Fox news has no legal requirement to tell the truth

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http://www.ceasespin.org/ceasespin_blog ... ublic.html


Not sure how much this is true or not...but if no news vendor has a legal requirement to their audience then doesn't that just turn our news into worthless chatter that we can never really verify as being real or not because there's no accountability held to anyone?

"The attorneys for Fox, owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, successfully argued the First Amendment gives broadcasters the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on the public airwaves. We are pushing for a consumer protection solution that labels news content according to its adherence to ethical journalism standards that have been codified by the Society of Professional Journalists (Ethics: spj.org).
A News Quality Rating System and Content Labeling approach, follows a tradition of consumer protection product labeling, that is very familiar to Americans. The ratings are anti-censorship and can benefit consumers."

Not a new item. That's a 2000 case.

It's why I laugh when the media says we can "trust" them while they spew nonsense I know isn't anything close to the truth.

So long as people believe the mainstream press is credible, there will be no truth.

Ironically, the mainstream press criticizes the "alternative press" for the very same reasons, but they won't fess up to their own misconduct.

It is certainly a sorry state that we are in. I don't think this sort of thing is new either. There's been corruption of the press since it began. I do think that Fox has really taken it to a whole new level though.

As lousy as it is for the media to be able to legally lie, it seems like the only alternative would be to allow some external agency to have oversight. Point being that the agency could corrupted. (Seems like that's happened National Public Radio.)

And even if the agency is the courts, it'll always be Murdoch's-corporate-lawyer-army vs. 5 swfit-boat-vets and some grass-roots organization with a $10,000 budget.

I think the next/current big thing is net neutrality. If that goes away we're done.

Faux News is only good at one thing, lulling Midwestern Christian Conservatives into a false sense of security while over-sensationalizing things they read on Twitter.

If the right wing bloggers had the power to shut down the phony National Guard documents on George W. Bush, why couldn't left wing bloggers do the same on things that are wildly factually errant on Fox? My guess, especially with Moveon.org - they would be already if they had the artillery.