The Father of Fake News

[Different Drummer]

[FailureToCommunicate]

1. Amen. And hate radio provided a constant diet of venom to those fake news junkies.

[klook]

2. Yes, the excuse was that with the advent of cable news there was a plethora of choices

on the airwaves. This, the argument went, meant that the airwaves were now as accessible as printing presses, so the Fairness Doctrine was no longer needed. Of course, this was long before the Internet and YouTube (which are still no match for a mainstream broadcasting or cable news outlet, obviously!).

And need I add that an average citizen's only access to a print audience via a printing press was maybe a letter to the editor, or at best an op-ed in your local paper -- unless you count mimeograph machines!
So to use the availability of the printing press as the standard for fairness was questionable by the 1980s anyway.

And the average citizen's only access to the airwaves was via Public Access TV (where you might get 11 viewers, including your mother, if you were lucky), or a low-watt community radio station -- if you had one in your area. So the whole argument was bogus.

Three decades after the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, we are reaping the whirlwind.

This interesting summary from the NY Times is worth a look.

[Boomerproud]

3. The scariest thing about RR Superstar was that he was NOT a phony.

He truly believed in his warped worldview and was cheered on and advised by his army of sycophants.

[fiorello]

4. He did much, much more than that

Reagan was the spiritual father of GW Bush and godfather to trump.

Without the Internet and social media, Reagan had to resort to direct statements and innuendo. If he never quite reached the carelessness, nastiness and dishonesty of a Trump twitter, but he came close.

80% of pollution comes from plants and trees.

Plagues of locusts, weed epidemics , etc., etc., why have these been happening? It's because the federal government banned the use of DDT" DDT was a very nasty pesticide-its ban actually improved pest control, as the pests had quickly acquired immunity.)

The percent of your tax dollar taken by the federa government has doubled over the past 20 years. (It had actually increased by 12%.)

And so on.

I need to bring up my memory of "There he goes again: Ronald Reagan's Reign of Error" to remember them. Their summary:

'Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently wrote: “This president is treated by both the press and foreign leaders as if he were a child.” “His occasional ability to retain facts is cited as a triumph when it should, in fact, be a routine occurrence…” '

( https://blog.nader.org/1983/12/02/ronald-reagan-reign-of-error/ )

There were Reagan's signature stories about "welfare queens". (When challenged as total fiction, his press secretary responded: "well, it's a good story. It made the point, didn't it?)

[Scurrilous]

5. K & R

[niyad]

6. k and r