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Comment by johnvschmitt | Hacker News Reader

The way it should (& DID) work:

1) First ammendment: Anyone can lie, ok? And, any speech has consequences.

2) THE "COMMONS" / spectrum / FCC: Anyone that uses part of the shared spectrum (broadcasters) & when calling a program "news"1, must be unbiased, factful, truthful, or at least show "both sides2" to issues*

1Fox News, in Florida, in court, proved that they were in fact entertainment, NOT news, so they could feel free to broadcast outright lies, factual untruths.

But of course, "both sides" is a fallacy to most real issues that have many more sides.

Those wiggle room *'s proved wide enough over time to lead to where we are today.

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>But of course, "both sides" is a fallacy to most real issues that have many more sides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

Is always a good read when talking about issues like this.

Exactly. Chomsky also pointed this out well many times, that anyone with an agenda for, say, "7 out of 10" on a scale (like, "should we go to war, & if so, how?", can simply present "both sides" as a 5 & 9, so viewers, most of whom would have chosen "3" would think they were very much outliers to the social norm, & picked something between between 5 & 9. They can frame an issue in such a way that looks like they are considering "all points", so that the viewers must identify within that limited range or feel very alone.

1Fox News, in Florida, in court, proved that they were in fact entertainment, NOT news, so they could feel free to broadcast outright lies, factual untruths.

This is a misrepresentation. The specific legal process is to assume everything the Plaintiff says is true and then determine whether it was illegal. If it's not illegal, there is no point wasting the court's time determining if the Plaintiff's allegations are correct.

>1Fox News, in Florida, in court, proved that they were in fact entertainment, NOT news //

That's hilarious. Presumably then in USA it's fine to label something as "fat free" when in fact you can prove in court it's NOT "fat free"?

Surely it doesn't matter if it's entertainment or news, in this case, if they labelled it as news then it needs to meet the expected level of truthiness.

> it needs to meet the expected level of truthiness.

Who do you propose be the arbiter of this? A government panel?

Really, it shouldn't be up to the government to decide what is unbiased of factual. I know a lot of people got their panties in a twist when the court said it was OK to lie, but what's the alternative? The FCC having a commission deciding if a given news report is factual and unbiased? Some judge who barely understands how to use a mouse and email deciding if the a given report about SOPA and the MPAA is 'true'?

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