Normalize using the parental controls to block FOX News on your grandparents/parents TV and pretending like the cable company just stopped providing the channel.
@netscape The #CRTC has opened a public consultation on a complaint from an #LGBTQ rights group asking the broadcast regulator to ban #FoxNews from cable packages in #Canada.
"Make it so!"
"The fun is about to commence."
Fox News is reprehensible and amoral. They should be shunned, shamed, and made the target of ridicule everywhere they are known.
But the government should not be in the business of deciding who can and cannot "broadcast" news. It doesn't matter how much you trust their judgment now; the question is "How would government by a party diametrically opposed to my values, morals, and beliefs decide what news I should and should not see?"
@cazabon@netscape True, but technically Fox News is not a news station. They are not licensed as one. So even if they are not blocked, it should not be part of the news package.
CRTC blocked Russian TV (Putin propaganda arm). The appeal to CRTC is based on Fox spreading hate speech; if demonstrated, then Fox can be blocked on those grounds.
In Canada, Sun TV tried to be Fox-North. No one wanted them, and it disappeared.
Simply letting the government decide what is "technically" a news station means you've already lost; you've handed the government - and all future governments - the power to shut down news they don't like.
"No one wanted them, and it disappeared." <-- THIS is the correct way to deal with it. The marketplace of ideas. If no one wants it, it will go away.
@cazabon@netscape But Fox is from a foreign country, just like Russian propaganda. Also, even by American broadcast laws they are not news, and admitted it in court. There are agreed upon laws/rules that allow a company to license themselves as News-journalism. They don't meet the criteria, that's why they never applied for a license. Their name is false advertising.
From your 2 comments, I assume you want no moderation, as in Bird. Let everything go.
So stand up, point at them, and say loudly "Fox is propaganda!". Point out where they're wrong. Say what you think the actual facts are. Let the marketplace of ideas sort it out.
Letting the government decide who gets to be news and who doesn't will end badly. Think: book burnings, imprisoned critics, hanged authors.
And the whole "Fox News is entertainment, not news, they admitted it" is a trope without a basis in fact. There is no such distinction in US law.
Other places do allow decisions to be made by tribunals about whether something is legitimate news or not. Promotion of hate speech against minorities is often found to be "not news".
Many of those "other places" are doing much better than USA is - the freedom of Fox News to spread lies and hate and corrupt the minds of its viewers has not benefited the country.
Other places do have tribunals and boards and committees and quangos that decide who gets to broadcast what.
And it's censorship. People arguing for silencing speakers whose speech they dislike are being censorious. The correct response to "speech I don't like" is "I will speak contrarily", not "someone shut that other guy up".
Calling it a "US" way of doing things is ahistorical. Classical liberalism birthed the idea; it existed before the USA did.
@cazabon@skua@netscape@Popehat I do not know what you want in terms of freedom - no moderation, no rules whatsoever? Sun TV could not get on a news package because, like Fox, they wouldn't follow journalistic standards. They couldn't get ad revenue because of content.
"Sun TV could not get on a news package because [...] they couldn't get ad revenue because of content."
Don't you see? That is exactly how the free market of ideas handles it. The system worked! Let it work again with Fox, or with Russia Today, or with Billy-Bob's Factx of the Day, or whatever.
Why do you think government - where every action is done at the point of a gun - is needed to interfere when the process is working?
It is clearly the government interference in weapons purchases that cause school killings?
If we just let the free market operate then cheaper guns and cheaper bullets would bias towards less killing?
I must be doing something wrong here because more free markets is always what we need right?
For one thing, I'm not American. We have strict gun laws in my country.
Secondly, I'm talking about not letting the government restrict speech by deciding what news is permitted and what is forbidden. Gun purchase/posession/use/carrying restrictions have nothing to do with speech; I am not stating a position on any of that.
Thirdly, speech does not kill people. By all means prosecute those who violate the law, but don't restrict their speech.
Unfortunately, some of us are extremely vulnerable to propaganda, & waiting for "sunshine" to "disinfect" misguided minds can cost millions of lives. Some censorship is required - one key is having it done by an arm's-length agency like the CRTC, not the House of Commons itself.
We've got laws against hate speech.
We have peaceful transfers of power.
We have compulsory voting - another violation of free speech.
We like it this way.
It seem to be working much better than "the free market of oppression by the rich and powerful through their use of billion dollar megaphones".
We also have peaceful transfers of power and are otherwise civilized. No compulsory voting, though.
"Billion dollar megaphones" is a side-effect of regulations on speech; the little guy can't afford to get through all the red tape and regulatory authority. Regulatory capture favours the incumbents, and they like to keep the barriers high.
"More speech" hurts no-one, and helps to fix all the problems you've mentioned.
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