Suffer the little children.....

[Fairweather]

Well, if Rachael Maddow said it...

 

 

Seriously, j_b, I'm becoming embarrassed for you.

[JayB]

The public interest isn't nebulous. It is to be informed so that democracy be possible and it is best served by diversity of speech and ownership, not by media consolidation and oligopolies that serve only the interest of corporations as can be observed routinely in today's media. Are you suggesting that private motives, those of Mr Murdoch for example, don't supersede the public interest today?

 

[el jefe]

fairweather's posts come with a content-free guarantee.

[Fairweather]

El Jefe's presence here comes with a TR-free guarantee.

[Fairweather]

okay maybe your right - he probably would plop down in front of espn for a couple of hours and watch the williams sistas have at it

 

 

Just caught it. Now that's funny shit.

[ivan]

The public interest isn't nebulous. It is to be informed so that democracy be possible and it is best served by diversity of speech and ownership, not by media consolidation and oligopolies that serve only the interest of corporations as can be observed routinely in today's media. Are you suggesting that private motives, those of Mr Murdoch for example, don't supersede the public interest today?

i agree w/ jay - it is a fuzzy term - as to your last question, are you suggesting that mr murdoch have his freedom to speak his mind (which for everyone involves their private motives) taken away by the government? it is not the gov's place to determine who can speak, just to ensure that all can speak - it might well be regretable that many large companies can, by virtue of their resources, reach many more ears than my own weak diatribes from the bowels of my spray-cockpit, but i don't think that means murdoch has to be silienced. the public interest in this case is just that everyone should be able to speak, not that everybody else should have to hear.

[JayB]

Seems like a timely moment to trot out one of the better passages on the perils of prohibitionism, be it of speech or drugs:

 

" No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism.

 

Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life, and it seems especially difficult for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirely to indulge in such pleasures or, at least, do so in moderation. Should not the state intervene here too? More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature. Should a press pandering to the lowest instincts of man be allowed to corrupt the soul? Should not the exhibition of pornographic pictures, of obscene plays, in short, of all allurements to immorality, be prohibited? And is not the dissemination of false sociological doctrines just as injurious to men and nations? Should men be permitted to incite others to civil war and to wars against foreign countries? And should scurrilous lampoons and blasphemous diatribes be allowed to undermine respect for God and the Church?

 

We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual's mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community, bound to obey the dictates of the majority. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the ways in which such powers could be abused by malevolent persons in authority. The wielding, of powers of this kind even by men imbued with the best of intentions must needs reduce the world to a graveyard of the spirit. All mankind's progress has been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate to the minority what it is to think, to read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once and for all."

 

 

[Jim]

The public interest isn't nebulous. It is to be informed so that democracy be possible and it is best served by diversity of speech and ownership, not by media consolidation and oligopolies that serve only the interest of corporations as can be observed routinely in today's media. Are you suggesting that private motives, those of Mr Murdoch for example, don't supersede the public interest today?

 

 

The counterpoint would be the book "Manufacturing Consent" by Chomsky and Herman. I agree that trying to decide who's speech is in the public interest is a slippery slope and one that should be avoided. But corporations have enourmous power in getting out their message these days.

 

I would at least prefer that they pay market rates for the use of the public airways while trying to convince us we're dorks unless we purchase the latest trinket du jour. And I prefer the former practice of requiring stations to provide limited air time to community groups or individuals rather than the current facade of public service by making appereances at the last walk for the (fill in the blank for terminal illness of choice).

[prole]

I agree that trying to decide who's speech is in the public interest is a slippery slope and one that should be avoided.

 

I'd rather what's in the public interest be decided by the public through an open and democratic process than by simply allowing it to be defined de facto by those whose abiding and objective interest is in keeping "the unruly mob" in a state of idiotic stupor punctuated with bouts of frenzied consumption.

 

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31_v2SLwLJI

[Jim]

While I don't like the current situation, limiting the public square to those the majority prefers is not what the first amendment is about either.

[JayB]

The public interest isn't nebulous. It is to be informed so that democracy be possible and it is best served by diversity of speech and ownership, not by media consolidation and oligopolies that serve only the interest of corporations as can be observed routinely in today's media. Are you suggesting that private motives, those of Mr Murdoch for example, don't supersede the public interest today?

 

 

The counterpoint would be the book "Manufacturing Consent" by Chomsky and Herman. I agree that trying to decide who's speech is in the public interest is a slippery slope and one that should be avoided. But corporations have enourmous power in getting out their message these days.

 

I would at least prefer that they pay market rates for the use of the public airways while trying to convince us we're dorks unless we purchase the latest trinket du jour. And I prefer the former practice of requiring stations to provide limited air time to community groups or individuals rather than the current facade of public service by making appereances at the last walk for the (fill in the blank for terminal illness of choice).

 

 

I'm not sure how one can logically equate the threats posed by manufacturing consent via media to be more significant than manufucturing obedience via the power to ban, seize, imprison, etc., all of which are subject to being co-opted to serve private interests in the name of safeguarding the public interest.

 

Anyone foolish enough to knock back a shot every time someone invoked "the public interest" while listening to the advocates of the various ethanol mandates plying the halls of congress, for example, would succumb to alcohol poisoning in less time than it takes to get through one of the PSA's you cite above.

 

 

[prole]

While I don't like the current situation, limiting the public square to those the majority prefers is not what the first amendment is about either.

 

The current situation amounts to limiting the public square to a tiny minority, but hey...

 

Democratic institutions have devised all sorts of ways to protect the interests of minorities. The 'one dollar/one megaphone' media oligopoly system however has not.

[JayB]

I agree that trying to decide who's speech is in the public interest is a slippery slope and one that should be avoided.

 

I'd rather what's in the public interest be decided by the public through an open and democratic process than by simply allowing it to be defined de facto by those whose abiding and objective interest is in keeping "the unruly mob" in a state of idiotic stupor punctuated with bouts of frenzied consumption.

 

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31_v2SLwLJI

 

Let's hear more about this public process. What are the specific legislative mechanisms, enforcement protocols, etc that you'd establish given a blank slate to do so?

[JayB]

While I don't like the current situation, limiting the public square to those the majority prefers is not what the first amendment is about either.

 

The current situation amounts to limiting the public square to a tiny minority, but hey...

 

Democratic institutions have devised all sorts of ways to protect the interests of minorities. The 'one dollar/one megaphone' media oligopoly system however has not.

 

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. No one is entitled to an audience for it.

[olyclimber]

lol. except on cc.com spray

[KaskadskyjKozak]

While I don't like the current situation, limiting the public square to those the majority prefers is not what the first amendment is about either.

 

The current situation amounts to limiting the public square to a tiny minority, but hey...

 

Democratic institutions have devised all sorts of ways to protect the interests of minorities. The 'one dollar/one megaphone' media oligopoly system however has not.

 

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. No one is entitled to an audience for it.

 

Prole, like all self-deluded commie idealists, has a big-government "solution" to all our social "injustices".

 

[Jim]

I agree - I'm not advocating the biggest-wallet-wins, which is the current situation. And when a substantial portion of the population believes in creation vs. evolution, they might vote in the need for more of Oprah and Montel.

 

The alternate is having the government decide what is good for the massess, but I'm open to suggestions.

[JayB]

The control of the flow of information and mass culture by corporate oligopolies would be at the very top of his list IMO. THE major invention of the 20th century was TV. Nothing has done more to change the way so many people perceive reality.

 

It's more than a bit strange that these corporate media oligopolies have seemed to have so little interest in using the uncheckable array of powers at their disposal to manipulate the public into consuming enough of the print media that they generate to allow the said media outlets to stay in business. Seems like if they can subvert the "public interest" at will and subvert it to their own ends that'd be job one.

 

 

[Choada_Boy]

I'd rather what's in the public interest be decided by the public through an open and democratic process than by simply allowing it to be defined de facto by those whose abiding and objective interest is in keeping "the unruly mob" in a state of idiotic stupor punctuated with bouts of frenzied consumption.

 

"Huh? What? My brain and junk can't, like, make no sense from your big words."

[prole]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. No one is entitled to an audience for it.

 

That the State, populated as it is by lobbyists and corporate in-and-outers, has given over the public airwaves entirely to the corporate megaphone without regard for its monopolistic practices would suggest that some are more entitled to an audience than others.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

That the State, populated as it is by lobbyists and corporate in-and-outers, has given over the public airwaves entirely to the corporate megaphone without regard for its monopolistic practices would suggest that some are more entitled to an audience than others.

 

And you advocate the same thing, but have a different message (that few care to listen to). Bugger off.

[Choada_Boy]

 

"And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn't just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!

[ivan]

That the State, populated as it is by lobbyists and corporate in-and-outers, has given over the public airwaves entirely to the corporate megaphone without regard for its monopolistic practices would suggest that some are more entitled to an audience than others.

 

And you advocate the same thing, but have a different message (that few care to listen to). Bugger off.

indeed - and who the hell gets their tv through the public airwaves these days anyhow?

[prole]

No, not "indeed". I think as a society we can stand some more Paul Ron and Ralph Nader and a lot more besides. The greatest check to political power is an informed and engaged citizenry. The function of independent journalism is to inform the population and the media's a means to transmit it. Providing more bandwidth to this function, a forum for diverse views, and more transparency for the processes of governance free from the pressures of profit-making would be the goal, not State control over content.

[JayB]

Sounds like eliminating constitutional checks and balances in exchange for turning over every third channel to C-SPAN is a one-way ticket to utopia.