The RIP thread...

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Oliver Schick

Interesting to read about the abolition of the 'Fairness Doctrine'. I've often wondered why that style of broadcasting was allowed:

At KRBK Limbaugh began to attract attention. In 1987, during the Ronald Reagan era, the Federal Communications Commission repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which had required users of the public airwaves to allow equal time if they broadcast political opinion. This opened the floodgates to the likes of Limbaugh, and in 1988 he moved to WABC in New York, which became the flagship for a 56-station network broadcast of his show, scheduled, unusually for talk, at midday. By 1990 he had five million listeners.

Lots of charming little anecdotes in here:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/17/rush-limbaugh-obituary

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Soul in reply to @Oliver Schick

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Oliver Schick in reply to @Soul

I'm not sure what is being planned currently, haven't read up on that, but I do think that media reports not being balanced can cause positions to become more extreme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

Most differences of opinion tend towards moderation, and it's usually only a comparatively small number of people who hold extreme opinions. That is, if you present the general contrasting opinions of the day in 'equitable' fashion, there is then less room for the sort of anger that a seemingly deeply unhappy little man like Rush Limbaugh appears to have felt. Expressing that anger allowed him to divide people, both those who felt similar things and those who reacted in disgust. People entrench themselves, fire their views in a scattergun fashion into an endless stalemate, and being in the trench don't particularly aim to look at the stars.

I may be wrong, and I'd like to do more reading on the impact of this change, but this is how it seems to me to be likely to have gone.

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