Fairness Doctrine/Rupert Murdoch/Ronald Reagan Conspiracy Meme Response...
Fact: Robert Murdoch came to the US in 1974 and became a US citizen in 1985 and, unless my math is wrong, is a bit longer than 1 year. He owned media companies in other countries and only became a US citizen in order to comply with certain laws surrounding media ownership in the US.
Meme: Then he had his FCC Chairman scrap the Fairness Doctrine...
Fact: The Fairness Doctrine was abolished in 1987 by a unanimous (4-0) FCC Commission vote--not by 1 single person--in the Syracuse Peace Council decision. Said decision was upheld by a D.C. Appeals Court 2 years later. Subsequent attempst by Congress to force the doctrine into law was quashed by not one, but two separate presidents.
Meme: ...which kept newspapers and television programs from lying to the American people.
Fact: The Fairness Doctrine never applied to print media, only to terrestrial, over-the-air broadcasts (i.e., those from station-to-radio or from station-to-television). It's also important to note that neither cable nor satellite broadcasts are "over-the-air" and would thus have made the Fairness Doctrine inapplicable to them. It also wasn't meant to keep the journalist from lying, per se, but to force them to express both sides of an argument, giving American's the opportunity to decide for themselves who's lying and who's not.
Meme: Ever since, Rupert Murdoch has been brainwashing Americans into believing our legitimate press is lying like he lies. It is propaganda that the oligarchs use to poison the minds of Americans.
Fact: Actual propaganda with some conspiracy theory thrown in for good measure.
Opinion:
The Fairness Doctrine served it's purpose when the airwaves were limited to a select few companies who had the technology to use them. With the invention of cable and satellite broadcasting technologies the Fairness Doctrine became a moot issue. It ultimately became irrelevant in the ever expanding, seemingly infinite landscape that was emerging in the arena of broadcasting.
As for keeping journalists honest, that is certainly a problem in today's media biased, politically polarized landscape. Even having media companies who present the "facts" based on what side of the spectrum their ideological beliefs fall on, if we do our due diligence and don't hide in an echo-chamber then we will still see both sides of the argument. Granted, we may have to do a little extra leg work to get there but we shouldn't hide behind a wall-of-agreement anyway; we should always seek the truth until we determine for ourselves what we believe the truth to be.
I do agree, though, that by not expanding it to include emerging broadcast technologies, the polarization of American politics was inevitable. It may well have been worth re-framing so as to be constitutionally sound where it applied to cable news and satellite broadcasting.
But the question remains, could it have been done without seeming to curtail free speech in some capacity? Forced speech is not free speech, right? Censoring someone is just as bad as forcing them to say something they don't want to. Am I wrong to say forced speech is a violation of the first amendment?
Conclusion:
Do your homework, people, and don't believe the "facts" as memes present them to you. I'm sure someone, somewhere, believes this to be true (and I know a couple of those people myself) but, alas, it isn't. What is true, though, is that this meme lacks facts and that the actual facts don't line up with the false narrative presented. (Boy did the rapper want to come out of me there and keep going with the wordplay!). The only value this meme has is as leftist propaganda because in the realms of factual value, it has none.
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