This is a great day for Three Rings; they have my hearty congratulations for surviving and then succeeding in the face of the withering trials of a small independent game developer.
Without a giant corporate bankroll and without any notice from the retail distribution "trust," they succeeded in launching really distinct and fun proprietary content, creating a thriving community, and finally just being so plain good that the majors were forced to notice.
I wish them all the success in the world, not only because they've clearly earned it, but because their story is a potential wind shift for smaller independent developers everywhere. Maybe the publishing system is finally seeing the costs of its hubris about budgets, "3dism," genre-lock and dealing with little guys, and realizing the value in doing smaller more unconventional deals.
There is an enormous untapped talent pool out there on the internet; Three Rings is one of many little guys who are doing great things way outside the norms of video game "Hollywood." Recognizing them, and fitting them into the distribution system in some meaningful way, would be a good thing for the industry, a great thing for gamers.
What... you really believed you could fool anyone?
For much of the post, you winged from this false claim, which I never made
Here you are, winging away on your imagination...
and feel no need to bother making
This is especially ironic, because you fell back on your vast left-wing conspiracy at every turn... maybe you should have tried to justify it a bit more rather than just chickening out and abandoning it now.
I spit in the face of the idea of a "VLWC".
But look at your track record, Atari. You will be begging it forgiveness and back together with it again in a matter of minutes.
So here we have it: on one side, conservatism. On the other side: Truth!
Are you suffering from a kind of political paranoia?
Did I say there was conservatism on one side and truth on the other? Anywhere, at any time? Even in jest?
No.
What I did say was that, despite your vast left-wing conspiracy theory, the reason the news stations were not the conservatives' friend was because it was not their job to be the conservatives' friends. It was their job to tell the truth. It was their job to be nobody's friend - to be impartial and fair.
It was the conservative's sick dream to dispose of inconvenient truth tellers by slandering them and ending the rules.
What does this mean? That there is common ground between us after all?
I find plenty of truth in both the liberal and conservative sides. I also find plenty of bias, "propagandizing", discreditable assertions, and valid points in both sides.
A fallacy of comparison. There is plenty of truth in both sides. But there really is no basis to say the liberal and conservative camps are equally guilty in modern propaganda. And in fact we have heard every possible variation: that liberals are a vast conspiracy to be valiantly resisted by struggling conservative outsiders, that they are a perpetual equal who balances out any conservative transgression, and of course that they have been vanquished, and are now a powerless loser... whenever each one was convenient.
You have some hard admissions to make. You don't have to make them to me. I don't need to hear you own up to what you've done here, not only because what's happened in this "profusion of posts" (which you engineered by taking over a dozen other conversations) is so obviously and embarrassingly clear, but because in an important way you are already admitting it to yourself. You know what's happening here, every time you knowingly refuse to give evidence, or rewrite a quote, or repeat an absurd debater's trick, or repeat a disproved idea instead of responding to new ones.
You must think at first you just need to "win" and this is I guess how you think that's done, but every time you have to stretch it a little more, reach a little farther, all it really does is sink in a little more...
Now once again, let's compare the two sentences:
Meanwhile conservatives are the only ones with real propaganda
Conservative views are always "propaganda", while liberal views are always well-expressed unbiased analyses/etc/etc.
How are these two sentences different? How are they the same?
I'm saying conservatives are the only ones who have a real proapganda machine. You're trying to paint me as accusing them of only having propaganda.
It does not get more obvious. You are distorting the words just a centimeter away on the same screen.
The only question is why you are willing to embarrass yourself this way. But I am glad you are. Because, whether you want to or not, your energy is forcing you to learn something.
who have no real difference what so ever except in the "side" they advocate.
I remember the years when the the only cable news network was CNN, run by a significant rich left-wing activist named Ted Turner.
Here we go again. The vast left-wing media conspiracy. It only flies if you can give any evidence of CNN bias, but really, they were not then and are not now 1/100 as partisan as Murdoch's "Fox News" and you know it.
One minute you agonize over the Fairness Doctrine, and the next minute you pretend it didn't have any effects. You say "you've been there"... only there was no there there, and we all know it.
You will say everybody from Michael Moore to Mickey Mouse is part of a giant, scary conspiracy to crush conservatism in America. The truth is that you have never seen real liberal propaganda, and I hope you never do.
NBC, ABC, CBS were then (as now) not the conservative's friend.
Well said. They are not they conservative's friend. They were more the truth's friend.
It really is repeating that "vast left-wing conspiracy" theory to say all that (from the sound of it, practically all) media was biased against conservatives. We know how conservatives argue; Fox News is "(cough) fair and (cough) balanced" anything that is not conservative propaganda is part of the vast left wing conspiracy... Disney, Sesame Street, Sponge Bob, FAIR, anything.
The fact is the news always followed the rules you don't want to follow. When they got into a controvertial issue they were fair to their opponents.
The fact is if you are wrong, and your ideas are bogus, and the only way you can sell them with lies, your complaints and excuses will sound just like a conservative's. Man, that fairness system was really unfair. I'm so glad there are no rules now. Sure, hey, let the people who told the truth before start lying too. It's fun.
Instead of the 4 to 1 there is now?
Here we go again. The martians are in it with the liberals and the arabs! Every media watchdog is a "liberal pressure group!" It's a vast left-wing conspiracy I tell you!
Meanwhile conservatives are the only ones with real propaganda, and they call it (haha) "balanced."
It was ridiculous the first time you tried this VLWC hokum and it's ridiculous now. You always refused to name any specifics or back it up with anything. When presented with evidence going the other way you could't find a specific thing wrong with it. All that's happened since then is you've made a lot of embarrassingly big mistakes trying to deceive us and your credibility has gone from zero to deep in the negative territory.
Even if your plan is just to spread propaganda about the media, you could have done all this so much better.
Thanks for mentioning Art Bell in an appropriate context.
You spent so many posts embarrassing yourself trying to claim I was biased, using obviously dishonest tricks and always refusing to give anything real to back it up. I wasn't expecting an apology, yet strangely, this almost feels like one.
Here's a dictionary link that actually contains a definition of the word "propaganda"
There is a process of trying to make something that is bad sound less bad by carefully chosing words that, which technically accurate (even a dictionary definition) are really intended to minimize and conceal something's true nature, and make it more palatable to people. Advertising executives do it. Foreign dictators do it. Lawyers do it. Now you are doing it. Saying that you gave the dictionary definition isn't exactly denying it, either.
This is exactly what political parties, editorialists, and activists do.
And that is what I think you are doing. Political editorializing. Being an activist. Not being truthful or fair or arguing honestly.
I think you are able to get the concept here, too. If I went on TV, and accused you of horrible things that would make everyone hate you, lying blatantly about your ideas and words, and all you had to answer with was the internet, or hell, even if you owned a newspaper, you would be angry - you would know you had a response, that you couldn't give it anywhere near the same power that my original slander had. You can't even buy a television network, and even if you were allowed to try (which you would never be) it takes years and millions (or billions) to do so.
When I speak millions hear me. You have no such power or even close. I will never admit you have been silenced... but I know the real score, which is that you never had a chance.
You might say the power that the FCC has to say who can and can't broadcast is arbitrary and wrong; maybe so, but there is no substitute, no other way of doing it short of declaring TV illegal or having broadcast anarchy, which amounts to the same thing (nobody gets TV). That's leaving aside the cost of entry issue. We're not going to outlaw all TV, that's a given...
I will put out a hypothesis. You have been an activist against Fairness just because you are happy with the state of the media market right now. Oh, you've heard the rhetoric that the propagandists give - they falsly drape themselves in the constitution to justify their acts - and maybe you even believed it at first. It sounded right. But by now you are starting to realize the truth. As we have demonstrated time, after time, after time, after time, it doesn't make any sense. It's just dishonest rhetoric. There is no real principle there. They don't even stop to dry their tears from crying about the constitution before they turn around to suppress demonstrations ("freedom of assembly"), or crusade against "immorality" - on the internet, in video games, even in art museums. They just want what they want and like good activists they will say whatever they think people will believe to get it.
OK, fine. You know the score. But maybe you enjoy the dominance of conservative media in our country, or maybe you don't really care. You don't really understand how much worse it can get. But what if that were to change? What if, in a few years... I know, you can't imagine it, but just pretend. Maybe the Chinese crash the dollar, the bond market goes south. We have a fiscal crisis. There is capital flight and we go into a major economic correction. No one will call it a "depression," but with rampant inflation, double-digit joblessness, and the whole works, everyone will know it when they see it. The conservatives tell everyone to suck it up, slash all social programs to try to save the government, and refuse to do any wealth redistribution, sticking to a really regressive tax policy. Everyone turns on them. Their fall is even more violent and decisive as their rise, as people will be outraged. The more they loved them, the more they'll hate them. Just in terms of the economics, I didn't make this up, by the way; you can read this theory as a worst case scenario in reputable financial news outlets today, and they are talking about the next 5-10 years.
Now suddenly there is a backlash. The elections are a bloodbath for the conser
Not true, since it has the government censor something that is "not fair".
I've now pointed out that no censorship is involved.
Oh yes it can. It can let people express political views without censoring them for not being "fair".
As I said, they are not censored, whether they are fair or not. And you can be as unfair as you want, as long as you give others a chance to say their side.
Hmmm? I agree that this is censorship.
This is encouraging. Now you just have to think it through the rest of the way.
Actually, my favorite source of unfettered political expression is public radio. I rarely get news from broadcast TV, and I do not find it terribly relevant to the argument personally as I do not recall much content change in the "10:00 News" pre and post fairness doctrine.
I was referring to your advocacy for legal propaganda; I can't guess what your personal listening habits are, but I admit I'm surprised to hear public radio.
False. In every message, you call for censorship of "unfair" media.
No, nothing of the kind. I have been very thorough in explaining that I have never called for censorship, and in fact failing to be fair has the effect of censoring people.
You are in agreement with none of them. They have all had hands-off when it comes to content of cable TV and satellite radio.
My already-provided link demonstrates bipartisan supreme court support for the doctrine. This is not the same as saying every justice or every politican agrees with me - only that a great many justices and politicians of all stripes have supported it.
Call yourself "progressive" or whatever.
I don't. I don't think I qualify, frankly. It's hard to tell.
Regardless, you are clearly in the left-wing when you think that a left-wing pressure group like FAIR is in the "center".
Seriously, you just blew an awful lot of smoke about this and never once backed it up. If you had anything real to hold up against them you would have done it by now.
You could go find something at this point but it will be clear you are doing your research after the fact. Not that I wouldn't take anything you found about them seriously.
By the way, though, even if you demolished FAIR (which you can't, let's be honest), they are far from the only watchdog.
Your groundless insistence on smearing FAIR, and refusing to give any checkable specifics or evidence as you do it, are a big part of why I've assumed you're a conservative - in fact, a hardcore one, since what you've done so far really is, I hope you can admit, over the top.
This might be true of some, but for you it is inherently liberal (anti-conservative) as your main "poster boy" for it is Fox News, which you want to stop being so conservative.
Not really. I picked examples of prominent propagandists who happened to be conservative. This is not hard to do, because they really are in control of the state of that art right now. But imagine, it's pretty backwards to say I am advocating an non-partisan idea in an "inherently liberal" way. All propaganda is dangerous to democracy, broadcast it is deadly dangerous, and it is not my fault if liberals don't give me enough good examples to match with the conservative ones.
Conservatives have a "vast left wing conspiracy" theory about the media but they don't usually give specifics, because there aren't really that many questionable things compared to the Murdoch companies, Sinclair, the radio networks, etc.
You bet it frightens me when the means to "fairness" is censorship of political content.
This really stuns me. Do you really not see the difference between these two sentences?
The government already regulates them.
The government never regulated the political content of Fox News.
This is like an elementary school exercise. How are these sentences different? How are they the same?
The government never regulated fairness on Fox News. They do regulate the content of Fox News.
The "Fairness Doctrine" did not apply to them.
This seems like another neat segue into something unrelated to the point. Come on, just think about the point honestly for a second. What's the harm in seriously considering it? You don't have to change your view - just think for a minute. All I'm saying is that the government already regulates Fox News. How does it make sense to say "free speech" is your paramount concern, even in though it's already less important than all of these other things? We keep coming back to that and you never answer it. You already regulate speech to see what's obscene, what's deceptive, what's threatening... It doesn't make any sense to turn around and say "free speech" is paramount when you've just made all these important exceptions to it already. This is not for nothing - it just happens that there are some important things that come into play and the First Amendment never meant you can say whatever you want "no matter what" - even on a street corner, let alone for the special case of the broadcaster. And this is one of the most important issues of all. If a TV broadcaster can be unfair, and keep your viewpoint off the air ("censoring" it, in effect, giving an unfair impression to eyes of hundreds of millions of viewers), the only way to protect "free speech" is actually to have a Fairness Doctrine.
If we bring it back, it would not apply to them unless it was significantly altered.
You're talking about the fact that FNN is on cable. I don't know if I would say "significantly" altered; almost the entire rule would be the same. Only one detail about new technology changes.
The alteration of the "Fairness Doctrine" to censor such non-broadcast content would open up another big can of worms that I find also objectionable.
Also? I thought you found it objectionable period. I appreciate that you're thinking past those objections a bit.
I really think you've just misunderstood how cable works. It's new technology that lets us have more channels, but the issues are really the same. I agree that with more channels you can have more diversity and it starts to be less pressing. I think as technology improves the Internet and cable will become indistinguishable and then we will agree there is no role for the Fairness Doctrine there.
But the problem is that day is still many years away. It's clear that it's much easier to have a newspaper or a website than a cable channel, and also that a cable channel reaches many more people. You still have to be selected by a group of people and there can still be a relatively small number (under a thousand?), and it is much more expensive to run a TV channel than, say, create a newspaper - which you can do with a few hundred dollar PC and a cheap printer, paper and ink, or a xerox machine...
Howard Stern has fled to satellite (non-broadcast) radio so he could say dirty words and interview porn stars with much more freedom. If we expand the "Fairness Doctrine" to censor satellite (cable) as well as broadcast, I think Howard's going to be in trouble again. Maybe that is fine with you. It is not for me.
You're right in that I don't think you would have a good argument to require fairness on cable without also requiring it on satellite.
But I think the reason it's not fine for you is that your perspective on the issues are shaped by some mistakes. Until you can have your own satelite radio show, in fact as long as hardly anyone can, then those few who can hold a major responsibility, and we are not like a laissez faire 3rd world nation; we believe in democracy and fariness, rather than letting some rich, privileged person run everything in this very pubilc, shared place to their whims.
I agree for once. Just as it is censorship for the government to control the content in any way.
Hahaha. You agree that television and radio inherently involve censorship, so therefore you believe there should be no rules over the content in any way. Except that you do believe there should be rules.
Stand, and salute the logic.
Because it's problematic, we must then allow anarchy and take no responsibility for it!
How would you handle the discovery of fire, had you been there to witness it? "This flame could burn people! Therefore we must immediately light fires and then leap over them naked!"
(Oh, my crystal ball tells me AtariAmarok will attempt to dodge this point by calling this analogy "babble.")
My concern was about government censorship of the papers, not arbitrary application of what someone thinks is "fair".
No. Let's go back and look at what you said, because it really is funny even after repeated readings. You must have been tired when you stumbled out with: "Using this bizarre pro-censorship logic, we should realize that since poor people can't afford to have a newspaper, we should censor the hell out of them too."
It sounds like you're advocating censoring poor people because they can't have a newspaper. I pointed out that the false argument you probably wanted to make was: "poor people can't afford a newspaper, so are you saying we should require newspaper owners to be fair, too?"
This would make sense but it does not.
Ahhh. Right. I'm worried you're really starting to lose it, saying things like this.
As a result, the number of real viable newspapers in a typical media market is much lower than the number of radio stations, and close to the same number of TV stations
And this is because it would make sense, but it does not.
By the way, the issue is not what the typical number of anything is, but whether or not it is technically or legally possible to do something.
Nice try though. Kind of.
It works out that people find it easier to start a radio station than a newspaper.
In your imagination.
You don't have to get anyone's permission to have print newspaper. Somehow in your world of lies, this makes it "harder."
I am not seeing any of your imaginary media market with 3 tv stations and thousands of newspapers.
That I never imagined or said anything about, nor does it have anything to do with the point.
Newspapers tend to be fewer in number than radio stations. Why do you not demand for them the same censorship to enforce "fairness" that you demand for radio?
You don't have to get anyone's permission to have print newspaper. There is no limited number of "newsprint frequencies" and no regulatory agency who decides who gets to have the few dozen channels a given area can support. The cost of creating, writing, and publishing one is far less than the costs to do radio.
That whooshing sound is these basic, glaring facts going in one of your ears and out the other.
Indeed they do, and they have many different ideas about it.
Not really. You want to claim that no one can agree on what fairness is - destroy the very concept of fairness, even - weasel around with what to call propaganda... all so that you can make the world safe for propaganda on TV.
It's really not so hard to agree on what's unfair. We solve harder problems in our government, in courts for instance, every minute of the day.
People have many different ideas about what constitutes pornography, too, AtariAmarok. What would you censor, and what wouldn't you?
Just as many of those who want to bring it back admit that their main reason is to silence Limbaugh.
You are changing the subject from the difficult to dispute dominance of right-wing talk radio over left-wing talk radio - a deception about which you tried to slip in but apparently know better to disavow than defend.
You don't have to single anyone out to know broadcast propaganda is horrible. Though you went to great pains to repeat baseless lies about it many times, I advocate fairness for everybody, and not to silence any particular person or view - and there is nothing in the slightest bit partisan about the Fairness Doctrine. By definition it applies to everyone equally.
It has been fun to watch you try to lie about that, though. It shows that you do know Conservatives are the ones who have more to lose from being fair.
There is also an explosive growth of left-wing (or at least non-conservative) radio at the same time.
I will be just as happy to see left-wing propaganda be curtailed by fairness as anything else.
This is a famous case: Red Lion Broadcasting Co. employed a Christian Conservative and instructed him to go on the air and act as an apologist for the notorious Republican racist, Barry Goldwater. In doing so, he slandered the author of a book about Goldwater, Fred J. Cook.
Contrary to your breathless and completely absurd lies, the rules never called for this to be censored at all, at any time. They merely required Red Lion to send Cook a transcript and offer him time to appear so that he could defend himself in the same forum in which he was attacked.
Poor Red Lion claimed this was too much of a burden, so the FCC cited them. I believe the penalty is a fine; not 100% sure. They ended up in court, and the case went all the way. The Supreme Court ruled against them (incidentally, they explicitly declared the Fairness Doctrine was constitutional).
You have a gross misunderstanding of the cable franchising system. The "government monopoly" applies to the local wire-runner only. It does not apply to someone who decides to uplink a new cable station to the network.
No, my understanding is just fine. You're the one who doesn't get it.
The cable company decides who to "uplink" and who not to. They can choose to take any channel they like, or not.
So, for broadcast TV, the government decides directly who the lucky few dozen who get to broadcast are, and will jail anyone else who tries. For cable, they pick a company that does this for them, and will jail anyone else who tries to compete with them.
Every act is an expression of free speech, not "harmful".
In a newspaper. Not on TV, where bias can't be answered properly unless the TV itself does so.
Howard Stern is the King of All Censors.
So this is what it is like when you try to read and understand things. I am starting to understand how you have so many grossly bad ideas - you can't seem to understand what you read.
There is no problem here at all.
The protests against the FCC's latest attempt to relax diversity rules were the largest in the agency's history. "No, no problem at all."
They did not dislike him out of diversity
You truly are babbling at this point.
You don't "dislike him out of diversity." The issue is preventing a few (five, four, or even one) powerful or rich person from controlling the media.
This "censorship" could occur if this was anywhere near happening.
Consolidation is happening.
Conservative bureaucrats wanted to relax the rules even more, and like I said, they got the largest outcry in history over an FCC decision...
Not at all. The only unfairness involved is in preventing the other 9 to speak.
You reasoning is so tortured at this point it's hilarious. An analogy to what you're saying would be, "the solution to poverty is for everyone to become rich."
You never had a choice. There are only so many channels to go around.
The content of the one speaker's speech has nothing to do with it.
Thus, we have established why this is wrong.
The solution is to get the other ones a soap box, not to gag the one speaker (or, as you want, have the government write his speech).
We see the AtariAmarok dream: a television station for every man, woman and child in America.
Truly, sir, you are a genius!
It is getting better: now that the Fairness Doctrine is gone, the number of national TV news outlets has more than doubled, and there are a lot more radio soapboxes available.
It is irrelevant how many news outlets there are or were, and yet even then I wonder, though it's only a diversion to talk about it, if you're making even this up.
This is a very incoherent response to when I pointed out the fact that it is a lot easier to "talk back" now to TV and radio.
No, what you're saying really is incoherent, and you know it. It's obvious from how disconnected and bizarre your statements become as you attempt to persuade people that propaganda on TV can be balanced out by having other, different propaganda, or perhaps by calling into a talk show.
Frankly this is so ridiculous it is difficult to tell if you are joking, except your track record of lies and absurdity gives us a terrible clue.
Using the dictionary definition of propaganda (information reflecting the views and interests of advocates), I not only imply this. I come right out and say it is great.
And there we have it again, in black and white, not that he won't deny he said it in his next post if he finds it convenient.
Pleased with weasel words for propaganda, and please with propaganda itself - especially where there is no proper answer for it at all.
Actually, I recognize that "liberal" or "conservative" are not recognized by the Constitution, and there is nothing for and everything against the idea of censoring something because it is too liberal or too conservative.
Now you are dancing rather awkwardly, because you know you've given yourself away - now you've even let on you know the imbalance is bad (by forcibly pretending there is no imbalance). Of course, you still hammer on your painfully constructed smear of fairness.
I was pointing out the fact of the recent growth of diverse shows showing many sides to show that even by your standards of fairness, the media are more fair and diverse now. However, something that is artificially conceived as an "imbalance" is Constitutionally irrelevant.
No, you were (again, without any credibility) trying to pretend that there is some balance between different sides in volume of propaganda since the rule ended.
n fact, the perception of "balance" is entirely subjective
There are many concepts that you would claim are "subjective:" things like justice, freedom, terrorism, and apparently propaganda. Yet we interpret them every day. This is because we are adults, and instead of acting like stoned freshmen in a philosophy class we use our common sense. It does not take a major undertaking to identify unbalanced and unfair mass media; in fact, even when you do your absolute shrillest screaming trying to make it harder, all you really do is shine a very bright light on all the serious roles dishonesty and irrationality plays in your way of thinking, only making it more obvious what you are theoretically "defending" is worthy of scrutiny.
First, there is your arbitrary and repeated mention of "both sides". There are many more sides than just two.
Return now to your worst enemy: the dictionary. Home of what you call "made up words". Look up "censor":
Actually, no - you misquote again. Chalk up another blatant lie. Now, what did I actually say?
"Except that there is no oops. You are making up words so badly that you would have to have subhuman intelligence to be fooled."
Hmm. I keep looking for places I say the dictionary is full of made up words but I can't find any. Neither can you. And that is because it's not actually true, and you are an outrageous liar. And here is another demonstration that your desire to make slanders based on lies is really boundless and you are fearless in doing it, even when you know you will immediately get caught.
Your censorship criterion of "fairness" fits in between the word "erroneous" (according to someone's opinion) and "objectionable" (according to someone's ability to be outraged by differing views and opinions, as you are by Fox News).
Actually, no - it doesn't fit there, you are inserting it there.
It is technically impossible to "censor" anything merely by saying something that is objectionable (or "unfair" if you want).
Ahh... maybe this sentence made sense when you were thinking it, but...
The objectionable (unfair) speaker can only be a victim of censorship, not a perpetrator.
Sure he can, and I have explained how.
The term "censor" instead applies to the authority (in the definition) who purges the publication (broadcast) of the "objectionable" material.
A newspaper editor publishes whatever he wants, because he has no responsibility to anyone. No one had to give up their right to speak so he could have his voice. A broadcaster is quite the opposite.
But you obviously knew that, because you go so far, far out of your way to avoid the concept.
The censorship does not happen when someone broadcasts something objectionable (unfair). It happens when the authority removes the objectionable content from the broadcast.
And here is where your mistake reaches its apex. It must be so hard, almost physically difficult to keep yourself from getting it.
Under the Fairness Doctrine, no authority ever removes anything. They only require that if you give on view on a controvertial issue, you also give others a chance to speak. So that you are fair to all the people who can't "speak" on TV or radio.
You have decided to believe something that isn't true. You may be desperate to hang on to it anyway, but as you can see, every step you take down this road is harder and harder. Each one leaves you having to back up and claim more and more absurd things. Soon you are stuck insisting that black is white. It didn't take you long to end up having to lie about words printed on the page, and look where you are now. Floundering around this very simple concept like a drunkard with a greased bottle.
I love it! You stand behind the weasel words! Well done, just like a good trial lawyer.
"I looked it up in this book, that makes weaseling away from the definition of propaganda OK!"
The misquote involved censoring stations into going to music.
Hah! And you even got this wrong.
Let's read it again, for reference:
"It does not censor it. It insures that it's fair. if some radio or TV stations would rather be silent than fair, that is fine. It was part of the intent. No speech was silenced; everyone was perfectly able to communicate their ideas the way they always had, with newspapers and speech (and eventually the Internet, which was around for many years before the rule was repealed), and they did so."
Look up the definition of censorship. If the government authority is silencing something that it does not consider to be fair, that fits the definition.
Actually, it's basically the opposite of what you're saying. The definition (which you don't provide, probably because you know it doesn't back you up) deals with deleting.
You censor the second you choose one person to be a broadcaster and not another. From that point on, the people who get to broadcast have a duty to the rest; "to serve the public trust" as we say in this country. To broadcast things for all of us, in other words. If they act unfairly, they are in effect censoring those they are unfair to... by leaving out their entire point of view.
No, Limbaugh is a widely discredited, disgraced propagandist. FAIR is a non-partisan media watchdog. And you know it, because once again, you refuse to use any but dishonest means to smear them.
Look in this archive, as I did even before you gave this link.
So you claimed "such links do not exist," but now you say actually knew they were there all along.
This is what I'm saying, AtariAmarok. If you want to libel someone, you have to try to keep yourself from looking like a lunatic that will make up a stunningly obvious lie just to keep from admitting they are wrong.
The fact is that you start out from a ridiculous position: that to "prove itself" FAIR must criticize both sides equally. Which would be fine in the extraordinary event that both sides were equal. However, back in the real world, conservatives have a much bigger, more sophisticated propaganda machine than anyone else, and in order to actually have a point, you have to actually catch FAIR doing something wrong.
I know that you are deeply in love with the notion that you can simply say something and it becomes a fact, but the truth is if you could actually provide a link to:
FAIR saying something untrue
A series of cases where someone (anyone) actually engages in some specific, documented unethical journalistic behavior that has gone unnoticed by FAIR.
I would be deeply shaken and would seriously, honestly question my beliefs.
This is how we are different, AtariAmarok; I take my cues from the truth. To you "truth" and "facts" are a funny game you play, trying to score points for your team.
On the other hand, if you actually were capable of this, you would have done it already, instead of floundering and making a childish spectacle of yourself to the astonishing degree we've seen here. It's hard to see how you would save any actual evidence to back up your crazy claims until after you'd so copiously wet yourself in public.
Notice what is never a possibility here? That it is really that much easier to catch Libmaugh and O'Reilly lying than it is to catch Al Franken lying. And why is that never a possibility? I wonder if it's just because it would cause AtariAmarok's brain to short out.
What you are desperately dancing around is that, although you lied and tried to deny it, FAIR covers liberals critically as well as conservatives; it covered not only Dan Rather's career-ending outrage, but also dozens of other questionable actions by him, and many others you would doubtless consider "liberal."
Now, as for Al Franken, imagine this scenario: Limbaugh (for instance) is a propagandist, and Franken is a comedian who makes part of his living (clevlerly) exposing him, and (sensibly) opposing his obviously deceptive political demogoguery. Quick, deny it, call it "opinion," then try to feed it into the rattling machine you call "argument" as proof of anything.
One thing that must considerably annoy you is that you cannot be a lazy slanderer. If you decide you must tarnish someone's reputation, there is the tiresome process of finding things to support your assertion, to placate those of us who are not outrageously dumb, and would otherwise take you at your word.
The systematic use of silly insults for media figures of only one side is strong evidence of FAIR bias.
Links please. Let's see some examples of what you're talking about.
I didn't see evidence of anything outside the normal standards of journalism. When you cover someone who is an audacious serial propagandist, and you have literally amassed an enormous dossier on their deceptions, their treatment of their subjects seems extremely restrained.
Let's see, is it your position that a media watchdog must cover minor transgressions with the same tone that they cover major ones?
I forgot. It seems like you believe a media watchdog has to find things wrong with eve
It is impossible to censor by saying what you want.
Say there are only ten people in the world, and only one person is allowed to speak.
If that person doesn't speak for the others, he is being unfair to them. You want to pretend that sort of thing is great - "the speaker is lucky, he should say whatever he wants and no one should question his power!" I call it censorship, especially because you do support the rules that says only one of them can speak in the first place!
I wonder, confronted with this yet again, what will you do? Will you pretend you haven't read this and (cowardly) ignore it, will you misquote it and pretend it means something else? Will you stoop to some absurd level of pretend-insanity to feign that it somehow isn't easy to understand? Show us again how low you can stoop to defend the theft of your own voice.
It is very obvious that there is a lot more "talking back" to TV and radio being aired now than under the fairness doctrine.
Dance dance dance.
Look, AtariAmarok is implying that propaganda on TV is OK, because we can "talk back." Is this a joke? Perhaps we talk back by shouting at the television, or maybe liberals can call into Rush Limbaugh's show and that constitutes fairness somehow?
The conservatives are ahead of everyone else in radio and TV propaganda. Whether they are or not, the important thing is that you seem to imagine if liberals played just as dirty and the mass media were somehow "evenly split" it would be OK...
This shows that you know an imbalance is unfair (and bad). Honestly, otherwise why would you try to deceive and pretend that it does?
You don't want any rules to put that balance in place. You want to have no rules and, "oops" oh well, what a surprise, it didn't come out even. It seems conservatives (or whoever) have a big lead in propaganda. Hey, they can even use their propaganda (or gullible little footsoldiers like you) to tell everyone that the media is fair, or even that there's a vast left-wing conspiracy to bias the media against them. Oh wait... look, they already did.
And this balance you want to pretend is there but sleazily refuse to put rules in place to protect? Even that stinks. Two sides spewing opposing propaganda versus everyone just being fair. It's just a watered down, broken version of what I'm saying.
There is also public access cable also lets anyone "talk back".
So your plan is... address the unfairness, bias and propaganda on TV and radio by allowing people to respond on... public access cable! To pick just a few more lucky winners, and give them a tiny... regional audience... that had to pay to receive it...
Hahaha. Wow, that's the first time you actually made me laugh.:D
Are you asserting that under the "fairness doctrine", the show "60 Minutes" was really "120 Minutes"
No.
Now you are... what, trying to suggest that to be fair to the public you have to be longwinded? Or have a pundit or propagandist participate? You're on a roll today.
Yes. Substitute the actual meaning
Welcome everyone, to the thread. Meet the sleazy lawyer AtariAmarok. He defends propaganda because his hobby is weaseling words into new meanings. He makes Bill Clinton look like George Washington.
It's not propaganda! It's "material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine"!
Amazing!
And if he holds up a bank, it's not armed robbery, it's "unplanned transfer of assets from one party to another"!
Your opinion about the war is one shared by half, disputed by half. This is exactly the sort of thing that should be left to free and open debate.
And without fairness, that debate is not happening properly. The issue will never be treated fairly in the mass media, any more than your home will stay safe if you leave the doors open.
The actual dictionary reference is in another recent message. You shot your mouth off before reading....oops.
Except that there is no oops. You are making up words so badly that you would have to have subhuman intelligence to be fooled.
You did state that you would rather have stations go silent than broadcast "propaganda".
This is truly amazing. You tried a sloppy, incredibly childish attempt to misquote something posted a single link away.
You got caught. The deception is obvious. So... why not just try it again! Repeat it! Maybe it will work on the second try!
Let's look at the whole paragraph you are misquoting, one more time. Notice that he is still cowardly refusing to respond to the whole thing.
It does not censor it. It insures that it's fair. if some radio or TV stations would rather be silent than fair, that is fine. It was part of the intent. No speech was silenced; everyone was perfectly able to communicate their ideas the way they always had, with newspapers and speech (and eventually the Internet, which was around for many years before the rule was repealed), and they did so.
Pretty dangerous when the government gags people who say something that the government does not think is "fair".
No, the only thing that is dangerous is if the government gags people from not broadcasting, and then the few people they let broadcast don't represent the people, and spew bias and propaganda instead.
By now he gets it, too. You can tell, because the deceptions AtariAmarok is engaging in are clearly deliberate. And what is most interesting is that, while he probably is too much of a coward to admit his mistake, still, having to be forced to be so dishonest, and do it so badly, will make it clear in his mind, even if only subconsciously, that his belief is a sham and a lie.
I oppose such censorship, and you repeatedly call for it.
No, you want broadcasters to be able to censor or treat unfairly whatever they want, and I am trying to go back to preventing it, which we did for generations.
The same is true if you have a newspaper.... You can "answer" in other media. You can "answer" directly to them. They may or may not read your letter over the air (just like a newspaper's letter page).
Not true at all. If the newspaper does something biased, you can answer in another newspaper. If TV or radio is biased, you can do nothing. If you believe a newpaper can correct what a radio or TV station does wrong, please say so, so we can have further evidence of how you think.
It is impossible to censor by expressing an opinion.
I have carefully explained how it is possible. It is obvious.
Almost no one can become a broadcaster. The few that do are thus given a duty ("to the public trust") to be fair - because if they don't represent all of us, they are effectively censoring those they bias against. Now that duty is gone. There is propaganda on TV. And you are happy.
So? Refer to the Constitution (a dirty word for you)
You are the one who believes the First Amendment trumps your protection against pornography being shown on TV to kids. Or maybe you don't and you admit you are a hypocrite?
Or, maybe you will continue cowering in fear against giving an answer and committing to either one, so we can continue to wonder which it is.
This tells us everything we need to know about your understanding of the law, constitutional or otherwise.
The groundswell of opposition to bring it back would be staggering
You hope.
You also imply that if there was an opposition it would justify broadcast propaganda. But the groundswell against abolishing slavery was staggering too. That took a civil war to sort out, but when you oppress people, as you love to do, by having propaganda on TV that doesn't represent them, it works out badly. The worse the oppression, the worse the result.
No, you have done nothing except present an opinion.
Another lie, from a shameless, prolific, abundantly proven liar.
Let's go through the AtariAmarok posting checklist:
Since you use the term "propaganda" for political opinion you do not like
Repetition of ridiculous lie that doubles for something resembling a "theme": check.
Hmm, let's repeat it again. Saying this lie does not make it true. Being challenged again and again to justify it, and chickening out every time and never providing even one link makes it painfully obvious.
It is not merely "documenting" conservative expression of information: it slams it all the time. They do not slam liberal expression of information. This slamming of one side and not the other is clear evidence of bias.
Repeating crazy, already discredited accusations without proof: check.
We have already established that you make up whatever you like about any individual or group, and can't back up what you say.
FAIR has credibility and you, having caught yourself in a series of embarrassing lies and missteps, do not.
I'd love to provide a link to a place in FAIR's site criticizing a Limbaugh of the left (such as Michael Moore), but such links do not exist.
Surprisingly ridiculous, obvious, and immediately provable lie: check.
It was already obvious you have never even looked at FAIR or know what they do. Of course, you deny it, continue to make baseless libels against them you refuse to back up (that not only myself, but others have chimed in to discredit), you refuse to provide any links, but now to my amazement you have stumbled even more gratuitously.
Here is the FAIR archive. They break down stories by topic, region, and media outlet. There are sections for CBS (Dan Rather!), ABC, NBC, PBS, NPR, the New York Times, you name it.
This is leaving aside that your argument is dishonest on its face. Your contempt for anyone reading you is obvious: unless you can point to something specific that's dishonest that FAIR didn't cover, you prove nothing.
If your attempt at deception hadn't been so smashingly sloppy, you might have said, FAIR spends more time covering conservatives, so they're biased. Still not true, just (very slightly) less obvious: Conservatives are have a bigger propaganda apparatus; they are therefore a bigger subject for any watchdog.
(Cue the "vast left-wing media conspiracy" cranks)
Will AtariAmarok apologize, or offer any explanation for this latest shockingly blatant lie? Or will he feel at this point, since this is far from his first such deception that this latest one won't really stand out?
We are amassing quite a good collection of quotes we can point to that will immediately tell anyone everything they need to know about AtariAmarok's character.
I criticize Rush quite happily, but I also criticize the left-wing blowhards. It is the bashing of just one side that shows that someone is on the other.
Vain attempt to disavow own biases: check.
No, the focus of your silly, childish and disgraced attempts here is clearly to decieve people about conservative propaganda and regulations surrounding it - this is fairly obvious, despite how badly you have failed at it.
The same is true of FAIR (substitute "activist group" for commentator, and "liberal" for "conservative.") As for links, I'm still waiting for the link to Karl Rove's racist marching orders you mentioned earlier
Another baseless libel against a media watchdog you will presumably claim you don't need to justify: check.
Another foolish attempt to misquote me: check.
This is a gross misquote. I have repeatedly supported allowing liberal expression of information. I have mentioned Al Franken as a main example. The fact is that I support freedom of expression for both political sides.
Hyporcritically accusing someone of doing what he has just done: check.
It is nothing of the kind. You claimed that "censorship" of television
If, by propaganda, you mean (as you always do) diverse and differing opinions, yes.
There you go again, like a sleazy lawyer, trying to weasel out of what propaganda means. What is the definition of "is", AtariAmarok?
Propaganda means propaganda. Bias. Unfair coverage of an issue. Everyone knows what that means.
You admitted elsewhere that you'd rather have music than have radio stations air political opinion that you do not like and is not fettered by government control.
This is a blatant lie. I have never said this. You will shortly admit to it, tacitly, by not being able to provide a link backing up what you say.
If anything is "propaganda", it is the content that stations are forced to air under the Fairness Doctrine because "the government says it is fair.".
No, this is pretty obvious. The rule requires you to be fair, not unfair.
What better way to do this than to have them serve the public by providing content the public wants (the current situation), as opposed to content the government wants ("fairness doctrine" government censorship and control)?
In other words, you like the corrupt system of letting the government censor people by deciding who can broadcast and who can't, and then allowing the few that can use this (the most powerful medium we have) to censor opinions they don't agree with.
Nothing is further from the truth. If you discuss something, that is your free speech. You are not "Censoring" by excercising that right.
On TV and Radio, you are not having a discussion. You are broadcasting. No one can answer you. If you don't treat an issue fairly, you are censoring those who you treat unfairly.
It's a simple concept. You've seen enough explanations of this by now to get it, and it is now quite obvious you are only pretending not to.
I'd rather have free political discussion rather than have it censored ("not at all") because some government inquisitor said it was not fair.
The government is appointed by the people.
If you commit a crime, the government judges you, but that is only the people judging you. For instance, this is why in criminal court we call the plaintiff, "the people."
The people understood the obvious reasons for needing broadcasters to be fair. No single person made that call; effectively, a group of people made up from across party lines would make it.
Any time you are allowed to broadcast and someone else isn't that's not "free." Any time you give a biased, unfair broadcast, you silenced your victims. Censored them.
So, you don't want the "Fairness Doctrine" to apply to them anymore?
Obviously, the Fairness Doctrine isn't censorship. It tries to ensure that everyone gets to speak.
Where has Fox News said or tried to keep CNN, CBS, or others from broadcasting/cabling what they want?
You appear to be making an elaborate show of misunderstanding.
There are not all that many channels. On broadcast TV, only the government can decide who speaks. On cable, the cable company decides, but only the government can say who gets to be the cable comapny - it's a "natural monopoly."
Every act of propaganda in the mass media is harmful as a result. Every time Fox News is biased and one-sided when covering an issue, they are preventing the other side from being heard. They are censoring them, in other words.
Since you have trouble with basic black vs. white concepts of truth and don't understand what makes a fact and why you should justify your opinions with citations or links, you will probably find this too subtle, but the other danger here is diversity, which the conservative-run FCC is also dropping the ball on, despite a huge public outcry.
If more and more channels can be controlled by a single individual or company, and the results of this unfair censorship become worse and worse. If there were no diversity requirements, one company could own all the television stations and radio stations in the country. Then, with no rule requiring them to be fair, the censorship becomes complete. This is similar to how countries like Russia or China operate.
You did not do this. Instead, you presented something from a partisan political pressure group.
See, AtariAmarok probably didn't even know what FAIR was before this conversation. He says he did, but he also has ammassed a list of obvious blatant lies, that anyone with a web browser can look at and see for themselves. So he could easily be making this up too.
The important thing for him is that, if it's documenting conservative propaganda, it has to be a liberal pressure group.
He does not provide proof, not only because this is a slander and there is no proof in the first place, but I wonder, maybe he just honestly believes that, by definition if you criticize a conservative broadcaster your are a liberal or a liberal group.
It's OK. We know the real score. He loves to make up stories, but show him anything concrete, even a single piece of work from FAIR, and he can't muster even a single specific complaint. Can't find one link, one item.
At this point, Atari, make something specific up about them. You've done so much obvious lying anyway you have nothing to lose.
Calling FAIR left-wing is no more libelious than calling Rush Limbaugh right-wing
Actually, no. Rush is widely known to be a conservative commentator. In fact, at this point, he has been the subject of much scrutiny and has been widely discredited and disgraced. I can provide links, of course.
You can't find anything FAIR has done that you can point to and say that's wrong. Looking back, you can't even successfully pretend you have done so.
ou repeatedly call for government control of political content of broadcasters and cable news.
You have advocated control as well. You just like your control to allow conservative propaganda, whereas I believe broadcasters should be fair, and not censor any viewpoint they don't agree with.
Propaganda on TV is for China, not the United States.
The Bill of Rights was written to protect the freedom of the newspapers/etc of the 1790s, which were at least as powerful then as what you call "mass media" of today.
Actually, no.
But one thing I do enjoy is getting people like you caught saying ridiculous things. Here we have another sample.
AtariAmarok believes that newspapers were as powerful as televison. He still claims not to understand the difference. Splended, now we can add this to the list of evidence about your credibility.
Why are you so afraid of political expression?
That's my question for you, actually. Why are you so afraid of fairness? What was wrong with the country when propaganda on TV was against the rules?
Bin Laden
That reminds me? How is Osama doing? Did you see him for the holidays?
You make up slanders about people, pretend to ignore it when you're caught. Even an example doesn't penetrate? Or you just don't like to taste your own medicine?
I guess we are once again faced with the classic question about you: subhuman intelligence? or serial liar?
Why are you so afraid of fairness? Why do you want broadcasters to be able to censor views they disagree with?
Using this bizarre pro-censorship logic, we should realize that since poor people can't afford to have a newspaper, we should censor the hell out of them too. Can't have them utter political opinions we do not like, can't we?
No, you would have a weak point but you even got that backwards.
Your criticism should have been: "poor people can't afford a newspaper, so are you saying we should require newspaper owners to be fair, too?"
This is nonsense too, but at least it would have been coherent nonsense. I am assuming you are actually not so unintelligent that you can't grasp this, and are just attempting to be deceptive, but I'll explain anyway just in case. The biggest difference with newspapers is that, unlike radio and television, there is no restriction on whether you can have one. No one to register with, no techincal problems with having a hundred, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand newspapers. It costs some money, but anyone can do it.
So, as you can see, your argument is nonsense, and once again we have demonstrated that you are either surprisingly unintelligent or being heartily deceptive.
Of course, you can't resist falling back and hammering on your big, dumb lie. "Can't have them" etc etc. But people know what fairness is. Fairness is the opposite of what you are accusing.
Name me one conservative-controlled channel from the time of the elimination of the Doctrine.
I'm so glad you asked.
Sinclair Broadcasting has famously been aggressive with broadcasts that are illegal not only under the retired Fairness Doctrine but probably under the still extant Equal Time and Public Trust legal concepts. These are major network affiliates operating in dozens of markets.
The explosive growth of right-wing talk radio is, of course, widely acknowledged to be a direct result of ending the rule. Rush Limbaugh himself campaigned to end Fairness.
Whether Air America is fair is something to be determined by Al Franken, Janine Gerafalo, and the listeners, It should not be up to the government.
Nonsense. The government already decides who can broadcast. That is already an act of censorship.
As part of the bargain when they pick somebody, they make them follow rules. The rules (until recently) used to say, and should say again, that whoever they pick have to treat controvertial ideas with fairness. In other words, they shouldn't be allowed censor ideas they don't like.
You, however, don't like this, and are happy this rule was removed.
You have so far reserved the term for conservative political opinion that you happen to not like.
I have not reserved the term for anything.
What's really set you off is that there is something like a standing order among conservatives that anyone who is honest about Fox News' propaganda must be immediately silenced or slandered.
If my example had avoided any conservative propagandists and chosen only liberal ones you would have probably applauded, but that, if nothing else, is opinion; at any rate, you don't seem man enough to admit it.
And the allies would not have overthrown them without anti-Nazi political expression ("propaganda").
I just realized something. Since you have no respect for the truth - indeed, you may not even properly understand the concept like most people do - you actually can't tell the difference between Nazi propaganda and Allied television and radio.
And that is one major, major warning sign about what is wrong with you, as if we needed another.
So that is the real reason you hate Fox News. They are Nazis???
Here is an example of how AtariAmarok thinks: I say "Goebbles is very quotable; Fox News talking heads love to reference him" and you accuse me of saying Fox News are Nazis.
Now you have lied about something literally on the same page as what you are writing. Not only that, it is less than an inch above it.
The rest is waiting for your sense of embarrassment to finally kick in.
By the way: http://mediamatters.org/items/200406140007
A Fox talking head referencing Goebbles.
That, and the rest of your statement about Fox News, is a very disputed opinion.
No, not really. There is widespread agreement about the bias. Major media watchdogs have documented it. I have cited them. You yourself cannot provide any citations to refute them.
(That's because the bias is so obvious, and the watchdog's work is sound, and you know you will look like a fool if you don't try to avoid it. Unfortunately, you are trapped - because you look like even more of a fool _by_ avoiding it.)
We and others could argue about it for a long time, but that would only prove my point.
No, actually, but judging from your performance so far you would probably continue to make a bigger and bigger fool of yourself until you found yourself demanding we accept the "fact" that you are not even writing, as you write it.
I don't want the government to censor anyone
Sure you do. The government decides who can broadcast and who can't, and you support letting broadcasters censor their political opponents.
The "fairness" is the government elite's definition of fairness, not the people's.
Who elects the government in this country, AtariAmarok?
Elites?
No, the people do.
Right now, they get to answer to the listeners about what is fair or not.
No, they used to answer to the listeners, when the listeners elected a government, and that government made them listen. Right now they answer to nobody, with regards to propaganda.
Without the Fairness Doctrine, they do not censor political opponents already
Fox broadcasts propaganda. That is an unfair representation of opposing views on controvertial issues. That is censorship in anybody's book.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a great day for Three Rings; they have my hearty congratulations for surviving and then succeeding in the face of the withering trials of a small independent game developer.
Without a giant corporate bankroll and without any notice from the retail distribution "trust," they succeeded in launching really distinct and fun proprietary content, creating a thriving community, and finally just being so plain good that the majors were forced to notice.
I wish them all the success in the world, not only because they've clearly earned it, but because their story is a potential wind shift for smaller independent developers everywhere. Maybe the publishing system is finally seeing the costs of its hubris about budgets, "3dism," genre-lock and dealing with little guys, and realizing the value in doing smaller more unconventional deals.
There is an enormous untapped talent pool out there on the internet; Three Rings is one of many little guys who are doing great things way outside the norms of video game "Hollywood." Recognizing them, and fitting them into the distribution system in some meaningful way, would be a good thing for the industry, a great thing for gamers.
You just did. Several times in your last post.
I was hoping you would back off
What... you really believed you could fool anyone?
For much of the post, you winged from this false claim, which I never made
Here you are, winging away on your imagination...
and feel no need to bother making
This is especially ironic, because you fell back on your vast left-wing conspiracy at every turn... maybe you should have tried to justify it a bit more rather than just chickening out and abandoning it now.
I spit in the face of the idea of a "VLWC".
But look at your track record, Atari. You will be begging it forgiveness and back together with it again in a matter of minutes.
So here we have it: on one side, conservatism. On the other side: Truth!
Are you suffering from a kind of political paranoia?
Did I say there was conservatism on one side and truth on the other? Anywhere, at any time? Even in jest?
No.
What I did say was that, despite your vast left-wing conspiracy theory, the reason the news stations were not the conservatives' friend was because it was not their job to be the conservatives' friends. It was their job to tell the truth. It was their job to be nobody's friend - to be impartial and fair.
It was the conservative's sick dream to dispose of inconvenient truth tellers by slandering them and ending the rules.
What does this mean? That there is common ground between us after all?
I find plenty of truth in both the liberal and conservative sides. I also find plenty of bias, "propagandizing", discreditable assertions, and valid points in both sides.
A fallacy of comparison. There is plenty of truth in both sides. But there really is no basis to say the liberal and conservative camps are equally guilty in modern propaganda. And in fact we have heard every possible variation: that liberals are a vast conspiracy to be valiantly resisted by struggling conservative outsiders, that they are a perpetual equal who balances out any conservative transgression, and of course that they have been vanquished, and are now a powerless loser... whenever each one was convenient.
You have some hard admissions to make. You don't have to make them to me. I don't need to hear you own up to what you've done here, not only because what's happened in this "profusion of posts" (which you engineered by taking over a dozen other conversations) is so obviously and embarrassingly clear, but because in an important way you are already admitting it to yourself. You know what's happening here, every time you knowingly refuse to give evidence, or rewrite a quote, or repeat an absurd debater's trick, or repeat a disproved idea instead of responding to new ones.
You must think at first you just need to "win" and this is I guess how you think that's done, but every time you have to stretch it a little more, reach a little farther, all it really does is sink in a little more...
Now once again, let's compare the two sentences:
How are these two sentences different? How are they the same?
I'm saying conservatives are the only ones who have a real proapganda machine. You're trying to paint me as accusing them of only having propaganda.
It does not get more obvious. You are distorting the words just a centimeter away on the same screen.
The only question is why you are willing to embarrass yourself this way. But I am glad you are. Because, whether you want to or not, your energy is forcing you to learn something.
who have no real difference what so ever except in the "side" they advocate.
The difference is clear.
I remember the years when the the only cable news network was CNN, run by a significant rich left-wing activist named Ted Turner.
... only there was no there there, and we all know it.
Here we go again. The vast left-wing media conspiracy. It only flies if you can give any evidence of CNN bias, but really, they were not then and are not now 1/100 as partisan as Murdoch's "Fox News" and you know it.
One minute you agonize over the Fairness Doctrine, and the next minute you pretend it didn't have any effects. You say "you've been there"
You will say everybody from Michael Moore to Mickey Mouse is part of a giant, scary conspiracy to crush conservatism in America. The truth is that you have never seen real liberal propaganda, and I hope you never do.
NBC, ABC, CBS were then (as now) not the conservative's friend.
Well said. They are not they conservative's friend. They were more the truth's friend.
It really is repeating that "vast left-wing conspiracy" theory to say all that (from the sound of it, practically all) media was biased against conservatives. We know how conservatives argue; Fox News is "(cough) fair and (cough) balanced" anything that is not conservative propaganda is part of the vast left wing conspiracy... Disney, Sesame Street, Sponge Bob, FAIR, anything.
The fact is the news always followed the rules you don't want to follow. When they got into a controvertial issue they were fair to their opponents.
The fact is if you are wrong, and your ideas are bogus, and the only way you can sell them with lies, your complaints and excuses will sound just like a conservative's. Man, that fairness system was really unfair. I'm so glad there are no rules now. Sure, hey, let the people who told the truth before start lying too. It's fun.
Instead of the 4 to 1 there is now?
Here we go again. The martians are in it with the liberals and the arabs! Every media watchdog is a
"liberal pressure group!" It's a vast left-wing conspiracy I tell you!
Meanwhile conservatives are the only ones with real propaganda, and they call it (haha) "balanced."
It was ridiculous the first time you tried this VLWC hokum and it's ridiculous now. You always refused to name any specifics or back it up with anything. When presented with evidence going the other way you could't find a specific thing wrong with it. All that's happened since then is you've made a lot of embarrassingly big mistakes trying to deceive us and your credibility has gone from zero to deep in the negative territory.
Even if your plan is just to spread propaganda about the media, you could have done all this so much better.
Thanks for mentioning Art Bell in an appropriate context.
You spent so many posts embarrassing yourself trying to claim I was biased, using obviously dishonest tricks and always refusing to give anything real to back it up. I wasn't expecting an apology, yet strangely, this almost feels like one.
Here's a dictionary link that actually contains a definition of the word "propaganda"
There is a process of trying to make something that is bad sound less bad by carefully chosing words that, which technically accurate (even a dictionary definition) are really intended to minimize and conceal something's true nature, and make it more palatable to people. Advertising executives do it. Foreign dictators do it. Lawyers do it. Now you are doing it. Saying that you gave the dictionary definition isn't exactly denying it, either.
This is exactly what political parties, editorialists, and activists do.
And that is what I think you are doing. Political editorializing. Being an activist. Not being truthful or fair or arguing honestly.
I think you are able to get the concept here, too. If I went on TV, and accused you of horrible things that would make everyone hate you, lying blatantly about your ideas and words, and all you had to answer with was the internet, or hell, even if you owned a newspaper, you would be angry - you would know you had a response, that you couldn't give it anywhere near the same power that my original slander had. You can't even buy a television network, and even if you were allowed to try (which you would never be) it takes years and millions (or billions) to do so.
When I speak millions hear me. You have no such power or even close. I will never admit you have been silenced... but I know the real score, which is that you never had a chance.
You might say the power that the FCC has to say who can and can't broadcast is arbitrary and wrong; maybe so, but there is no substitute, no other way of doing it short of declaring TV illegal or having broadcast anarchy, which amounts to the same thing (nobody gets TV). That's leaving aside the cost of entry issue. We're not going to outlaw all TV, that's a given...
I will put out a hypothesis. You have been an activist against Fairness just because you are happy with the state of the media market right now. Oh, you've heard the rhetoric that the propagandists give - they falsly drape themselves in the constitution to justify their acts - and maybe you even believed it at first. It sounded right. But by now you are starting to realize the truth. As we have demonstrated time, after time, after time, after time, it doesn't make any sense. It's just dishonest rhetoric. There is no real principle there. They don't even stop to dry their tears from crying about the constitution before they turn around to suppress demonstrations ("freedom of assembly"), or crusade against "immorality" - on the internet, in video games, even in art museums. They just want what they want and like good activists they will say whatever they think people will believe to get it.
OK, fine. You know the score. But maybe you enjoy the dominance of conservative media in our country, or maybe you don't really care. You don't really understand how much worse it can get. But what if that were to change? What if, in a few years... I know, you can't imagine it, but just pretend. Maybe the Chinese crash the dollar, the bond market goes south. We have a fiscal crisis. There is capital flight and we go into a major economic correction. No one will call it a "depression," but with rampant inflation, double-digit joblessness, and the whole works, everyone will know it when they see it. The conservatives tell everyone to suck it up, slash all social programs to try to save the government, and refuse to do any wealth redistribution, sticking to a really regressive tax policy. Everyone turns on them. Their fall is even more violent and decisive as their rise, as people will be outraged. The more they loved them, the more they'll hate them. Just in terms of the economics, I didn't make this up, by the way; you can read this theory as a worst case scenario in reputable financial news outlets today, and they are talking about the next 5-10 years.
Now suddenly there is a backlash. The elections are a bloodbath for the conser
Well, and graciously, said. I would say, "mod parent up" but it already is up. :)
Not true, since it has the government censor something that is "not fair".
I've now pointed out that no censorship is involved.
Oh yes it can. It can let people express political views without censoring them for not being "fair".
As I said, they are not censored, whether they are fair or not. And you can be as unfair as you want, as long as you give others a chance to say their side.
Hmmm? I agree that this is censorship.
This is encouraging. Now you just have to think it through the rest of the way.
Actually, my favorite source of unfettered political expression is public radio. I rarely get news from broadcast TV, and I do not find it terribly relevant to the argument personally as I do not recall much content change in the "10:00 News" pre and post fairness doctrine.
I was referring to your advocacy for legal propaganda; I can't guess what your personal listening habits are, but I admit I'm surprised to hear public radio.
False. In every message, you call for censorship of "unfair" media.
No, nothing of the kind. I have been very thorough in explaining that I have never called for censorship, and in fact failing to be fair has the effect of censoring people.
You are in agreement with none of them. They have all had hands-off when it comes to content of cable TV and satellite radio.
My already-provided link demonstrates bipartisan supreme court support for the doctrine. This is not the same as saying every justice or every politican agrees with me - only that a great many justices and politicians of all stripes have supported it.
Call yourself "progressive" or whatever.
I don't. I don't think I qualify, frankly. It's hard to tell.
Regardless, you are clearly in the left-wing when you think that a left-wing pressure group like FAIR is in the "center".
Seriously, you just blew an awful lot of smoke about this and never once backed it up. If you had anything real to hold up against them you would have done it by now.
You could go find something at this point but it will be clear you are doing your research after the fact. Not that I wouldn't take anything you found about them seriously.
By the way, though, even if you demolished FAIR (which you can't, let's be honest), they are far from the only watchdog.
Your groundless insistence on smearing FAIR, and refusing to give any checkable specifics or evidence as you do it, are a big part of why I've assumed you're a conservative - in fact, a hardcore one, since what you've done so far really is, I hope you can admit, over the top.
This might be true of some, but for you it is inherently liberal (anti-conservative) as your main "poster boy" for it is Fox News, which you want to stop being so conservative.
Not really. I picked examples of prominent propagandists who happened to be conservative. This is not hard to do, because they really are in control of the state of that art right now. But imagine, it's pretty backwards to say I am advocating an non-partisan idea in an "inherently liberal" way. All propaganda is dangerous to democracy, broadcast it is deadly dangerous, and it is not my fault if liberals don't give me enough good examples to match with the conservative ones.
Conservatives have a "vast left wing conspiracy" theory about the media but they don't usually give specifics, because there aren't really that many questionable things compared to the Murdoch companies, Sinclair, the radio networks, etc.
You bet it frightens me when the means to "fairness" is censorship of political content.
I hope your mind is now more at ease.
The trick is [lying].
Accurate, huh.
- The government already regulates them.
- The government never regulated the political content of Fox News.
This is like an elementary school exercise. How are these sentences different? How are they the same?The government never regulated fairness on Fox News. They do regulate the content of Fox News.
The "Fairness Doctrine" did not apply to them.
This seems like another neat segue into something unrelated to the point. Come on, just think about the point honestly for a second. What's the harm in seriously considering it? You don't have to change your view - just think for a minute. All I'm saying is that the government already regulates Fox News. How does it make sense to say "free speech" is your paramount concern, even in though it's already less important than all of these other things? We keep coming back to that and you never answer it. You already regulate speech to see what's obscene, what's deceptive, what's threatening... It doesn't make any sense to turn around and say "free speech" is paramount when you've just made all these important exceptions to it already. This is not for nothing - it just happens that there are some important things that come into play and the First Amendment never meant you can say whatever you want "no matter what" - even on a street corner, let alone for the special case of the broadcaster. And this is one of the most important issues of all. If a TV broadcaster can be unfair, and keep your viewpoint off the air ("censoring" it, in effect, giving an unfair impression to eyes of hundreds of millions of viewers), the only way to protect "free speech" is actually to have a Fairness Doctrine.
If we bring it back, it would not apply to them unless it was significantly altered.
You're talking about the fact that FNN is on cable. I don't know if I would say "significantly" altered; almost the entire rule would be the same. Only one detail about new technology changes.
The alteration of the "Fairness Doctrine" to censor such non-broadcast content would open up another big can of worms that I find also objectionable.
Also? I thought you found it objectionable period. I appreciate that you're thinking past those objections a bit.
I really think you've just misunderstood how cable works. It's new technology that lets us have more channels, but the issues are really the same. I agree that with more channels you can have more diversity and it starts to be less pressing. I think as technology improves the Internet and cable will become indistinguishable and then we will agree there is no role for the Fairness Doctrine there.
But the problem is that day is still many years away. It's clear that it's much easier to have a newspaper or a website than a cable channel, and also that a cable channel reaches many more people. You still have to be selected by a group of people and there can still be a relatively small number (under a thousand?), and it is much more expensive to run a TV channel than, say, create a newspaper - which you can do with a few hundred dollar PC and a cheap printer, paper and ink, or a xerox machine...
Howard Stern has fled to satellite (non-broadcast) radio so he could say dirty words and interview porn stars with much more freedom. If we expand the "Fairness Doctrine" to censor satellite (cable) as well as broadcast, I think Howard's going to be in trouble again. Maybe that is fine with you. It is not for me.
You're right in that I don't think you would have a good argument to require fairness on cable without also requiring it on satellite.
But I think the reason it's not fine for you is that your perspective on the issues are shaped by some mistakes. Until you can have your own satelite radio show, in fact as long as hardly anyone can, then those few who can hold a major responsibility, and we are not like a laissez faire 3rd world nation; we believe in democracy and fariness, rather than letting some rich, privileged person run everything in this very pubilc, shared place to their whims.
I agree for once. Just as it is censorship for the government to control the content in any way.
Hahaha. You agree that television and radio inherently involve censorship, so therefore you believe there should be no rules over the content in any way. Except that you do believe there should be rules.
Stand, and salute the logic.
Because it's problematic, we must then allow anarchy and take no responsibility for it!
How would you handle the discovery of fire, had you been there to witness it? "This flame could burn people! Therefore we must immediately light fires and then leap over them naked!"
(Oh, my crystal ball tells me AtariAmarok will attempt to dodge this point by calling this analogy "babble.")
My concern was about government censorship of the papers, not arbitrary application of what someone thinks is "fair".
No. Let's go back and look at what you said, because it really is funny even after repeated readings. You must have been tired when you stumbled out with: "Using this bizarre pro-censorship logic, we should realize that since poor people can't afford to have a newspaper, we should censor the hell out of them too."
It sounds like you're advocating censoring poor people because they can't have a newspaper. I pointed out that the false argument you probably wanted to make was: "poor people can't afford a newspaper, so are you saying we should require newspaper owners to be fair, too?"
This would make sense but it does not.
Ahhh. Right. I'm worried you're really starting to lose it, saying things like this.
As a result, the number of real viable newspapers in a typical media market is much lower than the number of radio stations, and close to the same number of TV stations
And this is because it would make sense, but it does not.
By the way, the issue is not what the typical number of anything is, but whether or not it is technically or legally possible to do something.
Nice try though. Kind of.
It works out that people find it easier to start a radio station than a newspaper.
In your imagination.
You don't have to get anyone's permission to have print newspaper. Somehow in your world of lies, this makes it "harder."
I am not seeing any of your imaginary media market with 3 tv stations and thousands of newspapers.
That I never imagined or said anything about, nor does it have anything to do with the point.
Newspapers tend to be fewer in number than radio stations. Why do you not demand for them the same censorship to enforce "fairness" that you demand for radio?
You don't have to get anyone's permission to have print newspaper. There is no limited number of "newsprint frequencies" and no regulatory agency who decides who gets to have the few dozen channels a given area can support. The cost of creating, writing, and publishing one is far less than the costs to do radio.
That whooshing sound is these basic, glaring facts going in one of your ears and out the other.
Indeed they do, and they have many different ideas about it.
Not really. You want to claim that no one can agree on what fairness is - destroy the very concept of fairness, even - weasel around with what to call propaganda... all so that you can make the world safe for propaganda on TV.
It's really not so hard to agree on what's unfair. We solve harder problems in our government, in courts for instance, every minute of the day.
People have many different ideas about what constitutes pornography, too, AtariAmarok. What would you censor, and what wouldn't you?
Just as many of those who want to bring it back admit that their main reason is to silence Limbaugh.
You are changing the subject from the difficult to dispute dominance of right-wing talk radio over left-wing talk radio - a deception about which you tried to slip in but apparently know better to disavow than defend.
You don't have to single anyone out to know broadcast propaganda is horrible. Though you went to great pains to repeat baseless lies about it many times, I advocate fairness for everybody, and not to silence any particular person or view - and there is nothing in the slightest bit partisan about the Fairness Doctrine. By definition it applies to everyone equally.
It has been fun to watch you try to lie about that, though. It shows that you do know Conservatives are the ones who have more to lose from being fair.
There is also an explosive growth of left-wing (or at least non-conservative) radio at the same time.
I will be just as happy to see left-wing propaganda be curtailed by fairness as anything else.
How did this happen when the Doctrine was in place? Do you have any specific examples?
Absolutely.
This is a famous case: Red Lion Broadcasting Co. employed a Christian Conservative and instructed him to go on the air and act as an apologist for the notorious Republican racist, Barry Goldwater. In doing so, he slandered the author of a book about Goldwater, Fred J. Cook.
Contrary to your breathless and completely absurd lies, the rules never called for this to be censored at all, at any time. They merely required Red Lion to send Cook a transcript and offer him time to appear so that he could defend himself in the same forum in which he was attacked.
Poor Red Lion claimed this was too much of a burden, so the FCC cited them. I believe the penalty is a fine; not 100% sure. They ended up in court, and the case went all the way. The Supreme Court ruled against them (incidentally, they explicitly declared the Fairness Doctrine was constitutional).
You have a gross misunderstanding of the cable franchising system. The "government monopoly" applies to the local wire-runner only. It does not apply to someone who decides to uplink a new cable station to the network.
No, my understanding is just fine. You're the one who doesn't get it.
The cable company decides who to "uplink" and who not to. They can choose to take any channel they like, or not.
So, for broadcast TV, the government decides directly who the lucky few dozen who get to broadcast are, and will jail anyone else who tries. For cable, they pick a company that does this for them, and will jail anyone else who tries to compete with them.
Every act is an expression of free speech, not "harmful".
In a newspaper. Not on TV, where bias can't be answered properly unless the TV itself does so.
Howard Stern is the King of All Censors.
So this is what it is like when you try to read and understand things. I am starting to understand how you have so many grossly bad ideas - you can't seem to understand what you read.
There is no problem here at all.
The protests against the FCC's latest attempt to relax diversity rules were the largest in the agency's history. "No, no problem at all."
They did not dislike him out of diversity
You truly are babbling at this point.
You don't "dislike him out of diversity." The issue is preventing a few (five, four, or even one) powerful or rich person from controlling the media.
This "censorship" could occur if this was anywhere near happening.
Consolidation is happening.
Conservative bureaucrats wanted to relax the rules even more, and like I said, they got the largest outcry in history over an FCC decision...
Not at all. The only unfairness involved is in preventing the other 9 to speak.
You reasoning is so tortured at this point it's hilarious. An analogy to what you're saying would be, "the solution to poverty is for everyone to become rich."
You never had a choice. There are only so many channels to go around.
The content of the one speaker's speech has nothing to do with it.
Thus, we have established why this is wrong.
The solution is to get the other ones a soap box, not to gag the one speaker (or, as you want, have the government write his speech).
We see the AtariAmarok dream: a television station for every man, woman and child in America.
Truly, sir, you are a genius!
It is getting better: now that the Fairness Doctrine is gone, the number of national TV news outlets has more than doubled, and there are a lot more radio soapboxes available.
It is irrelevant how many news outlets there are or were, and yet even then I wonder, though it's only a diversion to talk about it, if you're making even this up.
This is a very incoherent response to when I pointed out the fact that it is a lot easier to "talk back" now to TV and radio.
No, what you're saying really is incoherent, and you know it. It's obvious from how disconnected and bizarre your statements become as you attempt to persuade people that propaganda on TV can be balanced out by having other, different propaganda, or perhaps by calling into a talk show.
Frankly this is so ridiculous it is difficult to tell if you are joking, except your track record of lies and absurdity gives us a terrible clue.
Using the dictionary definition of propaganda (information reflecting the views and interests of advocates), I not only imply this. I come right out and say it is great.
And there we have it again, in black and white, not that he won't deny he said it in his next post if he finds it convenient.
Pleased with weasel words for propaganda, and please with propaganda itself - especially where there is no proper answer for it at all.
Actually, I recognize that "liberal" or "conservative" are not recognized by the Constitution, and there is nothing for and everything against the idea of censoring something because it is too liberal or too conservative.
Now you are dancing rather awkwardly, because you know you've given yourself away - now you've even let on you know the imbalance is bad (by forcibly pretending there is no imbalance). Of course, you still hammer on your painfully constructed smear of fairness.
I was pointing out the fact of the recent growth of diverse shows showing many sides to show that even by your standards of fairness, the media are more fair and diverse now. However, something that is artificially conceived as an "imbalance" is Constitutionally irrelevant.
No, you were (again, without any credibility) trying to pretend that there is some balance between different sides in volume of propaganda since the rule ended.
n fact, the perception of "balance" is entirely subjective
There are many concepts that you would claim are "subjective:" things like justice, freedom, terrorism, and apparently propaganda. Yet we interpret them every day. This is because we are adults, and instead of acting like stoned freshmen in a philosophy class we use our common sense. It does not take a major undertaking to identify unbalanced and unfair mass media; in fact, even when you do your absolute shrillest screaming trying to make it harder, all you really do is shine a very bright light on all the serious roles dishonesty and irrationality plays in your way of thinking, only making it more obvious what you are theoretically "defending" is worthy of scrutiny.
First, there is your arbitrary and repeated mention of "both sides". There are many more sides than just two.
Wow, I was hoping you would give me a really go
Return now to your worst enemy: the dictionary. Home of what you call "made up words". Look up "censor":
Actually, no - you misquote again. Chalk up another blatant lie. Now, what did I actually say?
"Except that there is no oops. You are making up words so badly that you would have to have subhuman intelligence to be fooled."
Hmm. I keep looking for places I say the dictionary is full of made up words but I can't find any. Neither can you. And that is because it's not actually true, and you are an outrageous liar. And here is another demonstration that your desire to make slanders based on lies is really boundless and you are fearless in doing it, even when you know you will immediately get caught.
Your censorship criterion of "fairness" fits in between the word "erroneous" (according to someone's opinion) and "objectionable" (according to someone's ability to be outraged by differing views and opinions, as you are by Fox News).
Actually, no - it doesn't fit there, you are inserting it there.
It is technically impossible to "censor" anything merely by saying something that is objectionable (or "unfair" if you want).
Ahh... maybe this sentence made sense when you were thinking it, but...
The objectionable (unfair) speaker can only be a victim of censorship, not a perpetrator.
Sure he can, and I have explained how.
The term "censor" instead applies to the authority (in the definition) who purges the publication (broadcast) of the "objectionable" material.
A newspaper editor publishes whatever he wants, because he has no responsibility to anyone. No one had to give up their right to speak so he could have his voice. A broadcaster is quite the opposite.
But you obviously knew that, because you go so far, far out of your way to avoid the concept.
The censorship does not happen when someone broadcasts something objectionable (unfair). It happens when the authority removes the objectionable content from the broadcast.
And here is where your mistake reaches its apex. It must be so hard, almost physically difficult to keep yourself from getting it.
Under the Fairness Doctrine, no authority ever removes anything. They only require that if you give on view on a controvertial issue, you also give others a chance to speak. So that you are fair to all the people who can't "speak" on TV or radio.
You have decided to believe something that isn't true. You may be desperate to hang on to it anyway, but as you can see, every step you take down this road is harder and harder. Each one leaves you having to back up and claim more and more absurd things. Soon you are stuck insisting that black is white. It didn't take you long to end up having to lie about words printed on the page, and look where you are now. Floundering around this very simple concept like a drunkard with a greased bottle.
Go to www.dictionary.com.
I love it! You stand behind the weasel words! Well done, just like a good trial lawyer.
"I looked it up in this book, that makes weaseling away from the definition of propaganda OK!"
The misquote involved censoring stations into going to music.
Hah! And you even got this wrong.
Let's read it again, for reference:
"It does not censor it. It insures that it's fair. if some radio or TV stations would rather be silent than fair, that is fine. It was part of the intent. No speech was silenced; everyone was perfectly able to communicate their ideas the way they always had, with newspapers and speech (and eventually the Internet, which was around for many years before the rule was repealed), and they did so."
Look up the definition of censorship. If the government authority is silencing something that it does not consider to be fair, that fits the definition.
Actually, it's basically the opposite of what you're saying. The definition (which you don't provide, probably because you know it doesn't back you up) deals with deleting.
You censor the second you choose one person to be a broadcaster and not another. From that point on, the people who get to broadcast have a duty to the rest; "to serve the public trust" as we say in this country. To broadcast things for all of us, in other words. If they act unfairly, they are in effect censoring those they are unfair to... by leaving out their entire point of view.
No, Limbaugh is a widely discredited, disgraced propagandist. FAIR is a non-partisan media watchdog. And you know it, because once again, you refuse to use any but dishonest means to smear them.
Look in this archive, as I did even before you gave this link.
So you claimed "such links do not exist," but now you say actually knew they were there all along.
This is what I'm saying, AtariAmarok. If you want to libel someone, you have to try to keep yourself from looking like a lunatic that will make up a stunningly obvious lie just to keep from admitting they are wrong.
The fact is that you start out from a ridiculous position: that to "prove itself" FAIR must criticize both sides equally. Which would be fine in the extraordinary event that both sides were equal. However, back in the real world, conservatives have a much bigger, more sophisticated propaganda machine than anyone else, and in order to actually have a point, you have to actually catch FAIR doing something wrong.
I know that you are deeply in love with the notion that you can simply say something and it becomes a fact, but the truth is if you could actually provide a link to:
I would be deeply shaken and would seriously, honestly question my beliefs.
This is how we are different, AtariAmarok; I take my cues from the truth. To you "truth" and "facts" are a funny game you play, trying to score points for your team.
On the other hand, if you actually were capable of this, you would have done it already, instead of floundering and making a childish spectacle of yourself to the astonishing degree we've seen here. It's hard to see how you would save any actual evidence to back up your crazy claims until after you'd so copiously wet yourself in public.
Notice what is never a possibility here? That it is really that much easier to catch Libmaugh and O'Reilly lying than it is to catch Al Franken lying. And why is that never a possibility? I wonder if it's just because it would cause AtariAmarok's brain to short out.
What you are desperately dancing around is that, although you lied and tried to deny it, FAIR covers liberals critically as well as conservatives; it covered not only Dan Rather's career-ending outrage, but also dozens of other questionable actions by him, and many others you would doubtless consider "liberal."
Now, as for Al Franken, imagine this scenario: Limbaugh (for instance) is a propagandist, and Franken is a comedian who makes part of his living (clevlerly) exposing him, and (sensibly) opposing his obviously deceptive political demogoguery. Quick, deny it, call it "opinion," then try to feed it into the rattling machine you call "argument" as proof of anything.
One thing that must considerably annoy you is that you cannot be a lazy slanderer. If you decide you must tarnish someone's reputation, there is the tiresome process of finding things to support your assertion, to placate those of us who are not outrageously dumb, and would otherwise take you at your word.
The systematic use of silly insults for media figures of only one side is strong evidence of FAIR bias.
Links please. Let's see some examples of what you're talking about.
I didn't see evidence of anything outside the normal standards of journalism. When you cover someone who is an audacious serial propagandist, and you have literally amassed an enormous dossier on their deceptions, their treatment of their subjects seems extremely restrained.
Let's see, is it your position that a media watchdog must cover minor transgressions with the same tone that they cover major ones?
I forgot. It seems like you believe a media watchdog has to find things wrong with eve
It is impossible to censor by saying what you want.
:D
Say there are only ten people in the world, and only one person is allowed to speak.
If that person doesn't speak for the others, he is being unfair to them. You want to pretend that sort of thing is great - "the speaker is lucky, he should say whatever he wants and no one should question his power!" I call it censorship, especially because you do support the rules that says only one of them can speak in the first place!
I wonder, confronted with this yet again, what will you do? Will you pretend you haven't read this and (cowardly) ignore it, will you misquote it and pretend it means something else? Will you stoop to some absurd level of pretend-insanity to feign that it somehow isn't easy to understand? Show us again how low you can stoop to defend the theft of your own voice.
It is very obvious that there is a lot more "talking back" to TV and radio being aired now than under the fairness doctrine.
Dance dance dance.
Look, AtariAmarok is implying that propaganda on TV is OK, because we can "talk back." Is this a joke? Perhaps we talk back by shouting at the television, or maybe liberals can call into Rush Limbaugh's show and that constitutes fairness somehow?
The conservatives are ahead of everyone else in radio and TV propaganda. Whether they are or not, the important thing is that you seem to imagine if liberals played just as dirty and the mass media were somehow "evenly split" it would be OK...
This shows that you know an imbalance is unfair (and bad). Honestly, otherwise why would you try to deceive and pretend that it does?
You don't want any rules to put that balance in place. You want to have no rules and, "oops" oh well, what a surprise, it didn't come out even. It seems conservatives (or whoever) have a big lead in propaganda. Hey, they can even use their propaganda (or gullible little footsoldiers like you) to tell everyone that the media is fair, or even that there's a vast left-wing conspiracy to bias the media against them. Oh wait... look, they already did.
And this balance you want to pretend is there but sleazily refuse to put rules in place to protect? Even that stinks. Two sides spewing opposing propaganda versus everyone just being fair. It's just a watered down, broken version of what I'm saying.
There is also public access cable also lets anyone "talk back".
So your plan is... address the unfairness, bias and propaganda on TV and radio by allowing people to respond on... public access cable! To pick just a few more lucky winners, and give them a tiny... regional audience... that had to pay to receive it...
Hahaha. Wow, that's the first time you actually made me laugh.
Are you asserting that under the "fairness doctrine", the show "60 Minutes" was really "120 Minutes"
No.
Now you are... what, trying to suggest that to be fair to the public you have to be longwinded? Or have a pundit or propagandist participate? You're on a roll today.
Yes. Substitute the actual meaning
Welcome everyone, to the thread. Meet the sleazy lawyer AtariAmarok. He defends propaganda because his hobby is weaseling words into new meanings. He makes Bill Clinton look like George Washington.
It's not propaganda! It's "material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine"!
Amazing!
And if he holds up a bank, it's not armed robbery, it's "unplanned transfer of assets from one party to another"!
Your opinion about the war is one shared by half, disputed by half. This is exactly the sort of thing that should be left to free and open debate.
And without fairness, that debate is not happening properly. The issue will never be treated fairly in the mass media, any more than your home will stay safe if you leave the doors open.
You ar
The actual dictionary reference is in another recent message. You shot your mouth off before reading....oops.
Except that there is no oops. You are making up words so badly that you would have to have subhuman intelligence to be fooled.
You did state that you would rather have stations go silent than broadcast "propaganda".
This is truly amazing. You tried a sloppy, incredibly childish attempt to misquote something posted a single link away.
You got caught. The deception is obvious. So... why not just try it again! Repeat it! Maybe it will work on the second try!
Let's look at the whole paragraph you are misquoting, one more time. Notice that he is still cowardly refusing to respond to the whole thing.
It does not censor it. It insures that it's fair. if some radio or TV stations would rather be silent than fair, that is fine. It was part of the intent. No speech was silenced; everyone was perfectly able to communicate their ideas the way they always had, with newspapers and speech (and eventually the Internet, which was around for many years before the rule was repealed), and they did so.
Pretty dangerous when the government gags people who say something that the government does not think is "fair".
No, the only thing that is dangerous is if the government gags people from not broadcasting, and then the few people they let broadcast don't represent the people, and spew bias and propaganda instead.
By now he gets it, too. You can tell, because the deceptions AtariAmarok is engaging in are clearly deliberate. And what is most interesting is that, while he probably is too much of a coward to admit his mistake, still, having to be forced to be so dishonest, and do it so badly, will make it clear in his mind, even if only subconsciously, that his belief is a sham and a lie.
I oppose such censorship, and you repeatedly call for it.
... You can "answer" in other media. You can "answer" directly to them. They may or may not read your letter over the air (just like a newspaper's letter page).
No, you want broadcasters to be able to censor or treat unfairly whatever they want, and I am trying to go back to preventing it, which we did for generations.
The same is true if you have a newspaper.
Not true at all. If the newspaper does something biased, you can answer in another newspaper. If TV or radio is biased, you can do nothing. If you believe a newpaper can correct what a radio or TV station does wrong, please say so, so we can have further evidence of how you think.
It is impossible to censor by expressing an opinion.
I have carefully explained how it is possible. It is obvious.
Almost no one can become a broadcaster. The few that do are thus given a duty ("to the public trust") to be fair - because if they don't represent all of us, they are effectively censoring those they bias against. Now that duty is gone. There is propaganda on TV. And you are happy.
So? Refer to the Constitution (a dirty word for you)
You are the one who believes the First Amendment trumps your protection against pornography being shown on TV to kids. Or maybe you don't and you admit you are a hypocrite?
Or, maybe you will continue cowering in fear against giving an answer and committing to either one, so we can continue to wonder which it is.
This tells us everything we need to know about your understanding of the law, constitutional or otherwise.
The groundswell of opposition to bring it back would be staggering
You hope.
You also imply that if there was an opposition it would justify broadcast propaganda. But the groundswell against abolishing slavery was staggering too. That took a civil war to sort out, but when you oppress people, as you love to do, by having propaganda on TV that doesn't represent them, it works out badly. The worse the oppression, the worse the result.
No, you have done nothing except present an opinion.
Another lie, from a shameless, prolific, abundantly proven liar.
Let's go through the AtariAmarok posting checklist:
Since you use the term "propaganda" for political opinion you do not like
Repetition of ridiculous lie that doubles for something resembling a "theme": check.
Hmm, let's repeat it again. Saying this lie does not make it true. Being challenged again and again to justify it, and chickening out every time and never providing even one link makes it painfully obvious.
It is not merely "documenting" conservative expression of information: it slams it all the time. They do not slam liberal expression of information. This slamming of one side and not the other is clear evidence of bias.
Repeating crazy, already discredited accusations without proof: check.
We have already established that you make up whatever you like about any individual or group, and can't back up what you say.
FAIR has credibility and you, having caught yourself in a series of embarrassing lies and missteps, do not.
I'd love to provide a link to a place in FAIR's site criticizing a Limbaugh of the left (such as Michael Moore), but such links do not exist.
Surprisingly ridiculous, obvious, and immediately provable lie: check.
It was already obvious you have never even looked at FAIR or know what they do. Of course, you deny it, continue to make baseless libels against them you refuse to back up (that not only myself, but others have chimed in to discredit), you refuse to provide any links, but now to my amazement you have stumbled even more gratuitously.
Here is the FAIR archive. They break down stories by topic, region, and media outlet. There are sections for CBS (Dan Rather!), ABC, NBC, PBS, NPR, the New York Times, you name it.
This is leaving aside that your argument is dishonest on its face. Your contempt for anyone reading you is obvious: unless you can point to something specific that's dishonest that FAIR didn't cover, you prove nothing.
If your attempt at deception hadn't been so smashingly sloppy, you might have said, FAIR spends more time covering conservatives, so they're biased. Still not true, just (very slightly) less obvious: Conservatives are have a bigger propaganda apparatus; they are therefore a bigger subject for any watchdog.
(Cue the "vast left-wing media conspiracy" cranks)
Will AtariAmarok apologize, or offer any explanation for this latest shockingly blatant lie? Or will he feel at this point, since this is far from his first such deception that this latest one won't really stand out?
We are amassing quite a good collection of quotes we can point to that will immediately tell anyone everything they need to know about AtariAmarok's character.
I criticize Rush quite happily, but I also criticize the left-wing blowhards. It is the bashing of just one side that shows that someone is on the other.
Vain attempt to disavow own biases: check.
No, the focus of your silly, childish and disgraced attempts here is clearly to decieve people about conservative propaganda and regulations surrounding it - this is fairly obvious, despite how badly you have failed at it.
The same is true of FAIR (substitute "activist group" for commentator, and "liberal" for "conservative.") As for links, I'm still waiting for the link to Karl Rove's racist marching orders you mentioned earlier
Another baseless libel against a media watchdog you will presumably claim you don't need to justify: check.
Another foolish attempt to misquote me: check.
This is a gross misquote. I have repeatedly supported allowing liberal expression of information. I have mentioned Al Franken as a main example. The fact is that I support freedom of expression for both political sides.
Hyporcritically accusing someone of doing what he has just done: check.
It is nothing of the kind. You claimed that "censorship" of television
If, by propaganda, you mean (as you always do) diverse and differing opinions, yes.
There you go again, like a sleazy lawyer, trying to weasel out of what propaganda means. What is the definition of "is", AtariAmarok?
Propaganda means propaganda. Bias. Unfair coverage of an issue. Everyone knows what that means.
You admitted elsewhere that you'd rather have music than have radio stations air political opinion that you do not like and is not fettered by government control.
This is a blatant lie. I have never said this. You will shortly admit to it, tacitly, by not being able to provide a link backing up what you say.
If anything is "propaganda", it is the content that stations are forced to air under the Fairness Doctrine because "the government says it is fair.".
No, this is pretty obvious. The rule requires you to be fair, not unfair.
What better way to do this than to have them serve the public by providing content the public wants (the current situation), as opposed to content the government wants ("fairness doctrine" government censorship and control)?
In other words, you like the corrupt system of letting the government censor people by deciding who can broadcast and who can't, and then allowing the few that can use this (the most powerful medium we have) to censor opinions they don't agree with.
Nothing is further from the truth. If you discuss something, that is your free speech. You are not "Censoring" by excercising that right.
On TV and Radio, you are not having a discussion. You are broadcasting. No one can answer you. If you don't treat an issue fairly, you are censoring those who you treat unfairly.
It's a simple concept. You've seen enough explanations of this by now to get it, and it is now quite obvious you are only pretending not to.
I'd rather have free political discussion rather than have it censored ("not at all") because some government inquisitor said it was not fair.
The government is appointed by the people.
If you commit a crime, the government judges you, but that is only the people judging you. For instance, this is why in criminal court we call the plaintiff, "the people."
The people understood the obvious reasons for needing broadcasters to be fair. No single person made that call; effectively, a group of people made up from across party lines would make it.
Any time you are allowed to broadcast and someone else isn't that's not "free." Any time you give a biased, unfair broadcast, you silenced your victims. Censored them.
So, you don't want the "Fairness Doctrine" to apply to them anymore?
Obviously, the Fairness Doctrine isn't censorship. It tries to ensure that everyone gets to speak.
Where has Fox News said or tried to keep CNN, CBS, or others from broadcasting/cabling what they want?
You appear to be making an elaborate show of misunderstanding.
There are not all that many channels. On broadcast TV, only the government can decide who speaks. On cable, the cable company decides, but only the government can say who gets to be the cable comapny - it's a "natural monopoly."
Every act of propaganda in the mass media is harmful as a result. Every time Fox News is biased and one-sided when covering an issue, they are preventing the other side from being heard. They are censoring them, in other words.
Since you have trouble with basic black vs. white concepts of truth and don't understand what makes a fact and why you should justify your opinions with citations or links, you will probably find this too subtle, but the other danger here is diversity, which the conservative-run FCC is also dropping the ball on, despite a huge public outcry.
If more and more channels can be controlled by a single individual or company, and the results of this unfair censorship become worse and worse. If there were no diversity requirements, one company could own all the television stations and radio stations in the country. Then, with no rule requiring them to be fair, the censorship becomes complete. This is similar to how countries like Russia or China operate.
You did not do this. Instead, you presented something from a partisan political pressure group.
See, AtariAmarok probably didn't even know what FAIR was before this conversation. He says he did, but he also has ammassed a list of obvious blatant lies, that anyone with a web browser can look at and see for themselves. So he could easily be making this up too.
The important thing for him is that, if it's documenting conservative propaganda, it has to be a liberal pressure group.
He does not provide proof, not only because this is a slander and there is no proof in the first place, but I wonder, maybe he just honestly believes that, by definition if you criticize a conservative broadcaster your are a liberal or a liberal group.
It's OK. We know the real score. He loves to make up stories, but show him anything concrete, even a single piece of work from FAIR, and he can't muster even a single specific complaint. Can't find one link, one item.
At this point, Atari, make something specific up about them. You've done so much obvious lying anyway you have nothing to lose.
Calling FAIR left-wing is no more libelious than calling Rush Limbaugh right-wing
Actually, no. Rush is widely known to be a conservative commentator. In fact, at this point, he has been the subject of much scrutiny and has been widely discredited and disgraced. I can provide links, of course.
You can't find anything FAIR has done that you can point to and say that's wrong. Looking back, you can't even successfully pretend you have done so.
ou repeatedly call for government control of political content of broadcasters and cable news.
You have advocated control as well. You just like your control to allow conservative propaganda, whereas I believe broadcasters should be fair, and not censor any viewpoint they don't agree with.
Propaganda on TV is for China, not the United States.
The Bill of Rights was written to protect the freedom of the newspapers/etc of the 1790s, which were at least as powerful then as what you call "mass media" of today.
Actually, no.
But one thing I do enjoy is getting people like you caught saying ridiculous things. Here we have another sample.
AtariAmarok believes that newspapers were as powerful as televison. He still claims not to understand the difference. Splended, now we can add this to the list of evidence about your credibility.
Why are you so afraid of political expression?
That's my question for you, actually. Why are you so afraid of fairness? What was wrong with the country when propaganda on TV was against the rules?
Bin Laden
That reminds me? How is Osama doing? Did you see him for the holidays?
You make up slanders about people, pretend to ignore it when you're caught. Even an example doesn't penetrate? Or you just don't like to taste your own medicine?
I guess we are once again faced with the classic question about you: subhuman intelligence? or serial liar?
Why are you so afraid of fairness? Why do you want broadcasters to be able to censor views they disagree with?
Using this bizarre pro-censorship logic, we should realize that since poor people can't afford to have a newspaper, we should censor the hell out of them too. Can't have them utter political opinions we do not like, can't we?
No, you would have a weak point but you even got that backwards.
Your criticism should have been: "poor people can't afford a newspaper, so are you saying we should require newspaper owners to be fair, too?"
This is nonsense too, but at least it would have been coherent nonsense. I am assuming you are actually not so unintelligent that you can't grasp this, and are just attempting to be deceptive, but I'll explain anyway just in case. The biggest difference with newspapers is that, unlike radio and television, there is no restriction on whether you can have one. No one to register with, no techincal problems with having a hundred, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand newspapers. It costs some money, but anyone can do it.
So, as you can see, your argument is nonsense, and once again we have demonstrated that you are either surprisingly unintelligent or being heartily deceptive.
Of course, you can't resist falling back and hammering on your big, dumb lie. "Can't have them" etc etc. But people know what fairness is. Fairness is the opposite of what you are accusing.
Name me one conservative-controlled channel from the time of the elimination of the Doctrine.
I'm so glad you asked.
Sinclair Broadcasting has famously been aggressive with broadcasts that are illegal not only under the retired Fairness Doctrine but probably under the still extant Equal Time and Public Trust legal concepts. These are major network affiliates operating in dozens of markets.
The explosive growth of right-wing talk radio is, of course, widely acknowledged to be a direct result of ending the rule. Rush Limbaugh himself campaigned to end Fairness.
Whether Air America is fair is something to be determined by Al Franken, Janine Gerafalo, and the listeners, It should not be up to the government.
Nonsense. The government already decides who can broadcast. That is already an act of censorship.
As part of the bargain when they pick somebody, they make them follow rules. The rules (until recently) used to say, and should say again, that whoever they pick have to treat controvertial ideas with fairness. In other words, they shouldn't be allowed censor ideas they don't like.
You, however, don't like this, and are happy this rule was removed.
You have so far reserved the term for conservative political opinion that you happen to not like.
I have not reserved the term for anything.
What's really set you off is that there is something like a standing order among conservatives that anyone who is honest about Fox News' propaganda must be immediately silenced or slandered.
If my example had avoided any conservative propagandists and chosen only liberal ones you would have probably applauded, but that, if nothing else, is opinion; at any rate, you don't seem man enough to admit it.
And the allies would not have overthrown them without anti-Nazi political expression ("propaganda").
I just realized something. Since you have no respect for the truth - indeed, you may not even properly understand the concept like most people do - you actually can't tell the difference between Nazi propaganda and Allied television and radio.
And that is one major, major warning sign about what is wrong with you, as if we needed another.
So that is the real reason you hate Fox News. They are Nazis???
Here is an example of how AtariAmarok thinks: I say "Goebbles is very quotable; Fox News talking heads love to reference him" and you accuse me of saying Fox News are Nazis.
Now you have lied about something literally on the same page as what you are writing. Not only that, it is less than an inch above it.
The rest is waiting for your sense of embarrassment to finally kick in.
By the way: http://mediamatters.org/items/200406140007
A Fox talking head referencing Goebbles.
That, and the rest of your statement about Fox News, is a very disputed opinion.
No, not really. There is widespread agreement about the bias. Major media watchdogs have documented it. I have cited them. You yourself cannot provide any citations to refute them.
(That's because the bias is so obvious, and the watchdog's work is sound, and you know you will look like a fool if you don't try to avoid it. Unfortunately, you are trapped - because you look like even more of a fool _by_ avoiding it.)
We and others could argue about it for a long time, but that would only prove my point.
No, actually, but judging from your performance so far you would probably continue to make a bigger and bigger fool of yourself until you found yourself demanding we accept the "fact" that you are not even writing, as you write it.
I don't want the government to censor anyone
Sure you do. The government decides who can broadcast and who can't, and you support letting broadcasters censor their political opponents.
The "fairness" is the government elite's definition of fairness, not the people's.
Who elects the government in this country, AtariAmarok?
Elites?
No, the people do.
Right now, they get to answer to the listeners about what is fair or not.
No, they used to answer to the listeners, when the listeners elected a government, and that government made them listen. Right now they answer to nobody, with regards to propaganda.
Without the Fairness Doctrine, they do not censor political opponents already
Fox broadcasts propaganda. That is an unfair representation of opposing views on controvertial issues. That is censorship in anybody's book.