"The perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants."

I hate neoliberals.

Blackwell disappeared from view rather quickly. I wondered what bunch of wingnuts would adopt him as their token. Now we know.

Unless there is a radical narrowing of the Digital Divide, can the internet really be considered the answer to the poverty of political discourse on television. At any rate, MORA seems to take the wisest path: combining fairness doctrine restoration with anti-consolidation efforts.

I'd rather they bring back the media diversity regulations from pre-Telecom Act of 1996 that kept the entire nation's radio airwaves from being owned by Clear Channel. And I'm wondering, given the insane perversions of the concept of "balance" that we have reached in the last decade, whether a new Fairness Doctrine would be construed to give "equal time" for and against, say, the theory of evolution, or the scientific principle of global warming, or whether HIV causes AIDS...

The biggest problem with a Fairness Doctrine revival at this point, though, is the simple fact that FCC television regulations are today more or less irrelevant. The biggest source of one-sided viewpoints in American media today, Fox News, is on cable and doesn't have to follow any FCC rule.

Many legal scolars believe that the "Fairness Doctrine" can no longer survive scrutiny under the First Amendment.  Although it was upheld a few decades ago, most feel the current Supreme Court would strike it down were the question to be put squarely before them.

I'm in favor of something more directly relevant to this problem. Sad to say, PBS is a joke. The U.S. needs a potent public, noncommercial broadcaster -- an "American BBC" -- with a budget that comes from a stable revenue stream. (I'd recommend an endowment from the auction of analog television frequencies, since the "television tax" has its own problems.)

"Denny" Kucinich?

I feel that the right solution is to alter the libel/slander laws to put some real teeth in them.

In America, you can't be sued for slandering a public figure unless there's "intentional malice," a standard which is currently impossible to prove.   How can you prove that a given lie was intentional, and not just the result of ignorance?  That's why media figures in America are essentially never sued for their slanders.

In Europe, you don't have to prove malice in order to sue somebody for slander or libel.  Simply the fact that they said something untrue about you is enough.  This may be a big part of the reason that there's so much less crap in European media.

I wouldn't suggest completely eliminating the "proof of malice" requirement, but I would suggest weakening it.  In particular, I would suggest a law that says that any media personality who has been specifically warned about a given falsehood, and who repeats the falsehood despite having received a warning, shall be presumed by the courts to have done so maliciously.

So here's how it would work in practice.  Step 1, Matt Drudge comes up with some outrageous lie about Barack Obama.  Step 2, Barack Obama sends out a certified letter to every media personality he can think of, warning them that Drudge's allegation is a lie, and explaining why it's a lie.  Step 3, O'Reilly repeats the lie anyhow.  Step 4, Obama sues O'Reilly for slander.   But since O'Reilly was specifically warned about this falsehood, and since he repeated it anyhow, the courts are instructed to assume that it was done with malice.  This takes the burden of proof off of Obama - he no longer has to prove malice - and instead puts it on O'Reilly - he now has to prove that he didn't do it maliciously.

This would dramatically slow down the spread of swiftboat-style nonsense.  It would also pretty much shut down people like Limbaugh and O'Reilly who make a business out of spreading falsehoods.

Reading through the comments, I like all these suggestions. I'm not sure we can pursue them all, but if we can, we should.

IMO it's a good idea for broadcast media, if only in that conservatives are all over talk radio, while liberals get more of their information over the radio. How awesome would it be if radio broadcasters had to pair rush Limbaugh up with some liberal.

The problem, though, is that you can't really divide issues into "two sides", I mean things in the world are complicated, and if you let your attacker pick your representative it's even worse then being silenced.  Just look at Hannity and Cooms.

I hate the fairness doctrine; I think that compelling networks to broadcast certain speech and forcing "equality" runs counter to the values of the first amendment.

Now, media consolidation is a separate issue, worthy of being addressed via antitrust law.

It's clear that folks here have a very uneven understanding of the Fairness Doctrine, as well as media history.  Getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine was a key part of the longterm rightwing political strategy.  It enabled the rapid spread of rightwing talk radio, and reinstating it would put a serious crimp in their propaganda machine.

That said, no one in the media reform movement is proposing it as a panacea.  A number of other good ideas have been mentioned in the discussion here, and a successful media reform strategy has to include all of them and more.

Of course the right will fight all of them with everything they've got.  Anything that limits their ability to fill people's heads with lies is poison to them.  Media reform is absolutely crucial the future of politics.  They know it to a certainty.  We should know it, too.