jcast's Journal: A Media Conglomerate Is a Government

From Talking Points Memo, quoting former FCC chairman Reed Hunt:

But its role instead is to make sure that broadcast television promote democracy by conveying reasonably accurate reflections of where the candidates stand and what they are like. ...

This tradition is embodied in the commitment of the broadcasters to show the conventions and the debates. ...

Part of this tradition is that broadcasters do not show propaganda for any candidate, no matter how much a station owner may personally favor one or dislike the other. Broadcasters understand that they have a special and conditional role in public discourse. They received their licenses from the public -- licenses to use airwaves that, for instance, cellular companies bought in auctions -- for free, and one condition is the obligation to help us hold a fair and free election. The Supreme Court has routinely upheld this "public interest" obligation. Virtually all broadcasters understand and honor it.

Sinclair has a different idea, and a wrong one in my view. If Sinclair wants to disseminate propaganda, it should buy a printing press, or create a web site.

Hat tip: PressThink.

First point: Mr. Hunt doesn't think freedom of the press (or, apparantly, of speech) applies to television. Store that fact away for future use.

Second point: Broadcasters have a commitment to show the conventions?

Third point: All of this lovely `balance' doesn't apply to third-party candidates, only to major party candidates. That doesn't help democracy; instead, it entrenches the two-party system.

Fourth and most important point: the purpose of television news, on this view, is to sort through the various viewpoints being reported on in those areas where freedom of the press applies (collectively `the press'), are report The Truth. In other words, television `news' is being explicitly set up to regulate and filter the press. The Big Three Liberal Media Channels are nothing more than government-subsidized (or perhaps I should say ``the government's delegated agency''?) agencies whose job is, in essence, to regulate the press. Or, put more simply and controversially, a television news network is a government regulation of the marketplace of ideas. And never in history has the government done better than the free market at anything. Including figuring out the truth.