@yetanotheruser I agree for the most part in what you are saying, but I would be careful and research all sides further on the Reagan campaign team/Iranian hostage thing. I need more evidence before I believe a presidential candidate, even Reagan, who I learned to dislike intensely when he was governor of California, would be so cynical as to delay the release of American hostages—all of them not only citizens, but US government employees abroad from general office personnel and Marine guards to people in the diplomatic corps, USIA and CIA—for the sake of an an election. For many reasons this doesn’t pan out for me. Reagan’s provable record is more than adequate to condemn him as one of the worst presidents of the people ever. Like you state above, we were blatantly sold out.
If there was one product of the Reagan administration that ensured a sea change in American attitude, popularization of historic revisionism, and locking in a positive take on the Administration itself, it was the repeal of the repeal of the 1949 FCC Fairness Doctrine in 1985. There are many arguments about the constitutionality of the Doctrine in the first place, but I ask people to look at American political attitudes and American political reportage before the repeal and then compare them to what they became after the repeal.
The 1949 Fairness began as way to guarantee equal time to all sides on political talk shows such as Meet the Press and it’s predecessors. It was a reaction to the dangerous, one sided political propaganda broadcasts that occurred in Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia and Japan before and during WWII by the generation of Americans who had to fight the people who had been brainwashed by that propaganda. We had seen what happens when a people get only one side of the story. But the Doctrine came under attack in 1969 by an unhappy Nixon administration (the war escalated to 500,000 US troops in-country after Tet, too many 19 year-olds were coming back in body bags and the truth hurt), in a Supreme Court First Amendment argument, Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, and the Fairness Doctrine survived.
You are around my age. You remember how the news used to be presented? Very encapsulated in highly definable segments, and the news readers, although many of them reporters of spectacular backgrounds, simply reported the news with no editorializing and certainly no silly opinions or talk of a personal nature. Not even between Huntley and Brinkley. Editorializing was done in a totally different, identifiable segment of he news, often at the end of the broadcast and after a block of commercials to separate the editorial from the rest of the broadcast. Whenever there was a political opinion made by a candidate or pundit, the opposing candidate or one of the editors—senior reporting staff—would present the opposing view. America was better educated in their political situation because of this. When Machine-Gun McCarthy was on top at the height of real paranoia, the opposing side was still presented at great peril of careers and reputations. But, under FCC rules, they had to be heard. After McCarthy’s alcoholic psychosis became apparent, there were established opposing views to consider, not a vacuum. A way for America to moderate herself.
In 1985, after the justifiably hostile press reaction to Reaganomics and it’s effects, the FCC under chairman Mark Fowler, a former Reagan campaign boss, released a report stating that the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. In 1987, FCC chairman Dennis Patrick abolished the doctrine by a 4–0 vote, in the Syracuse Peace Council decision, which was upheld by a panel of the Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit in February 1989.
The result was the immediate rise of a profusion of radio and TV shows, unopposed, radical, political punditry obviously designed to appeal to fear and ignorance for the sake of ratings and political power. Limbaugh was one of the first, withing a couple of years, his show went was available at least 3 hours a day, 7 days a week. When he is confronted with confirmations of his lies, he claims that he is merely an entertainer and has no political influence on his audience. This is repeated among his ilk.
You’ve seen change, and the change in American attitude, rationale. You’ve witnessed it, ETpro and I have talked hours about it, pretty much every one over a certain age knows the change and when it happened. Abroad, in Europe, and even down here in the Lesser Antilles, the American citizen’s irrationality in voting against their own interests is only difficult to explain until you describe the media situation. Then they understand, especially the old ones. It is a tragedy that Americans themselves don’t see it.
\Shit. This is way too long, sorry.
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