Not only that, but it gives the other side a dangerous amount of legitimacy if we treat "both sides" as equally valid.

There are a lot of beliefs and opinions that are just bad and should only be ridiculed.

I mean I get that not kicking babies in the face might seem like a clean cut issue, but have you ever discussed it with a pro baby face kicker? Obviously there's two sides to the story here!

This has to be one of the most harmful lasting cultural effects of the internet... Every moron with an opinion deserves a platform now apparently.

It's really true. He was packaged and sold and is now touted as some hero.

It's a good thing he was an actor. If he hadn't came down with Alzheimer's he may have gone to prison for selling drugs and missiles.

Hey! That's not fair

Some of it was Nixon too

I think anyone who sponsors a bill should have 12 seconds to explain why their bill benefits the PEOPLE and if they can't in that 12 seconds they get fried/electrocuted and the bill dies just like the sponsor did. If they suggest it benefits a corporation instead of the people then they get tortured before they get fried. But they still die, and it still fails.

now that's what i call legacy

Rush Limbaugh

I danced a jig in my cubicle when he stopped sucking down oxygen. One less piece of filth taking up space. Unfortunately, he gave birth to plenty of others.

Years of far Right wing extremist chudservative propaganda and it’s consequences are a disaster for American democracy and American society

Somebody should have taken those 4 out before their toxic bullshit was allowed to fester.

The biggest detail I think you aren't seeing is that the fairness doctrine made 'Opinion Pieces' on air much less attractive as a host, as a producer, etc. So generally they just WOULDN'T present anything that wasn't just news unless it was a political debate and the two sided conversation would be natural.

The main reason it's overrated is that it only applied to broadcast networks. It wouldn't do anything to hold Fox News accountable, since Fox News is on cable.

It might have helped with the Sinclair style bullshit in local news but they've lost a huge amount influence to the internet anyway.

Exactly.

And who determines whether it's "news" or not when it's something seen as controversial? Oh, the corporations that own the channels/shows? What could go wrong?

Thats why you require due impartiality instead of equal time.

Yeah, it would make it so you had to legally put a climate change denier on.

So you do a segment that says "here's a scientist with noting to gain from deceiving you and, by legally required contrast, a climate change denying corporate shill whose profit motive in lying to you is jarringly obvious."

You still have the lunatic there to rile up the audience, but you don't ONLY have the audience riling lunatic on.

Aka chudservatives

The difference is that each media stream had to show both sides, so you couldn't have people watching one channel living in a bubble of fiction.

It was probably the Equal Time Rule which basically means if a broad cast station gives free airtime to one candidate they have to give equal free time to their opponents. The Trump administration has been trying to argue that any negative coverage of Trump is tantamount to free campaign coverage for any Democratic candidates.

I agree!

Hate perturbs the mind; poisons it. What you focus on becomes what you grow to become. That's why I look at feet so much, so I can be the princess I always wish I was!

Go to Europe, off Hitler in a trench during The Great War then catch a boat to America.

Always remember, you got to take them out before they become famous.

No one cares about soldier Hitler or actor Regan dying. People do care when they have political support.

Eh, that's kinda easy - I wasn't born until the 1970s, so going back far enough to kill Hitler would drastically change history and endanger my own chances of ever being born. Reagan, on the other hand, began ruining my future well after my birth.

Fox was a pubic OTA broadcast in the 90s

and yet still better than the absolute cesspool that yall have right now… both sides is better than basically 90% propaganda because at least it shows that not everyone thinks the same

It was also targetted at public broadcasters, it would not have affected Fox as a cable-only channel

It would be quite strange. "Here is all the research that being gay is something you are born as. You can also just choose to not believe that and think they are demons." Like how would you both sides half of the current "discourse" without just saying actual lies? There is no proof of immigration being negative but if you hate brown people that's a negative?

Whatever flaws the Fairness Doctrine had, it was clearly preventing what we're experiencing now.

Bring it back.

The FCC is currently trying to apply Fairness Doctrine to late night shows in retaliation for them having James Talarico on.

The 2009 fillibuster-proof majority was a lot shorter than people think. They needed 60 Democrats in the Senate to override fillibusters from the GOP, and Al Franken was engaged in a legal fight to take his seat in the Senate that took months.

By the Time Franken was seated, Ted Kennedy had stopped showing up and lingered for months until his death. His interim replacement wasn't seated until right before the Christmas holidays. And then in January the Tea Party had replaced Kennedy with a Republican in a special election.

It's a miracle they managed to rush through the ACA, but that's also why it was a broken mess. It should have been fixed in reconciliation with a House version of the bill, but then it would have had to go back to the Senate. The House passed the exact, broken language of the Senate version so the GOP couldn't fillibuster it.

And the GOP spent the next 7 years blocking any progress. Moscow Mitch sponsored a bill that the Dems backed, then fillibustered his own bill just to stop any progress.

It's not weird at all, they're beholden to billionaire donors, not voters.

many years earlier*

Reagan was governor of CA before he was president of the U.S. .

Apparently it is not whether they will benefit, more so that they are afraid someone else will. Our national motto is "Fuck those guys." Deceptively simple with it's darker meaning where those guys is not defined, only that the slightest perception of a variance in world view will put one into that category. Divided we fell.

Daily reminder that these voter counts are still the minority of the country doing things.

There are way too many stupid people, but it's still not the majority

Yeah, also check out the rush limbaugh behind the bastards podcast episode

And you still practice slavery. Who really won?

I know, I hate neo-confederates