The FCC should add warning labels to news programs

You should vote for the other side if you believe truth, objectivity, and unbiased means reciting facts, and nothing else. Pro offers a twenty-four hour equivalent of a CSPAN camera, completely unfiltered, non-partisan, and totally disinterested. Or we can take this a step further and do what the Associated Press is already doing in newsrooms using computer algorithms to report stories, stories that cannot handle nuance but are adept at straight no-nonsense reporting, that under Pro’s methodology deserves an A+, a computer is the quintessential journalist by the standards adopted throughout this debate.[1] But Pro’s standard for FCC labeling doesn’t really take into account really what journalism is nor is it even close to what experts Michael Schudson and Katharine Fink at Columbia University’s School of Journalism have documented. According to rigorous, empirical “The Rise of Contextual Journalism, 1950s–2000s” they documented, here is the abstract: ______________________________________________________________________ Many journalists and other observers remember the 1960s as a watershed moment in American journalism. Do they remember correctly? This essay reviews relevant empirical studies on how US newspapers have changed since the 1950s. There is strong existing evidence that journalists have come to present themselves as more aggressive, that news stories have grown longer, and that journalists are less willing to have politicians and other government officials frame stories and more likely to advance analysis and context on their own. Based on content analysis of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this study finds that the growth in ‘contextual reporting’ has been enormous – from under 10 percent in all three newspapers in 1955 to about 40 percent in 2003; ‘conventional’ news stories on the front page declined from 80–90 percent in all three papers to about 50 percent in all three papers in the same period. What this study calls ‘contextual reporting’ has not been widely recognized (unlike, say, investigative reporting) as a distinctive news genre or news style and this article urges that it receive more attention.[2] Pro states: Facts speak for themselves regardless of your stance on a political issue. What do academics that what spent careers analyzing the issue say? The opposite! Pro’s standard is what their report calls conventional news reporting, a type of reporting that the authors note have waned over time. Both Fink and Schudson highlight a variety of journalistic approaches that bona fide reporters take. Although, my opponent stick with the conventional approach and does not accept three others as legitimate under his regime [three in bold indicate the kinds of journalistic methods Pro does not accept as “neutral,” “objective,” or “unbiased” ]: conventional: a simple report of an event which happened in the last 24 hours contextual: a story containing significant analysis, interpretation, or explanation investigative: extensive accountability or “watchdog” reporting social empathy: a story about the lives of people unfamiliar to the reader[3] Answering Pro’s questions and demonstrating once again the FCC is not an agency that should determine the truth; and no, Con does not believe five political appointees with zero background in journalism or Constitutional law should determine truth, nor penalize any network for using a national platform to argue about values, beliefs, principles, or that want advocate or speech on partisan issues that large segments of the population accept, reject, or indifferent too. Here is one example of why the FCC cannot be a neutral arbiter, as a government agency, when it conflicts with and capitulates to powerful agencies like the NSA. If you want to claim that the FCC is inept at its job, then point to a clear instance of the FCC completely failing to do a job that falls in its realm of responsibility. Here is an example: The University of Pittsburgh School of Law has a good scholarly article of the “FCC again refuses investigation of telecom involvement in NSA domestic spying. Here is what Kevin Martin, the FCC chairman had to say, “It is well within the authority of the independent agency responsible for the enforcement of our nation’s communications privacy laws to investigate the very serious reports that the intelligence agencies were using telephone companies to obtain phone records and Internet data on citizens without proper, prior authorization. I believe the FCC could conduct its own examinations of such reports in a way that safeguards national security. [4] Obvious real world obstacles to this plan: (1) Congress would have to pass a bill authorizing the FCC with that power since it does not have that authority. (2) Immediately, a major news network would sue on free speech grounds and based on recent precedent by the Robert’s Court, they would rule it an unconstitutional based on the “Strict Scrutiny” established by stare decisis.[5][6][7][8] Under Pro’s regime a summary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, following the Five-W’s model of facts might look like this: [Who?] Martin Luther King, an American Baptist minister [What?] delivered a speech [Where?] on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial [When?] August 28, 1963, [Why?] to call for an end to racism I can’t think of a more “totally unbiased,” “neutral,” and “objective” but inane way to document the “I have a Dream Speech” but essentially this is the model pro believes reveals truth, as noted in praising the ABC News model. You should vote for Con if truth involves more than straight facts, but includes knowledge, wisdom, beliefs, principles, which all derive from what Oliver Wendell Holmes called, “a marketplace of ideas.” Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power, and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law, and sweep away all opposition. To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care wholeheartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises. But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.[9] [1] http://www.theverge.com... [2] http://www.journalism.columbia.edu... [3] http://www.niemanlab.org... [4] http://jurist.org... [5] United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460. [6] Brown v. Entertainment Merchants 564 U.S. 08-1448 [7] Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443 [8] Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm'n, 558 U.S. 310 [9] Abrams v. United States 250 U.S. 616 (1919)