• xenoclast@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It should be illegal to present entertainment as news and opinion as fact to a global audience. There should be real life jail time (not fines that are only for the poor) for the business owners

      When a society in the future figures this out, the world will be a better place.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            Consensus? So when Newsmax fact checking says something isn’t true, you can’t achieve consensus?

            Look, the problem is that there’s no way to do this where you don’t run into problems.

            If you say it’s a government agency that does the fact checking, then you run the risk that one of the parties messes with that government agency so that the facts always favor its side. If you leave it to private companies, then there’s nothing to stop highly partisan companies from claiming to be fact checkers. If you say the courts can decide, you have a problem when the courts are biased. If you have an elected council of fact checkers chosen by popular vote, you’re relying on voters having enough knowledge and integrity to select unbiased fact checkers.

            • AbsentBird@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              Does newsmax have a fact checker? There’s only so much you can bend when it comes to matters of fact. If one checker is routinely inaccurate it should be removed from the set.

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                4 months ago

                There’s only so much you can bend when it comes to matters of fact.

                I think you’re in for a big surprise.

                If one checker is routinely inaccurate it should be removed from the set.

                Routinely inaccurate based on what? Fact checking? Newsmax fact checking says it is 100% accurate in all the facts it has checked, but that Snopes and Politifact only hit 60% accuracy, therefore Snopes and Politifact should be removed from the set.

                • AbsentBird@lemm.ee
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                  4 months ago

                  Newsmax doesn’t have a fact checker, but in a hypothetical situation where they did: most facts that get checked come to the same conclusions.

                  Trump did not have the largest inauguration crowd in history, it’s easily observed by looking at photos of the event compared to other inaugurations. Every fact checker agrees on that fact. If there were a rogue fact checker that regularly went against clearly evident fact in favor of a political narrative, it would lose credibility and be removed from the set of rigorous fact checkers.

                  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                    4 months ago

                    Trump did not have the largest inauguration crowd in history, it’s easily observed by looking at photos of the event compared to other inaugurations

                    A “fact checking service” that had a deliberate bias could easily work around that. They could claim that the pictures chosen are not representative. They could talk about how crowded people were in one picture vs. another. They could claim that certain people seen in the crowd were not actually there for the inauguration, but were protesters or something.

                    Every fact checker agrees on that fact.

                    That’s because there hasn’t been any reason to set up a Russian Fact Checker service. Instead they just question the credibility of the existing fact checkers. But, if there were a reason for a Russian Fact Checker service, there would definitely be one.

                    If there were a rogue fact checker that regularly went against clearly evident fact

                    How could you tell? Look at all the people living in the MAGA bubble. They don’t understand that everything in that bubble goes against clearly evident facts. But, what could happen to them could happen to anyone if the disinformation was strong enough.

        • JasonDJ
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          4 months ago

          Hopefully not our current supreme court, because that’s where any rehashed version of the fairness doctrine would undoubtably end up. And from the purely originalist stance that this court would obviously take, it is a pretty cut-and-dry first amendment issue.

          There’s also the point that truths and facts are two totally different yet related things. Truths are the subjective interpretations of objective facts.

          Two people can experience the exact same thing and have a wildly different telling of the exact same events. Neither are necessarily untruthful, but through the omission or inclusion of various facts and context, hell even tone, the truth can be told wildly different ways.

          This is quite obvious when watching different news networks cover the exact same event.

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            the purely originalist stance that this court

            I’m not disagreeing, but I don’t want them getting credit they don’t deserve.

            They sure weren’t very originalist when they made the president a king

    • FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      FAIRNESS DOCTRINE!!!

      Fox giving “news” while legally not being news has led to crimes, that’s a fact. Maybe prosecutor Kamala could go for a bite but damn it’d be nice to have the news be true again

      • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Another of the many sanity checks Ratass Reagan took from us after the GOP collectively shat itself over Nixon’s press reception.

        So much of our nations 4 decades of struggle have come from this moment, and no one involved will ever face justice for degrading our nation so much for so little benefit for so few.

        • Asafum@feddit.nl
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          4 months ago

          Watergate is why we have fox news and right wing reality fabrication news. Roger Ailes had said (paraphrasing) “if we had a friendly media outlet Nixon would have never had to resign.” He then made it his mission to make a right wing media outlet.

          It’s so infuriating seeing magoos talk about Truth™, Fake News, and BiAsEd MeDiA while consuming literal propaganda aimed specifically at conservatives to keep them voting R no matter what. (This is the part where the magoos head explodes with anger because MsNbC! yOu HaVe ThE sAmE MeDiA BiAS LiBTaRd!)

          I swear the #1 issue in America, and most of the world that has to suffer Murdock owned media IS PROPAGANDA RUNNING RAMPANT!

          • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            I am so glad that you and others are aware of this. Media is our new religion, I don’t mean that sarcastically or dismissively. The part of our brains that wanted to listen to stories of gods and monsters is what makes us susceptible to carefully crafted media propaganda campaigns.

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        The “fairness doctrine” didn’t prevent news from being crazy entertainment. Watch the 1975 movie “Network”. Faye Dunaway runs part of a TV network that tries (among other things) to present videos from a terrorist organization as a weekly program. It was ridiculous, but plausible at the time.

    • Fubber Nuckin'@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I’d really like this, but I’d also be worried about it becoming a 1984 “ministry of Truth” so to speak if the Republicans gained enough power.