In 1949, the Federal
Communications Commission (“FCC”) enacted the Fairness Doctrine. This policy did two things. First it required broadcasters to commit a
portion of their air time to presenting controversial issues considered in the
public interest. Second it required
these presentations to allow for contrasting viewpoints. They didn’t need to have equal time. The counterpoints just needed to exist.
In 1985 FCC then-chairman Mark
Fowler, a former Reagan Administration attorney and campaign staffer, released
a report stating that the Doctrine violated free speech and hurt the public
interest. In 1987 under then-chairman
Dennis Patrick, another former Reagan Administration official, the FCC voted
4-0 to abolish the Fairness Doctrine.[1] According to the Commission, enforcement by
the government to require contrasting viewpoints was an intrusion and violated
the free speech rights of the press.[2]
Congress, at the time controlled
by Democrats, protested. A couple months
before the 1987 FCC decision, Congress tried to make the Doctrine law of the
land, but Reagan vetoed the legislation.
A Democratic Congress tried again in 1991, but Bush I killed that as
well. (Years later in 2005, Democrats again
tried to restore the Doctrine, but a Republican controlled Congress killed
that.)
By the mid-1980s, say 1985, you
had the Big Three: ABC, NBC, CBS (as well as PBS). In cable, there was just CNN. Aside from the Big Three anchor news broadcasts,
the major investigative journalism programs then were CBS’s 60 Minutes (launched 1968), PBS’s The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (1975), ABC’s
20/20 (1978) and Nightline with Ted Koppel (1980).
The anchors reported the news under the stricture of the Fairness
Doctrine, and the investigative programs generally steered away from politics.
The only political news commentary
programs in 1985 were NBC’s Meet the
Press (launched 1947), ABC’s This
Week with David Brinkley (1981) and CNN’s Crossfire (1982). I should
note, not a year after the Republican FCC chairman publicly stated that the
Fairness Doctrine should go away, Fox Broadcasting launched, becoming the
fourth commercial broadcast network in the US.
In time, with the Fairness
Doctrine now gone, things started to change. In 1992, Reliable
Sources launched on CNN.[3] In 1994 Politics
with Chris Matthews launched on America’s Talking.[4] Two years after Matthews was up and running,
in 1996, the Fox News Channel launched with its headliners, The O’Reilly Report with Bill O’Reilly
and Hannity & Colmes. And in 1998, Fox News launched Fox & Friends.[5]
Somewhere around here going
forward, politics started to become increasingly disagreeable. Around ~1992-94 several controversies
surrounding President Clinton had come into the mainstream. House Republicans led by Newt Gingrich made a
“Contract with America” committing to several initiatives if they achieved a
majority of the House at the 1994 mid-term elections. Which they did and, in 1995, Republicans took
both houses of Congress away from Democrats for the first time since 1956.
We ended the 1990s with the embarrassing
sex scandals involving Clinton. And
started the 2000s with a Presidential election whose result a large portion of the
nation felt was illegitimate at the time. Going forward we grew angrier with a
prolonged prosecution on the “War on Terror”, which included invading and
occupying a nation that we maybe never should have.
So with this 1990s-forward backdrop
of politics growing uglier and the most personal since maybe the 1960s, enter the
21st Century of political news commentary. Adding to the 1990s-launched stalwarts, in
2003, MSNBC launched Countdown with Keith
Olbermann and HBO launched Real Time
with Bill Maher. The Glenn Beck Program on HLN launched
2006[6]. MSNBC launched Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski in 2007. In 2008 we got The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC and Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN. In
2009 we got The Ed Show with Ed
Shultz on MSNBC; State of the Union
on CNN[7]. In 2010, The
Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell debuted on MSNBC. In 2011, MSNBC launched PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton, Up with Chris Hayes, Martin
Bashir, Now with Alex Wagner; and
Fox News launched The Five. In 2012, MSNBC launched The Cycle. In 2013, MSNBC
launched All In with Chris Hayes.[8] And if that isn’t enough for us, CNN is
bringing back Crossfire this year with
Newt Gingrich and others.[9]
None of that includes various daytime
(e.g. The View) or late night Leno,
Letterman, Stewart, Colbert, et al
often chiming in on politics with various degrees of “not-so-subtlety”. And I
haven’t even mentioned talk-radio.
When our Founding Fathers crafted
our Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms, they were dealing with mostly a mix
of flintlock, smoothbore muzzle-loaded muskets.
They certainly were aware of the notion of radical technological advances
in weapon lethality.[10] But did they have fully-automatic weapons or
perhaps the RPG in mind?[11]
Consequences, intended or not,
can sometimes get out of hand, and not be in the public’s best interest. Like the murkiness of firearm availability for
the few insane who seek to harm us. Like repealing the Glass-Steagal Act.[12] Like eliminating the line-item veto.[13] Like Citizens
United v. Federal Elections Commission.[14]
And like abrogating the Fairness
Doctrine. Now I know that I’m starting
to sound like I support a nanny-state, Big Brother puppet-mastering the media. I don’t. I want it free. But anyone who’s ever read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, understands that an unbound lack of guidance can lead to some horrific circumstances. Thus our monster, the present state of news
media commentary.
In 1985, we had a mere three news
commentary programs whose primary or major focus was politics. Two of those only aired once a week, on
weekends. Today by my count, we have almost
21 mostly daily, fully committed political oriented news commentary programs bathing
us all week long in a 24-hour cycle.[15] That sounds like – great, variety is good,
right? But it’s not really variety. Nearly all these programs are the focus of just two
or three sources. Just two or three
editorial departments, where I posit at least two have clear political agendas.
Five of the commentary programs were
launched in the 1990s. Three by
right-leaning Fox News. One by
left-leaning MSNBC, one by CNN.[16] Sixteen were launched in the 2000s+
(including the three cancelled). Two by
right-leaning Fox News (one of which cancelled). Two by CNN.
And twelve launched by left-leaning MSNBC (albeit two
cancelled).
Fox News programming consistently
draws larger audiences than MSNBC or CNN (combined). My guess about that is, people with
conservative points of view only really have one place to go, whereas much of
the rest of news media offers either a rather left-leaning perspective, like
MSNBC, or at least let’s just call it a non-right, neutral perspective like CNN,
et al. Therefore the various shades of liberal-leaning
viewership are diffused across a small handful of options, whereas all shades
of conservative-leaning viewership are concentrated toward only one.
And that’s kind of the
point. These programs have just become
go-to places to be told how to think. They don’t exist to provide information
about controversial issues considered in the public interest. They exist to sell advertising. They do that by attracting eyeballs. They attract eyeballs by appealing to our preformed
ideological biases. Unchained now from
having to present any credible opposing voice in their content, aside from the
occasional weak-handed one, to create enough of an appearance of balance
(or perhaps attempt to discredit someone that might suggest what I am) without ever undermining their narratives.
Their only consequence is losing eyeballs by appearing blatantly disingenuous. But would their audience ever really see it that way if they are only really there to receive the narrative that supports their world view, which sustains their ego? To disavow the source of your world view of its credibility, is to admit your own world view lacks credibility. Is to threaten your ego. And that, according to Eckhard Tolle, for the unconscious mind, is equivalent to threatening death.
So it's a seductive, and thus lucrative, draw. These certainly more askew news commentary programs have become nothing more than mills that provide talking points for two opposing tribes that
either don’t really want to use their minds and think for themselves, or at least
have become lost trying to. They feed a citizenry
that now “informs” itself by steering toward the program that best affirms its
beliefs – the co-called “confirmation bias” theory (as pointed out to me by a
friend the other day).
What
we have now is a society whose people don't really have much interest in
understanding a point of view that differs from their own. We are becoming a self-radicalizing nation. And for those younger than me by perhaps
just a decade, the only thing they’ve been exposed to regarding public
political discourse is often intellectually dishonest, loud, sometimes nasty or
off-putting, and presented for the most part in only one each of two directions. We are building a generation that understands
politics to be the art of being disagreeable, rather than the art of
compromise.[17]
This will either indoctrinate us
in, or repel us from, all form of political discourse. And reasonable discourse is important to
have, if we would still like to be a representative democracy. It weakens our foundations if we all become
programmed to either go to our corners and have a tantrum, or instead simply
tune-out in disgust.
We’re always going to have our
politics, and our sometimes strong beliefs with them. That should be OK. But I would hope that we all strive to
understand the issues, using a diversity of credible ideological sources, to
arrive at conclusions then that we can truly call our own.
Because nowadays, I can’t
remember the last time I had a discussion with friends on pressing issues,
where it was not abundantly clear to me that they were simply parroting the
spin of their favored pundit (read, party).
And if you don’t sound like their favored pundit, either their ears clog
up and they start talking louder, or they just move on because they think you
are the one who is intractable.
It’s like trying to talk to a
zombie. And all zombies really want to
do is eat your brains.
[1]
The FCC typically has five commissioners.
There was one vacancy at the time.
By law, no more than three can be from one political party. At this vote, two were Republicans, two
Democrats.
[2]
Such opinion was later affirmed in the courts.
[3] It
is supposed to be commentary about the press, but it really goes all over
politics too.
[4] A
cable news channel spun from NBC. It
failed two years later, and Matthews took his show to CNBC. By 1999, he was on MSNBC as Hardball with…
[5] I
don’t think too many would argue with me that it’s basically a news opinion
show, thinly dressed up as a digest.
[6] It
moved to Fox News in 2009.
[7] At
first with John King, but by next year with Candy Crowley.
[8] Steve
Kornacki took over Up with…
[9] It
was ended in 2005. With him on the right
is S.E. Cupp who left MSNBC’s The Cycle. On the left will be Stephanie Cutter and Van
Jones.
[10] The
breech-loading rifle was just coming out in the 1770s, and it dramatically
increased rate of fire; rifling its accuracy.
They just weren’t abundant at the time because they were too expensive
to mass-produce.
[11]
Fully automatic features on light assault firearms and rocket propelled
grenades are illegal. So are nuclear bombs, and privately-marketed weaponized
drones (however I think sharks with laser beams attached to their heads are
still available). But I hope you get my
point.
[12] In
1999, which allowed commercial banks to combine with investment banks. This allowed the riskier investment taking
investment banks to source cheaper commercial bank deposits as funds that did
not appropriately price risk. Thank you,
Clinton, and a Republican controlled Congress.
[13]
In 1998, which requires that Bills must be signed into law in their entirety, regardless
of how jam-packed it is with completely unrelated fetid, pork-barrel
earmarks. Thank you, a Supreme Court
dominated by Republicans.
[14]
Of 2010. Which eliminated restrictions on independent expenditure endorsing
political candidates, made by corporations, associations or labor unions.
[15] This excludes Beck, Olbermann and Dylan Ratigan which
have since been cancelled. It also
excludes Rick Sanchez’s Rick’s List,
which didn’t last a year after he was canned for racist remarks.
[16]
No one leans more right than Fox News.
But CNN, if left-leaning, isn’t nearly as bad as most of MSNBC
programming. So I’ll call them “non-right”
neutral. And I think Morning Joe is the only MSNBC
programming that is actually even-handed.
[17]
German economist and sociologist Max Weber coined “the art of compromise” in a
1919 essay. But I think he was just channeling
Germany’s first chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who said politics is “the art of
the possible” sometime in the 1870-80s I guess.
