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OCTOBER

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Who needs horror movies? 

 

Really life is scary enough. 

 

TUSC is feeling festive this Fall season — perhaps for reasons not all that typical. With the darker weather and Halloween celebrations upon us, there are a few causes behind our collective fears this year that go beyond skeletons and spiders, haunted houses and Hocus Pocus — or worse… the dread of an evening stroll across the Faryon bridge in the stark cold.

 

This month we’d like to draw your attention to what will really keep you up at night…the state of Western media! 

 

October feels to be an appropriate time to discuss the monstrous machine of modern, mainstream, Western media — with the US Presidential election upcoming and the Federal Canadian election a year away this month, we are in no shortage of disturbing, dishonest, and divisive content that spans across online spaces, addressing issues of politics and beyond. 

 

With this in mind, we’d like to guide you in considering some difficult questions:

 

  • What is the media’s role in creating political division?

 

  • Are we — as consumers of media — responsible for our own consumption of content, how we interpret what we intake, and how we use this information in our lives?

 

  • Alternatively, what is responsible journalism? For news networks, talk show hosts, freelance writers, social media ‘influencers’, podcasters, government communication teams, your aunt on Facebook, and everyone in between — what duties do they have to create a culture of understanding, honesty, and media literacy online?

 

  • How does the misrepresentation of social issues in media contribute to lacking or impeded social change?

 

  • Is there reasonable policy to be made which could aid in correcting what has become an isolating, antagonistic, and confusing media consumption experience for most?

 

There are many academics among us who have dedicated entire degrees, decades, and careers to answering some or all of these queries in different manners — more research and work, although, hasn’t necessarily produced more answers. On this note, we can’t possibly address all of these topics in their complexity; however, perhaps we can let you in on an aspect of this discussion that you haven’t yet taken into account.


 

Namely, pointing towards the last question asked above — few are aware of major media policy discarded in the 1980s which attempted to prevent the culture of social and political divisiveness we now find ourselves in. 

 

“The Fairness Doctrine” was legislated by the United States’ FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in 1959 as an amendment to the Communications Act. The premise of this law amendment is fairly simple — in the context of talk radio, show runners were required to platform opposing views on their daily topics. Further, another aspect of these rules meant that radio broadcasters had to provide equal opportunity to prospective political candidates who wanted to use their programs as a setting for campaign activities. 

 

With this context, it’s hard to imagine that something called “The Fairness Doctrine” could be perceived as being connotated by anything but equality or tolerance. However, opinions on this legislation — almost 37 years after its repeal by the FCC — remain mixed. Some argue that the language of this law was vague and practically subjective in its application; after all, media licensees were required to serve “the public interest, convenience, and necessity” of America. This begs the question: who decides ‘the public interest’? Also, how do we quantify a balance of opinions on audio media — is ensuring an even 50/50 split of views at all attainable? If it’s not attainable, who’s to say that republican radio hosts couldn’t twist the ambiguity in their favour and spew 90% of their own opinions with only a 10% rebuttal from ‘the other side’?

 

Clearly, the stipulations are necessarily blurry, at least for the average person to understand.

 

For such reasons, the doctrine has received much criticism, especially from more Libertarian, free-market-favouring folks:

 

“Despite its name, the Fairness Doctrine was deeply unfair. It made broadcasting less diverse, more beholden to powerful corporate interests, and more susceptible to political abuse. And it was a key weapon in one of the most successful censorship campaigns in American history. It would be a mistake of historic proportions to mimic it while writing regulations for the internet” (quoted from Matzsko article below)

 

Comparatively, others see that although the doctrine was filled with practical faults, its core aim of mitigating online echo-chamber-like spaces of extreme political ideology is something that most would agree to be sensible. 

 

Evidently (and ironically) the potential comeback of the Fairness Doctrine is pretty divisive itself. 

 

With this said…what do you think? 

 

Should we enter back into a space of legislation that regulates media on a larger scale? Had you even heard of the Fairness Doctrine before? What impact do you think it had on the birth of extreme online communities on either end of the political aisle? Also, Tik tok, Instagram, and all other social media were non-existent during the era of this legislation — how would they have complicated things?

 

These were questions that we at TUSC would’ve loved to interrogate with you this October in another roundtable conversation — but alas, we’ve got midterms to write and reading breaks to take. However, even without an event, the discussion doesn’t end here!
 

See below for some resources and content to start you on your way:

 

Visual/Audio Media:

 

More on The Fairness Doctrine: 

 

Empirical and Extended Reading:

  • Bode, L., Edgerly, S., Wells, C., Gabay, I., Franklin, C., Friedland, L., & Shah, D. V. (2018). Participation in Contentious Politics: Rethinking the Roles of News, Social Media, and Conversation Amid Divisiveness. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 15(3), 215–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2018.1485607. 

  • Kubin, E., & von Sikorski, C. (2021). The role of (social) media in political polarization: a systematic review. Annals of the International Communication Association, 45(3), 188–206. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2021.1976070. 

  • Zhou, K., Meitus, A. A., Chase, M., Wang, G., Mykland, A., Howell, W., & Tan, C. (2024). Quantifying the uniqueness and divisiveness of presidential discourse. PNAS Nexus. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae431. 

 

  • Book recommendation: Critical Readings: Moral Panics and the Media, Chas Critcher (Ed.) (2006)

  • Book recommendation: Reckoning: Journalism's Limits and Possibilities, Candis Callison & Mary Lynn Young

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Have a safe, restful, and happy reading week, 

​

TUSC Executive

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