company that makes expensive military equipment for the United States (General Electric)?
Clear Channel (who I despise) owns about 10% or so of the radio stations in the US.
Quite a lot, and they suck, but still a long way from 90%.
And the majority of what they own doesn’t broadcast content that would fall under FD, unless we are going to start making them play a Flaming Lips record after every Journey song.
***hypothetical***
Don’t miss the forest for the trees…
Fairness and funding often seen to get contentious. I tend to side with Jason, in that I really don’t want the government deciding what is fair political speech, and what is not fair. I think we can see exactly why this fails – look at the vitriol over the recent Supreme Court decisions, and the tendency to view persons with differing political views as evil. So I would probably argue for keeping things as they are instead of returning to the old Fairness Doctrine.
But I would add a twist. I would argue for a strict campaign finance reform package. No limits on spending, but strict limits on who can give.
1. All donors must be registered voters.
2. All donors must be eligible to vote for the candidate they are giving money to.
3. Candidates accepting contributions from persons not eligible to vote for them will forfeit the election if (A) the dollar value of the ineligible contributions exceed 1% of the funds raised or (2) the number of ineligible campaign contributers exceeds 1% of the persons donating to the campaign.
4. Knowingly contributing to a campaign which one is ineligible will be a felony, and grounds for loss of voting rights.
5. All political endorsements must be by persons who are eligible to vote for the candidate or ballot measure.
Note that this takes the big money out of the picture. No big contributions form the National Association of Manufacturers, or labor unions, or various civic, charitable, educational or advocacy groups. If Jane Schoolmarm wants to send a check to her senator’s campaign fund, but the National Education Association can’t make contributions to a specific campaign. It can buy as much advertising time as it wants and run ads saying that it encourages people to vote for candidates who support more funding for schools. The rights of people to speak are preserved, but the big money might be a little less corrosive to the democratic process.
I am expecting anything of the sort to happen in my lifetime. We will continue to deal with big money warping the system. And so, I would just as soon not add the fairness doctrine, an inherently flawed approach.
***hypothetical***
Which means any crap that anyone could ever think? As if there are no other mechanisms to prevent monopolies of markets. It also ignores popular liberal hosts who are doing just fine because they are good at there job. Do you people even listen to the radio? Are you really desperate because you can’t find a voice on the air sympathetic to your lefty leanings???? Or would you never listen anyway and just want to shut it up because those on the right find it useful??
By the way Clear Channel owns 960 KQKE San fran. Here is a shock, they air liberal talk because they want to make money.
Ed Schultz
Stephanie Miller
Bill Press
Thom Hartmann
It was a idiotic hypothetical.
One issue that contributes to the lack of differing opinions on radio is the purposeful branding of a station’s content. No talk radio station I know has the best conservative content and the best liberal content on at various times. Instead, they try to build brand loyalty by being all conservative all the time, or conservative for political content with non-political content, such as sports, filling in the rest.
Very natural marketing decision. It’s an extremely rare music station that has the best rap for one show followed by the best classical followed by the best country. People want to get the same thing day in, day out. However, the result is that to get pretty much any liberal political content, you would have to have an entire station devoted to it. Since there’s only a small number of high quality liberal shows so far, you get pretty much nothing. In fact, I’ve never heard a single one of the liberal talk shows that are mentioned sometimes here – no Stephanie Miller, no Al Franken, no Ed Schulz.
I am not expressing an opinion on the Fairness Doctrine as I’m not educated enough concerning it to contribute productively. Just stating an additional point. There’s sort of a critical mass element to hearing content of different types.
Taking up Bones_708′s comment, the report from the Free Press which kicked all this off, however, does show a pretty clear tie between station ownership and station content. You diversify who owns stations and suddenly, poof, the viable commercial content appears to change. Whether or not ClearChannel at 90% is the correct hypothetical, having different sorts of owners of stations does appear to influence the different sorts of programming available to the listener. Whether or not government should be involved in who owns media is a separate issue, of course.
I’m still waiting for a suggestion as an alternative fo the reviled Fairness Doctrine.
I say again that market forces fo not work. If they did,, then where are all the complaints about the liberal bias in MSM coming from? It seems like the market argument is used very selectively.
As for government, it’s already involved and represened on the airwaves. Corporations that own TV shannels also own companies with lucrative governemtn contracts. Why are MNBC amd CNN news so approving of all economic policies, do you think?
Okay, government can’t be trusted. The maket doesn’t work.
I would really like to hear a workable suggestion.
Or do we just give up and let the money bags rule the air?
This is like the Immigration Bill. Everybody hates it, but no one is suggesting a solution that is. yes,.fair, or even just better. r.
I’m not going as far as domajot yet, in that I really do not want government involved directly in the management of political viewpoints on the radio, even with ostensibly good motives. That said, the explanation for the current radio content is not clear.
In the last 12 years I’ve lived in Tennessee and Hawaii, a red state and a blue state. Why have I never heard a single liberal talk show ever? Let’s take Ed Schultz. Again, never heard him, but supposedly he is one liberal host who knows his job and does it well. He may or may not be as amazing as Rush, but he’s got to be as good as Michael Medved, who I can listen to every day here in the blue state of Hawaii where a good 70% of the local legislature identifies as Democratic. If this is right about the Ed Shultz show, then there are at least a few decent liberal radio shows. Quality then is not the problem.
Is it the size of the potential audience? It’s hard to believe that is it since again most people in Hawaii are Dems, not Republicans. So the local conservative talk radio is actually targeted to the minority political view. Even in Tennessee, a very “red” state, some 40% are Dems and there are certainly niche music stations with a far smaller potential listening audience than that.
This means it’s not either quality product or market share. Something else is affecting this. I do not imagine a grand conspiracy. But the normal comments of, “there’s no market and all the liberal shows are lame” don’t really explain what’s going on.
Pacatrue said:I
“’m not going as far as domajot yet,”
I’m not going ‘there’ willingly, myself.
I don’t like the idea of putting the governmnet in charge.
When something is cearly wrong, however, I’m not willing to throw up my hands and do nothing..
I would welcome any better suggestion.
Domajot,
How do market forces “not work?” If there was a market for liberal talk radio, someone would service that market. The example of San Francisco has already been given.
And the thing is, the fairness doctrine could only regulate federally broadcast media, which is, frankly, a shrinking enterprise in an internet-enabled world. Radio stations, though they carry nationwide programs like Rush, serve local markets. The fairness doctrine would be like forcing a rural country radio station to play Tupac half the time. It will kill those local stations and will ultimately only ensure Sirius and XM are successes by driving Rush, Hannity and others to satellite, which I guess is the purpose.
You’ve got that precisely backwards; as profits shrink, the pressure is toward media consolidation, not ownership diversification.
Pacatrue do you listen to the radio? Talk radio? Lets take KAOI 1100 in Kihei (Maui)
Ed Schultz 4pm-6pm
Stephanie Miller 6pm-9pm
KUMU 1500 AM, Honolulu and KQNG 570 AM, Lihue, were/are air america affiliates and have progressive talk radio. So what was your point again? That because you don’t listen it’s not there even when it is?
To some extent I think the market forces don’t work and I assume it’s because there’s sort of a third party payer (advertisers). The market is based on response to demand by particular demographic groups, not by demand from the aggregate of all individual consumers.
I don’t see how that would affect liberal vs. conservative content though.
As to the part about effects on local ownership; here I think we have an effect that could be reversed by “trust busting” (which is probably not the correct technical term but the concept applies). Owners are now allowed to own more stations than they previously had been, and I do think that has led to too much concentration of ownership and has decreased diversity.
We see that elsewhere already, and it leads to an amusing glimpse at the future as well.
Since they cannot always rely on misusing the courts to get the desired results, this is what more radical Democrats may attempt one day with elections, since radical leftism loses elections. (That’s one reason the Left seeks to legislate through the judiciary instead.)
Maybe that’s something that Superdestroyer was anticipating with his vision of an eventual one-party Democratic People’s Republic of the USA. For every office and issue, there one day will be one (1) box to check, one (1) candidate, one (1) party affiliation. (Maybe others can be allowed, but kept off the printed ballot, write-in only. That’ll do for starters!)
Bones_708, thanks for letting me know about them. There was no conspiracy on my part in my comments. I simply flip through the FM dial and never go by AM. I think many people are the same and FM is far more listened to than AM.
And does everyone on a political blog have to attack, attack, attack all day long? Why not just say, “hey, paca, I’m in Hawaii and those shows are on stations X, Y, and Z”? or “I did a search and you can find those shows. Just to let you know. See ya.” Instead we get insinuations that I am a complete fool or purposefully lying to everone.
Paca I wasn’t trying to attack but rather convey my frustration and make a point. Most people who are involved in the advocating of the fairness doctrine are not people who would, or do, listen to talk radio. People make sweeping statements that parrot what others have said without ever looking for themselves. I’m not from Hawaii I just spent 30 sec to look on the internet. If you had any real interest in “progressive talk” then you could find it. Even here in Texas I can find it and not just NPR. My point being that this is not being driven by lack of access or any thing of that nature because the people making an issue don’t, won’t, and will not be listening to am radio, like you though they “heard” unfair it is from others who would like to stop conservative radio.
Entropy,
How do market forces “not work?â€
If market forces in the media work, then how do you explain the claims of liberal bias throughout the media?
TOX news was not created by market forces, the creaor was Murdoch and his money.
I’m not really concerned with talk radio, per se.
I’m concerned with the state of media, in general, and the access to airwaves by diverse groups and individuals.
It’s the influence of big money,and consolidated
power, in politics and in the media that I oppose.
I don’t know any other way to combat the current trend than to bring back the concept of the public interest and promote diversity. I know that means involving the government (which I don’t like) and I know about the problems experienced in the past
with the idea.
But I sure don’t like what’s going on.
And I sure don’t want to give up and accept that Paris Hilton stories are the best we can hope for.
Also, the fall back on consumer demand works no better than the market forces explanation.
A corporation that buys up media outlets also creates consumer demand by advertising and by the seducion of applealing to the lowest common denominator in taste and intelligence.
I’m enraged by the notion that money is the only way to access free speech on the airwaves or access a diverse selection of news outlets and entertainment.
I’m open to other,better suggestions about combatting the sorry state of the media of all kinds.
CS-
Your suggestion about ‘trust-busting’ is good.
I’m not sure how easy it would be to accomplish, though.. I notice how long it’s been since the last time a monopoly was challenged.
The same corporations that buy up media outlets also own companies with lucrative governemtn contracts. Needless to say, they also finance powerful lobbyists. It’s one hand constantly washing the other, it seems to me.
Thanks for the comment, Bones_708. I reacted as I did partly because of your comment, but partly because I was called a craven despicable coward several posts down and I”ve getting angrier all day.
I had started to address some of your comments earlier, but deleted them because I felt I was wandering by going into my experience with talk radio when I’m long-winded enough. I do, however, listen to talk radio. When in the car, I flip back and forth between two NPR stations and the FM talk radio here. With the hours I am driving that means I hear Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Bill Bennett, and Laura Ingraham. I confess that I don’t make it very long in the shows anymore before I get mad and switch stations. I used to listen to G. Gordon Liddy pretty frequently during a commute when I lived in Tennessee and I could listen to it a good bit more. Sometimes he would have sessions on gun recs, car repair, and other non-political items that were interesting. The point: I do listen to talk radio and perhaps I would listen to more than 5 minute blurps if I had a longer temper or I agreed more often with what was being said. (Actually, that’s not quite right. I don’t have to agree with what is being said at all. I just have to believe that the person is arguing genuinely and with respect for other opinions. The latter is particularly rare.)
That said, I don’t know if I would listen to Ed Schultz or Stephanie Miller. The reason, though, is an odd one. I hate being pigeon-holed or being told what to do. The problem I had with the concept of Air America was that the goal wasn’t to put the best and brightest and most entertaining radio hosts on the air. It was to put a liberal radio show on the air. And then I as a self-identified liberal am now supposed to do what I’m told and go listen and become a dittohead of some liberal talking piece. Not into that.
Anyway, assuming Ed Schultz is in fact good at his job and since I do like talk radio and listen regularly, perhaps I will give him a try and be pleased.
You are exactly right, however, that I don’t traditionally seek out political shows to listen to. If I’m in the car and a show comes on, I will give it a try. That’s pretty much it.
That wasn’t my point. My point was that broadcast media, unlike 50 years ago, is a continually shrinking source of news and information when compared to cable, satellite and the internet. It simply doesn’t have the influence it once did.
And even if your characterization is correct, then what has that do to with the fairness doctrine? If media conglomerates are becoming too consolidated, then there are measure available to prevent or reverse that from happening short of government enforcement of “fairness.”
Doma,
Murdoch certainly created Fox news, but it success is driven by market forces, not some infinite pool of money Murdoch pours into it. For all his faults, he’s a shrewd businessman and he saw an untapped market and exploited it. Besides, I’m not really sure what the point of the Fox example is since the Fairness Doctrine would do nothing to Fox since it is a cable outlet.
Furthermore, like I said above, if one believes the problem is too much consolidation in the broadcast media, there are remedies for that.
I’m with C Stanley. We need to return to the old limits on media ownership.
I realize that I don’t know what the answer is. Limits on media ownership certainly sound good, but I don’t know how that can be achieved. The entities that would resist the idea have a lot of political power.
In the meantime, I’m bothered by talk of market forces as if those forces were sacred. Market forces are created by the manipulation of advertising and other forms of seduction; they don’t spring up out of nowhere.
Consumers play the role of sheep, but the shepherds take no responsibility for where they lead the flock. Sheep just eat grass, and they don’t ask questions about the quality of the grass.
The result is a mindless unqestioning market force.
That doesn’t sound like what should be leading a society to me.
I’m left with the quandary of how to re-introduce old fashioned notions of fairness, diversity and, most important, quality back into the market.
If you adhere strictly to the rules of consumer demand, there may not be enough demad to make quality profitable. Does that mean, then, that it should not be available at all? Or should quality be available only to those moneyed enough to pay a premium price for private progaramming?
Without access to ‘free speech’ in the media for unprofitable iideas we are all complicit in the downard spiral of our culture.
That’s where I’m stuck
Who defines “quality” in political speech, doma?