Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
1) Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
2) No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
3) Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
4) No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
5) No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
I know the Fairness Doctrine was a good thing but it kind of sounds like false balance to me. Of cause it's better to put a climate change expert next to a climate change denier instead of only listening to the latter but wouldn't the Fairness Doctrine also make it more difficult to only interview the former? Or would that fall under News? Maybe I'm missing something here.
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.
90% of what is shit in this country can be blamed solely on Reagan. The other 10% is lingering racism.
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
Press F for fuck this guy.
This is 'Murica in a nutshell though
Reagan was voted in as president because the populace is stupid, and just saw a face they recognised
The same thing happened in CALIFORNIA, many years later, when the harm that Reagan had done was well known (to the civilised world, admittedly. Muricans ignored it, despite living through it)
America will choose hate and stupidity, if the think that there's a tiny chance that they will personally benefit as individuals
Most of them are stupid, and stupid people are afraid, and afraid people are easy to manipulate
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.
many years earlier*
Reagan was governor of CA before he was president of the U.S. .
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
Rush Limbaugh's show was just starting to syndicate across the country, but radio stations who played his show, were supposed to balance it with 3 hours of alternate programming, and neither he nor the conservative radio station owners liked that. He spoke out often against the Fairness Act, and loudly called for its end. So once Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine, those stations went to work.
First they bookended Rush's Noon-3 PM slot. I believe Hannity was before him, and Glenn Beck was before Hannity. Where I lived was a fairly neutral local talk show, followed by Laura Ingraham. Other show were gradually added until the station had 24 hours of conservative talk. There was enough demand that a second Conservative talk station came on, obviously without Trump as the tentpole, but they still survived.
Every city added Conservative talk stations, and the Conservative Propaganda Machine envisioned by Cheney and Ailes in the wake of the Watergate debacle, was underway. In the mid-90s, Ailes produced a half-hour TV version of Rush's radio show, which was successful, although It didn't last, because it was too much work for Rush, but it was proof of concept, and allowed Ailes to put together Fox News.
And that's how Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, and Roger Ailes ushered in the Golden Age of the Conservative Propaganda Machine, following the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine.
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.
The perfect example of "I've never wished for a man's death, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."
Eh, who am I kidding? I wished for Limbaugh's death for years.
Years of far Right wing extremist chudservative propaganda and it’s consequences are a disaster for American democracy and American society
Ronald Reagan Ruined Everything.
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.
One of my least favorite things about the culture I currently live in is that people believe, without a doubt, that there are two sides to every issue. Every news story, every decision, every fucking thing needs ”both sides” to weigh in. And the world gets dumber and less interesting and more myopic. There are hundreds and thousands of viewpoints on any given topic, but if we get a couple of the most inane then we’re totally covered and the world goes on being “fair.”
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!
They never told me that was a career option in high school.
Always Remember: you don't hate Ronald Reagan enough
This first allowed for rush limbaugh (rest in piss) on radio, which led to fox news, led to Bush jr, led to Palin, led to tea party, led to citizens united, led to trump, led to Jan 6, led to project 2025, led to ufc pedophile party on the front lawn of the half demolished white house and the reflecting pool filled with brawndo.
Yeah, also check out the rush limbaugh behind the bastards podcast episode
Agreed. Love Robert Evens.
Also, a podcast called, "The Master Plan", Slow Burn's Fox News season and a great documentary called, "Slaying the Dragon" if you have not seen.
Every decent person should be sat down and made to consume these.
I agree with you on this!
I'm skeptical about the Fairness Doctrine. Not everything has a valid "other side".
I'm also certain that it would be used as a tool of manipulation had it continued to exist until today.
TLDR
Conservatives (Regressives) are quite literally destroying this country.
Fuck "both sides". The problem with US media is that it's all for-profit corporations.
Seems like this should be near the top of the list for Democrats to fix if they ever take power again. I mean, if they can muster the effort to make a list. Weird that they didn't do this in 2009.
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.
It's a pattern in US presidencies: Republican sets new policies, then the next Democrat quietly accepts their predecessor's platform, even expanding on it as they see fit.
Clinton didn't push back on the fairness doctrine or the housing finance reforms (giving us sub-prime morgages and the '08 crash) of Regan and Bush Sr.
Obama accepted the war in Afghanistan, the enhanced interrogation, and the PATRIOT act of Bush Jr.
Biden kept and expanded the tariff and trade war policy of Trump's first term, and continued militarizing the border in an attempt to out-right the right.
Thanks, OP.
I've been talking about the Fairness Doctrine for years now.
Enlightened centrism doctrine? Is that really a good idea
So, between Hitler and Reagan, if you were to time travel...
Go to Europe, off Hitler in a trench during The Great War then catch a boat to America.
Ehhh. Yes to the Fairness Doctrine.. No to Reagan causing FoxNews.
What everyone doesn't understand, or has long forgotten, is that FoxNews is subscription cable only. The entire FCC framework of equal time and information and television programming "in the public's interest," was predicated on broadcast TV controlled and given permission to use the public's airwaves..
The main concern back in the late 40's was inappropriate content on TV and of course communist propaganda and the risk that children could be exposed to both. The FCC oversees broadcasters only. Hence Brendan Carr being an absolute bootlicker for Trump and going after them - he's even threatening to suspend the licenses of the 5 broadcast TV stations that Disney owns over ABC's news reporting of Trump.
Cable as a subscription only service is beyond that reach since adults BUY access to it. At the point where it is a purchased product, the user - the parents - assume all risk to themsevles or their kids. Ancillary to this, it's why as a broadcast network FoxTV has NO nightly national news programming: They would have to create TWO separate newsrooms - one following FCC standards, (such as they are..) the other - FoxNews - not.. No how, no way is the Murdoch clan going to do that.
Now the cable news is another matter, corporate ownership being all settled with the outright purchase of networks like CNN and others, so now the angle that I'm seeing now is Trump putting youtube creators on his "list," which is all the government can do to them at this point.
The loophole was that no one imagined cable TV as a thing in the 1940's.
Both ~~sides~~ political parties
Insane that Reagan died of old age (more or less) and not by lethal injection. People like that don't get such happy endings in most of the world.