In Reply to: Citizens United and elimination of the Fairness Act led… posted by Fuzzy on December 06, 2024 at 06:04:03
I'm asking before I was not following teh US media those days.
Were news programs forced to put on an anti-vaxxer every time someone talked about vaccines? Were they forced to put a climate change denier every time a global warming was being discussed? Or whatever was the eequivalent in those days? (AIDS/HIV and the relationship between cancer and smoking were probably the corresponding issues at the time).
Where I am going with this is that the Fairness Doctrine has been out the window for a long long time, and yet all respectable media, corporate or otherwise, seem compelled to produce "both sides" of an issue constantly, no matter how dumb "the other side"s position may be. So perhaps the problem is not necessarily the death of the Fairness doctrine but the vulnerability of mainstream news media to public pressure and their fear of offending vocal people with dumb opinions, which slowly became the norm in "respectable" media.
Yeah, Citizens United was a factor but that was merely the final nail in the coffin that followed a bunch of other nails.