“It’s frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write and people should want to look into it,” President Trump complained to reporters recently, apparently in reaction to something reported by NBC.
“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” Trump tweeted.
He followed this by tweeting, “Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”
Even false and fake news is protected from government interference. The public can decide for itself what to turn on and turn off.
4TH ST8 
Makes no difference to me. I don’t believe anything anymore! There are no real journalists, just hacks that fill up time and space between advertising!
Hardly worth writing, Mr. Mitchell, it was a passing thought, not a legislative proposal to the Congress. I know there’s slow days but couldn’t you find a subject more worthy of comment, e.g., the evolving story of the concert murders, will the issue die like so many others have, a lone shooter, differing forensics glossed over, unknown motive, etc.
I have no insight on that.
Some days you lay down a bunt.
Disappointing from a person I believe is a principled defender of the First Amendment.
I wonder how different the slant would have been if the instigator was a democrat.
Huh?
C’mon Patrick, Trump has never been a popular figure on this blog.
Trump is actually one of your peeps, in a pod person sort of way.
I think it’s a lot like vaccines. If 90% of a population is vaccinated, many diseases die out because there aren’t enough people to maintain a chain of transmission. Likewise, when 90% of the news is reported in a nonpartisan manner, without intent of deception, then the truth generally wins out. When more than 30 or 40% of the news is reported in a deceptive, partisan manner, the disease of confirmation bias takes over as does a state of chronic confusion. At that point, many of us don’t know what we don’t know. Today, moneyed interests on both sides are apparently capable of distorting more than the required 30 or 40%. The only cure is to ignore partisan sources of information (such as the majority of think tanks) and critically examine all sources, dismissing those that show a pattern of distorting information or with a clear motive for bias. Since almost all news sources do this to some degree, it is very difficult for people to spot the most egregious players. Confirmation bias ensures an inability for most extremists on both sides to see truth.
Thomas where’s the attack on Trump? What I was trying to say is that if this was a democratic president, you’d have called out the party and at a minimum, the president.
No nothing here at all about Trump or his party. Like I Sid, the leant would have been different if the last president would have done this.
Man I’m not good at this whole typing thing.
Should be “like I said, the slant would have been different.”
Patrick,
“Obama undermined press freedom. Now he wants a strong media to stop Trump?”
“President Obama had harsh words for the state of journalism and how it has lapsed in its duties to hold public figures – specifically those vying for his current job – accountable. If that’s truly important to him, he can start with his own administration.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/30/barack-obama-press-freedom-strong-media-stop-donald-trump
In a perfect world, we would only hear, see and speak truth.
Alas, it is not a perfect world and perhaps, other than danger when speaking to a federal agent, there is little or no punishment for untruths.
It is exceedingly difficult to slander or libel an anyone these days. Politicians and public officials are free to lie, distort and suborn without consequence. There are limits, such as the usual shibboleth of crying “fire” in a crowded theater.
When you get right down to it, the only practical remedy for false speech is more speech. I guess we could pass sedition laws, as we have in the past, to curtail criticism of public officials or policies but those have been noteworthy not for their effectiveness but for their abuses.
It seems that many of the proposed remedies for requiring truth are worse than the malady.