Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Trump vs. NBC
So we’re just going to jump into it. Yesterday morning, the President Tweeted the following: “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!”
That comment was in response to an NBC news report about a July 20 meeting where the President said he wanted a 10-fold increase in the US nuclear arsenal, and everyone had to patiently explain the costs, the impracticality, and the international agreements that prevented such a thing. It was also after that meeting that Rex Tillerson allegedly called the President a “moron.” (Not only does the President dispute that report, but several other people, including Gen. Mattis, say the report is inaccurate.)
Okay, first things first, the President’s Tweets are (according to the White House) official statements by the President of the United States. Just to be clear: the President of the United States publicly threatened the broadcast license of a critical media outlet in an official statement.
Trump continued later, saying in a meeting with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, “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.”
There are a few things wrong with this. As Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic member of the FCC, observed on Twitter, this is “not how it works.” She added a link to the FCC regulation guide that says, “The Constitution’s protection of free speech includes that of programming that may be objectionable to many viewer[s] or listeners. Thus, the FCC cannot prevent the broadcast of any particular point of view.” But also the FCC licenses local stations. So it’s not like NBC, the network, has an overarching license to pull.
So yeah, that happened. The reaction went far beyond Rosenworcel with criticism coming from both the left and right on First Amendment grounds. Either this will dominate the news for a while or it will blow over when something else comes along.
This is a preview from Thursday’s Daily Shot newsletter. Subscribe here free of charge.
Published in General
Maybe. We would have to research exactly the language of the law being changed. The ACA is so full of the “Secretary shall… type” stuff, that these changes could actually be power that Congress assigned the Executive Branch.
I was being serious, not literal. I was going to qualify the statement with “they hardly own any affiliate” but I’m tired and lazy so you got me.
Moderator Note:
No.Is this now the official Ricochet position? I did not think this type of thing passed as OK. I can now call anyone making an comment, irrelevant to the conversation, that I don’t like, a “troll”?
[redacted]
That is a word that should be left on the ash heap.
It is a charge that, like actual malice, should be proven. I don’t think anyone at Comcast is “chilled.” They were probably more intimidated by Harvey Weinstein than at anything Donald Trump could ever tweet.
Moderator Note:
Please return to the subject of the OP[redacted]
Moderator Note:
Please see http://ricochet.com/456027/trumpkin-nevertrump-civil-conversation/I remember not being trolled or particularly agitated by Obama’s verbal attacks on Fox. Obama was an effective politician. Fox was a clear (though somewhat ineffectual) enemy.
His administration’s far-from-empty black op actions against James Rosen and Sharyl Atkisson were true crimes.
Anything remotely like it from the Trump administration thus far? (I know that whataboutism is the hammer and screwdriver in the toolkit, but it doesn’t really work here.)
Trump’s a narcissistic, petulant guy who tweets like a teen. This is headline news?
He’s also saved the country from the Clinton crime family and is attempting to govern in a remarkably consistent center-right manner, whatever his erratic personal demerits.
Tax reform, sweeping Ocare executive action , conservative judges full speed ahead. All this week.
Let’s fixate on tweets!!!
Another day in
Neverland.Right. I keep forgetting. Trying to reason with the Fifth Avenue Caucus is a fool’s errand. I’ll just go ahead and stop taking you seriously now. Good day.
So, in theory, the First Amendment would permit a station’s broadcast license to be pulled if the station knowingly broadcasts defamatory fake news?
Besides no longer being employed by Ricochet, the answer should be evident by the fact that my comment has now (rightly) been redacted.
Again, it does not, as evidenced by the fact that my comment was redacted.
I’m curious, though: Do you feel BD1’s comment should have passed for okay, especially given that it was completely off-topic and the first comment on a post?
You are enjoined, like all of us, to abide by the rules of the Code of Conduct. This both prohibits personal attacks like the one I made, as well as off-topic trolling comments like the one I responded to.
There was reason somewhere in there? Ok I missed it.
Given your concern for the site’s tone, I should ask: Did you flag comment #1?
If not, why not?
Regarding the content of the OP, it was wrong when the Democrats flirted with the Fairness Doctrine and it’s wrong when President Trump does this sort of thing.
To be honest, I expect nothing will come of Trump’s threat. At the time time, I think it’s disgusting of him. Focus on tax policy and getting useful stuff done, Mr. President.
Umbra, there is really almost always one reason: some folks made the comic, colossal misjudgment that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be preferable for this country than the election of Donald Trump. So, if Trump makes an ill advised tweet on the same day he is pushing for large personal, corporate and small business tax cuts, setting loose a regulatory assault on Obamacare and finally seeing the wholesale approval of the largest set of liberty-minded judges in US history, what will some focus on?
The tweets, the tweets, the tweets …
They have few arguments. Only their wounded egos.
Excuse me, people. Take your argument outside. I’m holding a master class in broadcasting in here!
You could be right. It is possible that the ACA actually contains language that would permit the President (or, more correctly, the Secretary of HHS) to make changes to the insurance coverage plans, etc. Somehow, though, I doubt the ACA would permit the changes that have been made, if for no other reason than that the Dems would have done whatever they could to prevent such changes from occurring. If the ACA failed, it had to fail as a prelude to single-payer; it could not be “saved” by executive action (by a President from the other party) that would correct problems by enlarging competition among insurers, or by allowing opt-outs, etc.
Not that I’m in much a position to object given my earlier behavior, but ad hominem much?
Finally, Trump is going to take Alex Jones off the air.
If Trump were legislating via these orders, it would be.
There is nothing within the prosecutorial discretion of the DOJ which countenanced BHO’s DACA and DAPA orders.
Trump’s HHS is simply exercising the discretion which was embedded into the ACA, which was of course going to leverage the ACA to the far left for the next two decades of Democratic control of all three branches.
Does anyone imagine that a Trump executive order outside the lines of executive authority won’t be stopped by the federal courts within a day? His executive order on travel was in the center of the field of that authority and was waylaid.
In theory, yes. But you would probably have to prove a pattern of deliberate deceptions over a long period of time. Most revocations have been tied to other lawless behavior. One man lost his radio stations after being convicted of child molestation, another for hawking the implants of goat testes as a sexual rejuvenation cure. Oh, and peddling illegal drugs seems to do the trick, too.
Others have lost their licenses due to public fraud, mostly for not paying out the prizes in listener contests. The closest the networks have come to being implicated in something like that were the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. NBC was quick to plead victim status in those cases.
The problem, of course, is that the network doesn’t need those licenses to exist.
I don’t think the travel bans are particularly enlightening that way. They were egregiously poorly written (I say this as someone who basically supported their substance) and the administration contradicted itself several times about them.
Putting aside the dumber arguments the courts used against the orders (however awful the president’s comments during the campaign, they can’t possibly be more important than the text of the actual order), it was perfectly appropriate to stay the orders on behalf of green-card holders whose due process rights are protected by the Constitution.
Thanks. This jibes with my understanding of things, although I had forgotten all about the quiz show stuff. It seems that many current restrictions on FCC authority are self-imposed and subject to change under pressure from a President. The First Amendment is not a particularly strong defense where the government issues the licenses. It may be that Trump has a more sophisticated view of the possibilities than do his critics.
As I understand it, the justification for the licenses was that the airwaves were a public good so it made sense for the government to regulate their usage, largely to assure that they were usable at all. As @ejhill said, earlier, the technology has moved beyond that.
But the law has not, despite the best efforts of the NAB.
Agreed.
That argument has been made in reference to content regulations such as the fairness doctrine, but really the licenses are still about technical orderliness. In the early days of radio folks would be listening to a program and Joe on the next block would fire up his experimental 2-watt transmitter and take out a station for a one-mile radius. That had to stop for the industry to thrive.
America is really remarkable in this. In most countries it was (and still is) the government that monopolizes the airwaves.
I think we’d be better off viewing the EM spectrum as real estate. Scarce resource? Only so many people can use it at one time? What am I missing?
Then the question becomes not “Should the government yank a license”, but (much like the State of Nevada) why is the government retaining ownership in the first place?
I agree that the President is wrong about this and should not have threatened NBC’s license, even if it was not meant seriously.
I have a hard time summoning much outrage when virtually the entire Democratic party, and 4 SCOTUS Justices, come out on the opposite side of free speech in the Citizens United decision. Hillary Clinton was continuing to argue the issue in the 2016 campaign, as I recall. No one in the media — at NBC, for example — ever gets around to mentioning that the Citizens United decision that Hillary wanted overturned invalidated a law preventing the airing of a documentary critical of Hillary.
A good thing to point out to leftists.
Not seeing the unconstitutional part either. Does the constitution say that NBC is entitled to exclusive use of a certain frequency (which others are legally forbidden to use)? Is this license perpetual? Are there no conditions? What about other people who’d like to use it instead? Shouldn’t we have a clear idea about the answers to these questions?
I would say that there should be broad leeway for difference of opinion – but that isn’t indefinite is it? What would be a clear example of when a license should be revoked? Collusion with a foreign government to influence an election? Seriously interested in scenarios that might qualify.
Pushing a fairness doctrine is not the same as questioning the license rules. Neither is the level of commitment and action taken (like an actual FCC policy or actual bills that were presented or passed-but-vetoed).