Government Involvement in the Media - OG Myth-Weavers

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Government Involvement in the Media

 
Government Involvement in the Media

The whole Anita Dunn/Glenn Beck thing, coupled with comments from earlier debates has got me thinking.

For those of you who don't know, Anita Beck is the White House Communications chief who said "Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control" Here is a very biased article on it -- I advise you only watch the videos and make your own thoughts here.

Rather than getting into the specifics of this (which could get very America-centric and partisan), I was wondering... How much government involvement should there be in the new media? The FCC and obscenity laws exist in almost every nation, so that seems to be acceptable. Should the government allow news organizations to lie? Should there be different rules for print, TV and internet?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Squeak View Post
Should the government allow news organizations to lie?
My goodness yes. Making the government the sole arbiter of truth would pretty much be a road to totalitarianism.

Not advocating lying in the media (or anywhere else) at all, but the courts can handle defamation etc as is. No need to give the executive the power to censor people it disagrees with.

There must be no government involvement in the news media. Indeed, any problems can be handled via courts. And if a news outlet repeatedly lies, people will turn away from it and start taking information elsewhere. Internet is a huge asset in delivering information, exactly because nobody can control everything that is posted here.

I'm living in a country where government gradually took control of most mass media during past 10 years. And one of bigger effects of this was that people no longer watch them. Nobody wants to eat shit, so given people have a choice they will find the best news source themselves. Honest, accurate & unbiased, and all this without much government supervision.

Lying was just one example that I was using. Should there be ANY government involvement in the media? Obscenity laws? What is the difference between attempts (whether successful or not) to regulate the internet .Vs TV and print media?

How about the comment made by people in the Bush Administration and now those in the Obama administration that they control information that goes to the press?

I think that you'd find, if it would be possible to do so, that every administration had some control over the press. It should be up to an informed, intelligent citizenry to find out the truth about what is given to them; or, in the very least, what spin had been given to them. The unfortunate flip side of that is that spin, and to a certain extent, omitted items, are easily viewed by some of the more easily swayed of us to be lies.

Which begs the question, "Why were the citizens of the US not given the chance to view the Health Plan and given enough time to assimilate it, ourselves?" Surely, there are some of us who are capable of understanding it, no matter how long it is. Possibly a subject for another thread.

I think the comment 'controls information' is a bit misleading. I believe that what is meant is that they are very careful about what is said by members of their administration to the press, such that they control all the information that goes to the press, not that they tell the press, oooooh you found out about _____ you can't broadcast that.

As for government involvement, it should be limited to protecting others in a reactionary way. When someone is harmed, or perceives themselves to be harmed by the media, part of the governments job is step in as the arbitrator. That is the reason for things such as the obscenity laws or libel/slander suits. The government shouldn't make decisions itself about what and when to persecute, but should be based on a reaction to the harm caused to its citizens.

That is also why we have civil courts to go after things that are not endangering, but still harmful.





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