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Nancy Pelosi vs. the Internet
selil writes "A story popped up on the ChicagoBoyz Blog. It says 'Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would like very much to reimpose the old, so-called, "Fairness Doctrine" that once censored conservative opinion on television and radio broadcasting, is scheming to impose rules barring any member of Congress from posting opinions on any internet site without first obtaining prior approval from the Democratic leadership of Congress. No blogs, twitter, online forums — nothing.'"
"We know what's best for you"
Does politics bring in the idiots from the streets, or does politics create idiots from sane stock? Discuss!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Your epidermis is showing.
Here's a direct link to the letter in question.
the old, so-called, "Fairness Doctrine" that once censored conservative opinion on television and radio broadcasting
[Citation needed]
Tweet, tweet.
So, Submitter says that the right-wing Chicagoboyz blog says that Congressman Culberson says that Congrassman Brady says that Congressman Capuano says that Majority Leader Pelosi says she wants to stifle free spech?
EVERYBODY PANIC!
This is a regulation of HOUSE MEMBERS usage of the Internet - not the general public. Look at the linked letter: http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF
The AS ASS above thinks that the Dems are manipulating the general public's right to free political speech, he is dead wrong.
The limits are to be placed upon Members of Congress and their staff and merely require that the material is vetted (I approved this ....) and that limitation of the staff's right to engage in political speech is included, too (it already is restricted - See, the Hatch Act, http://www.osc.gov/hatchact.htm ). RTFA.
From the PDF of the letter in question:
"Please note that nothing in these recommendations should b e construed as a recommendation to change the current House rules and regulations governing the content of official communications."
This is an attempt to deal with technical issues and update existing House rules to keep up with technology. There's a lot of FUD in the article summary and in TFA.
Here is the actual letter they reference: http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF
I'm sorry, but I don't understand how they can draw those conclusions from the source they reference. And I don't see anything about Pelosi. The letter seems to say that people can post stuff on outside servers, provided there is a way of verifying it really came from who it says its from. Whoah! Scandal!
Why is Slashdot posting links to crazy right wing/libertartian conspiracy theories? This is stupid.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I've read the PDF about the *suggested* changes.
Currently there are rules governing the posting of *official* House of Reps material which includes the requirement that such posts are done in the house.gov domain.
The suggested change allows that material to be hosted on external servers subject to the *existing rules*.
It says *nothing* about prohibiting posting of opinions by house members on any web site. Nothing.
I read it three times, and it seems pretty standard. Basically, it's mostly about links to non-official websites and standards those outside sites must meet. It's no different than the rules that most corporations place on user-maintainable CMS systems.
Note: it never discusses approval of any particular piece of content (except to the extent that official postings already have to meet certain standards), just having pre-approved sites.
Here is the letter linked as "evidence" of this "censorship" policy:
http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF.
Seems to me that it's referring to "official" House media... that is, representative of The House. Makes sense that if something's supposed to represent the body it ought to be approved by the majority, Democratic, Republican, or whoever.
Any other sources that indicate that congress is being gagged in their personal speech?
More Twoson than Cupertino
They just have very specialized knowledge. The knowledge of how to get themselves elected, keep getting re-elected and moving up the chain of authority.
All of that schmoozing and such does not leave much time for learning anything else.
So they rely upon "advisors" for their "information". And said "information" has to be communicated to them in the least technical terms. Which results in statements about "tubes" and "trucks".
But to be fair to them, my CFO asked a little while ago if the power problems we had were a result of her sending an email to Iceland. After all, it must take a lot more power to push the message that far than to push it across the street.
The sites will be vetted to prove that it is secure, that not just anyone can post video "from teh US congrass." Horrors. And it mentions nothing about Nancy Pelosi.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Basically it's saying that if you have official content you want to post (e.g. big videos) that you can't post on house.gov, you currently can't do it. Since some content is hard to post, Pelosi is suggesting new rules that allow it to be possible, within guidelines.
It's actually more permissive than our Internet posting policies here at work. Right now, you have to work through us (the web services team), as opposted to setting up your own URL and posting whatever you want outside of the official content.
Please don't vote if you don't realize McCain is a senator is this has to do with House rules.
they are too busy using Iraqi babies as skeet shooting targets
Did they run out of lawyers already?
http://www.mhall119.com
Liberal, Democrat, Republican, Conservative it doesn't matter who tells you what the corporate agenda is. The corporations are still in charge.
They are the "elite" the "haves" that like to make your decisions for you..or rather make your decisions for their profit.
Anyone that supports the current system of corporate rule are the enemy no matter what party they support. Most people won't believe this and that is why they are winning the class war. Unfortunately the bulk of people like to have someone else think for them which is why democracy won't solve this problem.
Fraud Alert: The Slashdot story seems to be without support elsewhere. It may be a paid Slashvertisement.
Also, if you read the PDF of the letter mentioned, it is about technical limitations of U.S. government support for internet access. The rules proposed seem very sensible. The letter says NOTHING about Nancy Pelosi.
The letter is avialable here
#1 - This is only concerning official House communications...not informal messages from House members.
#2 - The letter is actually requesting to open up external sites (like Youtube) for official House communications since the current house.gov website doesn't meet the needs.
#3 - The restrictions requested ask for similar standing on external sites as they have on house.gov. In other words, offical communication can't be posted along side an Obama banner ad.
ÕÕ
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was genuinely interested in seeing if anyone could reference actions attributable to the fairness doctrine that effectively suppressed any point of view. According to the wikipedia entry, the Fairness Doctrine:
merely prevented a station from day after day presenting a single view without airing opposing views. The Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows or editorials.
It seems likely to allow broadcasters freedom to espouse any point of view they wish while simultaneously giving some access to minority or marginalized points of view, and I'm having trouble imagining how this would play out in such a way as to bury any point of view, conservative or otherwise.
But I'm aware the law of unintended consequences has an amazing reach, and it does say the Supreme court found it had a "chilling effect" on speech. I just don't understand the mechanism and am unfamiliar with any specific case, so I figured I'd *ask* for incidences where the Fairness Doctrine was abused to the suppression of conservative views.
Tweet, tweet.
Morally, and in the upper arms.
Remember Al & Tipper Gore's charge against "bad lyrics" in 1985?
Remember Al Gore and his running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, threat to impose forms of state censorship on the film, music and video games industries should they win the November election in 2000?
Remember Senator John D. Rockefeller's (D-W.Va) "Indecent and Gratuitous and Excessively Violent Programming Control Act." of 2005?
Remember Hilary Clinton taking a public stand in favor of shielding children from game and other animation content that she deems inappropriate in 2007?
The republicans arent the only ones taking away your rights...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The crack about the Fairness Doctrine is particularly illuminating because it is so ignorant.
The Fairness Doctrine. was a pre-internet rule supported by both Conservatives and Liberals, used because the government was controlling who could broadcast television and radio.
Since broadcast mass media "speech" was already totally controlled ("non-free") on the airwaves via the FCC (though for reasons of technology rather than politics), the lucky (and very wealthy) few who had been granted the privilege to broadcast were required to provide time to both sides of any controversial issue. This rule was administered by the FCC, who still performs the same function today with regards to moral standards, language, etc... pretty much everything but politics, where they were instructed by Reagan and Bush (sr. and jr.) to stop (and not yet forced by congress to resume, despite several failed attempts).
The Fairness Doctrine is as irrelevant on the Internet as it is to a newspaper or a public park, since there is no meaningful barrier for anyone to "speak" in these venues.
It will not be thus forever, but today in 2008, TV and radio still have a substantial audience and influence (as evidenced by gross advertising revenues), and it is still only an exclusive, government controlled elite club who can broadcast on these systems. Repealing the Fairness Doctrine essentially allowed the broadcasters as a whole to skew farther to one side of the ideological spectrum or the other legally (where before it would have been very difficult to go too far and stay within the law). Those with wealth and power (and that changes in cycles) can thus use the broadcast media for propaganda purposes, a concept familiar in places like Russia, Italy, etc. and now increasingly familiar here in the USA.
As Rupert Murdoch is now considerably warm towards Barack Obama (see the WSJ), I wonder if Conservatives who previously thought this was a great idea are now beginning to reconsider.
Murdoch himself has a history of switching the political orientation of his propaganda machine; in the U.K., for instance.
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The fairness doctrine doesn't censor anything.
It allows for equal time and space of people with opposing or different views.
No. It REQUIRES equal time and space for people with opposing or different views. Big difference.
Conservative talk radio is a business, collecting revenue by attracting ears for advertisers. It spends long blocks of time - like three hour chunks - on particular points of view. The fairness doctrine would require stations playing it to give equal blocks of time - in equivalent timeslots - to anti-conservative viewpoints, which would NOT attract the target demographic. This would be a massive financial hit (in a number of ways) on any station that played a talk show with enough of a point-of-view to invoke the doctrine.
The result would be that such stations would drop political talk shows entirely. This would leave the entire political content of stations coming from their news coverage (which has been shown, by an objective scale developed by Stanford and UCLA researchers, to be massively left-biased). The entertainment content is similarly left-biased (though not subject to the methodology used on news coverage.) As one big talk show host says: "I AM equal time!"
The left has just as much opportunity to field its own talk shows with its own biases. And it has tried, several times. But (with a few notable exceptions in extremely liberal areas, such as KGO radio in San Francisco) their content has failed to attract enough of an audience to be profitable. So shutting down political talk radio by reinstitution of the so-called "fairness doctrine" would have the effect of massively suppressing conservative political viewpoints on broadcast media.
A flip side is that the conservatives could potentially start a news organization of their own, covering conservative viewpoints. Indeed, this HAS been done to some extent, in the form of Fox News. But FNN has shown its true colors in the primary season: It covers only ONE of the four or so major conservative factions' positions and is perfectly happy to blatantly suppress the others.
Starting a new wholly-owned NETWORK by buying a little station in each major market is forbidden by FCC rules, which limit the amount of the population stations owned by a single entity can reach to well under 50%. So they'd have to recruit a lot of independents. (And you can bet, if they were succeeding, there would be attempts to invoke the fairness doctrine against them, adding massive legal costs to the equation.)
So with talk radio as the only broadcast outlet for conservative political thought (but not effective for liberal positions), and liberal political thought dominating entertainment content and most news coverage, shutting down political talk radio by reimposing the fairness doctrine would be a massive blow to the right and a victory for the left.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Since the letter doesn't mention the fairness doctrine, I wouldn't tilt at that windmill if I were you.
The first part is true, the second part is not. Or at least the second part grants the unsubstained allegation that the recommendations are that evil. The letter reads, to paraphrase:
Nothing about unoffical postings is being mentioned (a member's twitter account, for instance.) And it seeks to expand, not limit, options.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Judges 9:8
Have you read the letter? The summary and its source are utter bullshit. The letter is about figuring out how to allow House members to post official videos on their official pages without going over their disk space quotas, while still conforming to existing regulations on how a Member may present official documents.
Pelosi has nothing to do with this. Censorship has nothing to do with this.
These scare tactics work for and on conservatives so very well.
Wow.