Coronavirus Misinformation and Lies Mean that It’s Time to Pull the FCC Licenses of FOX “News” Stations

What should be done about TV and Radio stations that have already endangered Americans by calling Coronavirus a hoax, claiming that it was simply like the flu, or the many other variations of these themes? The FCC licenses of such TV and Radio stations should not be renewed where such hoaxes and lies cause illness and death. Shouldn't we start taking the FCC standards seriously? FOX "News" should be concerned. Here is the FCC standard for denying a license renewal.

Broadcast Journalism

Introduction. As noted above, in light of the fundamental importance of the free flow of information to our democracy, the First Amendment and the Communications Act bar the FCC from telling station licensees how to select material for news programs or prohibiting the broadcast of an opinion on any subject. We also do not review anyone’s qualifications to gather, edit, announce, or comment on the news. These decisions are the station licensee’s responsibility. Nevertheless, there are two issues related to broadcast journalism that are subject to Commission regulation: hoaxes and news distortion.

Hoaxes. The broadcast by a station of false information concerning a crime or catastrophe violates the FCC's rules if:

The station licensee knew that the information was false; Broadcasting the false information directly causes substantial public harm; and It was foreseeable that broadcasting the false information would cause such harm.

In this context, a “crime” is an act or omission that makes the offender subject to criminal punishment by law, and a “catastrophe” is a disaster or an imminent disaster involving violent or sudden events affecting the public. The broadcast must cause direct and actual damage to property or to the health or safety of the general public, or diversion of law enforcement or other public health and safety authorities from their duties, and the public harm must begin immediately. If a station airs a disclaimer before the broadcast that clearly characterizes the program as fiction and the disclaimer is presented in a reasonable manner under the circumstances, the program is presumed not to pose foreseeable public harm.

News Distortion. The Commission often receives complaints concerning broadcast journalism, such as allegations that stations have aired inaccurate or one-sided news reports or comments, covered stories inadequately, or overly dramatized the events that they cover. For the reasons noted previously, the Commission generally will not intervene in these cases because it would be inconsistent with the First Amendment to replace the journalistic judgment of licensees with our own. However, as public trustees, broadcast licensees may not intentionally distort the news. The FCC has stated that “rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest.” The Commission will investigate a station for news distortion if it receives documented evidence of rigging or slanting, such as testimony or other documentation, from individuals with direct personal knowledge that a licensee or its management engaged in the intentional falsification of the news. Of particular concern would be evidence of the direction to employees from station management to falsify the news. However, absent such a compelling showing, the Commission will not intervene."

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Opponents of Effort to Privatize Lambert St. Louis Airport Celebrate

Just when the opponents of privatizing were digging down and getting ready to wage serious war against big money, Lyda Krewson, Mayor of St. Louis, flipped her position.

As reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,


Mayor Lyda Krewson on Friday abruptly ended the city’s exploration of privatizing operations at St. Louis Lambert International Airport, citing criticism from residents, business leaders and other elected officials.  “They have expressed serious concerns and trepidation about the process, and about the possibility that a private entity might operate the airport,” Krewson said in a letter to members of a city committee weighing privatization.


Big money didn't win this time, but it took a huge village of people who are not motivated by money.  Today's events proved that bad ideas + lots of money = bad ideas.  I was out of town today, but got back to the city just in time to join the celebration at Yaquis on Cherokee. It was a good time for a photo with my hero, Cara Spencer, who is right on the issues, time after time, and who will fight the fight whenever necessary, with the help of hundreds of dedicated people who go above and beyond because they recognize her for the treasure she is. I don't know the next big challenge for Alderwoman Spencer, but I am certain that she will take the side of her constituents.

Another hero is Tony Messenger, reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. On this web page to the Lambert Airport Sunshine Law website that I recently created, I have listed only some of the articles Messenger wrote regarding the effort to privatize.  He recognized the problems from the beginning and wrote his articles with a laser beam.  There's no doubt that his efforts allowed many others to coordinate their energy against privatization.

Someday, we might know what caused today's death of the airport privatization effort. My best guess is that this deal had such a pervasive multi-faceted stench that it collapsed under various ongoing pressures to expose the details of the process, including the sunshine lawsuit filed by Mark Pedroli. There was a lot to hate about this privatization effort, including the warped incentive structure of the contract with the "Working Group," the apparent self-interested motives of the various players, the sham public hearings and the pie-in-the sky promises of magic wealth-production made by the "Working Group."

All of this must be viewed in the following critical context: the current airport commission, led by Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge, has been doing a fantastic job by any metric imaginable. Tonight is a night to celebrate, because the good guys won. Big money failed to completely twist local government to serve its profit-driven whims. The dark lining on this silver cloud is that big money got as far as it got and that it took so much work by so many people to put the brakes on the process.

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Matt Taibbi discusses the “Rot of American Journalism” with Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges and Matt Taibbi discuss many of the ways in which "the news" has changed for the worse over the past few decades.   This is the type of discussion you don't see on most news outlets--news media fail to cover problems with news media.

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Matt Taibbi’s Ten Rules of Hate

Here's something almost everyone can agree about: Dysfunctional public discourse is ubiquitous. What is feeding it? There are many ideas out there, but one that I find compelling is that the mass media has adopted "Dysfunctional public discourse" as its favorite method of providing us with "news." Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone boils down his criticisms into the form of "Ten Rules of Hate." First, here is an excerpt from his article:

We’ve discovered we can sell hate, and the more vituperative the rhetoric, the better. This also serves larger political purposes. So long as the public is busy hating each other and not aiming its ire at the more complex financial and political processes going on off-camera, there’s very little danger of anything like a popular uprising. That’s not why we do what we do. But it is why we’re allowed to operate this way. It boggles the mind that people think they’re practicing real political advocacy by watching any major corporate TV channel, be it Fox or MSNBC or CNN. Does anyone seriously believe that powerful people would allow truly dangerous ideas to be broadcast on TV? The news today is a reality show where you’re part of the cast: America vs. America, on every channel. The trick here is getting audiences to think they’re punching up, when they’re actually punching sideways, at other media consumers just like themselves, who just happen to be in a different silo. Hate is a great blinding mechanism. Once you’ve been in the business long enough, you become immersed in its nuances. If you can get people to accept a sequence of simple, powerful ideas, they’re yours forever. The Ten Rules of Hate.
Here are Taibbi's Ten Rules, but I highly recommend reading the entire article: 1. THERE ARE ONLY TWO IDEAS - Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative. Boolean political identities. 2. THE TWO IDEAS ARE IN PERMANENT CONFLICT 3. HATE PEOPLE, NOT INSTITUTIONS 4. EVERYTHING IS SOMEONE ELSE’S FAULT ("The overwhelming majority of “controversial news stories” involve simple partisan narratives cleaved quickly into hot-button talking points. Go any deeper and you zoom off the flow chart"). 5. NOTHING IS EVERYONE’S FAULT ("If both parties have an equal or near-equal hand in causing a social problem, we typically don’t cover it.") 6. ROOT, DON’T THINK ("By the early 2000s, TV stations had learned to cover politics exactly as they covered sports, a proven profitable format. The presidential election especially was reconfigured into a sports coverage saga.") 7. NO SWITCHING TEAMS ("Being out of touch with what the other side is thinking is now no longer seen as a fault. It’s a requirement.") 8. THE OTHER SIDE IS LITERALLY HITLER 9. IN THE FIGHT AGAINST HITLER, EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED. ("If the other side is literally Hitler, this eventually has to happen. It would be illogical to argue anything else. What began as America vs. America will eventually move to Traitor vs. Traitor, and the show does not work if those contestants are not offended to the point of wanting to kill one another.") 10. FEEL SUPERIOR. ("We’re mainly in the business of stroking audiences. We want them coming back. Anger is part of the rhetorical promise, but so are feelings righteousness and superiority.")

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About Google Scientist James Damore

I know I'm late to the game on this Google incident, but this is such a good illustration about how we, as a society, are unable to talk and think about serious issues except through our ideological filters. Further, some questions that can be explored through science apparently should no longer be even raised. First, a comment from a Gizmodo article by Melanie Ehrenkranz, who characterizes former Google Engineer James Damore as follows: "The man thinks women are inferior to men as engineers." That is typical of a lot of how Damore has been treated on the Internet. Now consider the basic facts about what Damore wrote at Google:

Calling the culture at Google an "ideological echo chamber", the memo says that while discrimination exists, it is extreme to ascribe all disparities to oppression, and it is authoritarian to try to correct disparities through reverse discrimination. Instead, it argues that male/female disparities can be partly explained by biological differences. According to research he cited, those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait). Damore's memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women's representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination.
Damore has given detailed interviews about what happened at Google and why he wrote his comments. That includes this interview with Joe Rogan:

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