Should it be illegal for a news station or news paper to post false news? There is so much corruption in the media now. I am personally getting sick and tired of watching the news and seeing them post just completely false or inaccurate news. I am curious to see what others thoughts and opinions are on this subject.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
How are you going to control if a media is lying or not? What should be forbidden is that one single media company holds most rights for television, radio etc. Even worse if it is controlled by a higher instance like government or religious community.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Muse2223, that's really great and all. But congress definitely passed the patriot act, which effects all of the above. So that fun exert can be just thrown right out the window.
How can anyone have an honest opinion about anything if there information is coming from media that is expressing there paid for opinions as facts. I am not saying we should not have the freedom of press or speech, or that media should not have a right to an opinion as long as it is made clear that it is indeed an opinion and not a fact. I am saying the freedom of the press should not be able to be bought out and enslaved by people who want to control. Because that does not sound like freedom at all.
How do you know they're false or inaccurate? More news.
Graham, here's an example. Have you ever watched a presidential election? "I'm not going to list out news station names." Lets say you have your right wing station showing you these numbers, and then you have your left wing station showing these numbers. Now both these numbers clearly don't add up for either candidate. But if you do your research neither one of these stations numbers are actually right on anyways. Just one is going to be closer then the other for either candidate, and in some cases just flat out wrong. A kind of, hey look this guy does this, "other guy" no I don't, to late everybody already thinks you do now. I know this is really vague and I want this to be much broader then just news on political election coverage. I am trying to avoid this from becoming a battle between news stations.
Also this is just an example, for lack of a better one, and not an attempt to stir up a political party debate. I am already getting pretty sick of the closed minded finger pointing anyways.
If the media weren't allowed to lie then I assume that they couldn't speculate on things either as they could be wrong - I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
What about that whole "Don't shout fire in a crowded theater" thing? Should blatant falsifying of information count as spreading alarm and despondency?
Where do you get your research? FROM A BIASED SOURCE.
Well that all depends on what your talking about Graham. There are a lot of places to get non-biased information. We like to call this type of information facts. Say if we are talking about a theoretical bill being passed, instead of taking your major media's word, that it is this horrible thing that is stealing all our rights and it will be the end of us all. Which would definitely be there biased opinion. Do your own research. As in. Look it up, and read the bill yourself. I am not sure how that would be a biased source, but I'm trying to understand where your coming from here. If media couldn't lie. We wouldn't have to worry about being scared into voting against or on said theoretical bill. Because the people would at least know that they where stating there opinion and not necessarily facts. Opinions which could be bought by perhaps the benefactor of Mr. theoretical bill.
How are you going to control if a media is lying or not? What should be forbidden is that one single media company holds most rights for television, radio etc. Even worse if it is controlled by a higher instance like government or religious community.
Well we would only worry about our nations media for one, as we have no right to mess with another country's media. And monitoring this would be very simple, I mean just look at our AG forum, you can't type a sentence without getting criticized on spelling, grammar, and on whether it was a fact or not. I'm pretty sure we could find a way to solve this while possible adding a few more jobs to our economy. Not sure what you where meaning by one media company holding rights over all media. I am merely talking about perhaps a company that is already monitoring all media to have maybe just one more responsibility or department enforcing truth in news.
I meant that if there is just one media company, holding the monopoly of news, it could very easily manipulate things to it's needs, and that is why I said even worse if there is actually the government or a religion behind. Some media's are already able to manipulate a wide number of people. Of course we could do things to partly prevent this to happen, but the impact would still be big. This is what I was trying to say.
