I did not see repealing the fairness doctrine mentioned.
This is what is basically allowing media like fox “news” to spout straight up lies and made up news, while selectively not mentioning, twisting or brushing over actual news.
It’s also what allowed Sinclair to start their buying spree and create a hidden broadcast network of similar right-wing propaganda and lies. John Oliver had a very good episode on them: m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
For me this is the biggest sin of Ronald Reagan. Without this change to content quality control, there wouldn’t be so many Americans who live in an alternate reality, which is also what is allowing the republican party to not even try to govern & is allowing them to be as despicable as they are. Those rightwing “news” channels will after all just brush over their gaffes & instead conjure some made up scandal again over something democrats or one of the designated out groups has allegedly done.
Fox News is cable. And was never subject to the fairness doctrine. It may have had a small impact on AM radio. But nothing near the impact of all the consolidation that happened under Reagan and Clinton.
Mostly consolidation of ownership. Don’t get me wrong, the fairness doctrine and played a small part. But single ownership of a vast swath of stations did far more damage than lack of fairness doctrine.
Not to mention how fair was the fairness doctrine? Did it truly serve a purpose giving voice to other opinions etc? Or was it largely limited to the same few mainstream ones? Socialist, social democrats, anarchists, communists?
I think the reason AM radio is right wing is it’s only good for talking, and the people who listen to long conversations as their form of media consumption tend to be conservatives.
Fox news was launched when the fairness doctrine was already dead for many years and Rush Limbaugh was huge. Without the repeal of the fairness doctrine, right wing talk radio shows wouldn’t have been so ubiquitous. Without similar alternate fact content from many sources, fox news alternate facts would have to be closer to reality out of necessity or they would have no credibility with their target audience.
It’s one of those things where one thing lead to another. Without the repeal of the fairness doctrine, fox news as we know it today, would simply not exist. Here’s a good article on it: poynter.org/…/how-rush-limbaughs-rise-after-the-g…
I don’t get your comment about how the impact on am radio was “small”. Consensus seems to be that the repeal in 1987 was the start of the shift to the alternate facts radio shows on am radio: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_talk_radio
Most consolidation came later and it’s definitely a contributing factor, but this shift was already well under way before most of the consolidation happened.
Fox News was conceived in the 1970s. Yes, it started after the fairness doctrine was ended. The fairness doctrine never applied to it in any way however. Even then in the late '90s early 2000s, much of the content was designed with the concept of the fairness doctrine in mind. Any overtly political show, such as Hanity and Colmes. Already had a fake diverse/alternate voice built in. The fairness doctrine was always toothless and easily bypassable
Rush Limbaugh as problematic as he was. Was largely pushed by large conservative owned radio networks. There is some correlation between the end of the fairness doctrine and Limbaugh’s national syndication. But no clear causation. No part of the fairness doctrine would have impacted syndication. And his show exist fine before and after.
Plenty of people nostalgically lament the loss of the fairness doctrine. But none can actually explain how it would help. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of the concept. But the problem is, who is the arbiter of what is “fair”. Or when it is fair. It makes a difference.
Fox news was launched in 1996. In did not adhere to the fairness doctrine in any way. Yes it did follow classic panel show formatting with multiple guests with differing opinions, but that’s just the classic format for those shows, that’s not the fairness doctrine. You can even find shows like that in Russia. Fairness doctrine would be for example that every time that a fox news slandered someone, that person would be able to demand airing a rebuttal on fox news.
Rush Limbaugh was first nationally syndicated in 1988. The fairness doctrine was done away with in 1987. It’s really no coincidence and it’s plenty documented and discussed. Check the 2 links I send you earlier for starters.
There was once a union employee. When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers for striking “illegally” the big companies did hardcore union busting. This employee, young and with a family, was suddenly thrusted into a world with wages racing to the bottom. People being fired for any or no reason. Strike? Say hi to your scabs.
I know this is vague, but it’s real. Edited for privacy, but real nonetheless. Fuck Ronald Reagan.
I’m sorry it reads the way it does. Part of my reason for joining Lemmy was to go back to the old way of the internet where you are only a screen name with no real ties to identity. The uncensored version of my story would be too easy to dox unfortunately.
US workers are too tribal, each industry thinks they’re different than others.
See what happened with the nordic unions, uniting against Tesla across different industries? This is what the American unions should have done to the US government after Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Automotive, public servants, train drivers, every union should have walked out until the controllers were reinstated. Instead they looked on as if it didn’t apply to them.
This is from Planet Money of NPR which really sums up the entire event way better than I could. If necessary I’ll try to dig up an even better source. My original comment is admittedly anecdotal.
You should be aware guys this is a pro trump thread. Negative Trump relayed comments have been removed (including mine) without reasons given. might be worth blocking this OP in the spirit of Lemmy.
A number of people replied about Reagan’s work ending state mental institutions, and made a lot of good points. One interesting aspect of that was en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation. In the 60s and 70s, mental health professionals were advocating for moving from a institution-based model of care (a la “One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest”) to a community-based model (groups like www.reachinc.org basically follow this model). The basic thrust: ensuring that individuals are a part of a community, and care is tailored to the individual. It’s very well-meaning at its core. By the lat 70s, deinstitutionalization had (to some extent) become doctrine with experts working with disabled individuals. And for good reason! A number of early studies showed promising results! So come the 80s and Reagan. Reagan has an easy excuse for closing down institutions: experts in th field even recommend it! There’s one really important caveat, though: experts recommended diverting the funding the institutions had received into community-based support (again, see the link above for Reach as an example of how they imagined this funding being dispersed). Reagan…just cut the funding. So really, he did a “No Child Left Behind” 20 years earlier! Which, as I type it out…is even shittier. He gave false hope that he was actually going to do something great for mentally disabled people, and instead threw them on the street. Man. Reagan really sucked.
Side note: there are groups like Reach all over the US and the world, and they all could use help. Volunteers, funding, etc. A quick bit of research and you may meet some incredible people in your local community.
Well, Ivestopedia says the national debt increased about 160% not 300%. Still the 3rd worst in presidential history. Brookings.edu says the top tax rate went from 70% to 50%.
You’re not wrong, but as it’s literally been six months since anyone posted anything here I’ve decided to let the discussion continue as long as the topic stays on Regan’s presidency.
Because they’re not entirely accurate. And the ratio of downvotes to upvotes should’ve sparked skepticism. The replies point out why it’s not completely accurate.
Over-moderation is exactly why we’re here. I’m not so quick to ask for people to do my fact-checking for me. You probably shouldn’t be, either. I don’t want a mod making that decision.
Almost all mental health institutions were either run by the state or country and relied on very little federal funding. Their popularity collapsed after the 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that depicted such institutions in negative light. Reagan may be to blame for the other items but not this.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with JFK’s movement for deinstutionalization? If there was a serious cut in federal funding, it happened then. Reagan didn’t bring it back, but it was already mostly gone by his time. A good book to read is “American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System” by E. Fuller Torrey. Many historians who discuss the decline in public mental health in the US specifically site the book (and later the movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a principle cause for the shift in dollars. And really, the institutions were bad. Very bad. The attempt to replace them with something else ended-up being replaced with … nothing else except crime, homelessness, and police.
They were called State Houses for a reason. However, they did rely on no small amount of federal funding, even indirectly. Carter started a bill (MHSA1980) that was supposed to help mental health institutions like these, Regan killed it, and the promise was that the states would rework how these mentally ill were handled. Nobody ever got around to it. Taxes = evil, and there was also a study that was pushed hard by anti-tax types to “mainstream” mental patients. More cost cutting by closing State institutions and booting the patients into the public and like I said, the help never materialized. That’s the quick and dirty version.
The movie had nothing to do with it.
You are only partially correct about Reagan. He isn’t entirely responsible, but he absolutely had a hand in it. Cutting a bunch of the MHSA and the failure was also the State’s unwillingness to maintain public Institutions, but that ties in with the deregulation during the early ‘80s (Reagan’s doing) as well as fixing Medicare prices to hospitals so that hospitals had to look elsewhere to make money, and that means you and I paid more.
So yeah, loss of mental health care facilities and health care costs in general are directly tied to the Reagan administration’s actions in the early 1980s.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with JFK’s movement for deinstutionalization? If there was a serious cut in federal funding, it happened then. Reagan didn’t bring it back, but it was already mostly gone by his time. A good book to read is “American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System” by E. Fuller Torrey. Many historians who discuss the decline in public mental health in the US specifically site the book (and later the movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a principle cause for the shift in dollars. And really, the institutions were bad. Very bad. The attempt to replace them with something else ended-up being replaced with … nothing else except crime, homelessness, and police.
I think what everyone should recognize is that every president is going to have a list like this because they are all terrible presidents, in modern history.
Add comment