Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: ejdrapes
I presume that the BBC isn't going to be summoned to explain it's pro-saddam agenda throughout the war, bloody Red bastards.
2 posted on 05/08/2003 3:43:14 AM PDT by Big Bad Bob (Syria, Iran, North Korea, France, Germany, Russia - The Hall of Shame)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: Big Bad Bob
my thoughts exactly
4 posted on 05/08/2003 3:45:30 AM PDT by Texas_Jarhead
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

To: Big Bad Bob; Texas_Jarhead
Section 3 of the commission's programme code says it must ensure "due impartiality is preserved on the part of the person providing the service as respects matters of political or industrial controversy or relating to current public policy".
The elegance of the First Amendment lies in its intent to exclude the government entirely from any role in deciding who is objective and who is not. Since nobody can know--let alone tell--all of the truth, and since "Half the truth can be a very big lie" (Churchill), absence of bias is an unprovable negative.

And the examples of the BBC and our own NPR illustrate that government ownership is a long way from a guarantee of objectivity. Indeed if the government is the judge of who is objective, we know that it will define eternal incumbency as the de facto standard of "objectivity."

It is patent that government licensing/censorship actually creates broadcasting as we know it; without it there would be a free-for-all in which reception of a given broadcast would be at the mercy of those who might intentionally jam it. But is that worse in principle than the a priori censorship imposed by the government on all who wish to transmit but are forbidden by the licensing agency to do so?


16 posted on 05/08/2003 5:24:26 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

To: Big Bad Bob
Exactly. There's a reason that Pacifica left wing radio has taken to airing BBC news broadcasts twice an hour 24-hours a day.
34 posted on 05/08/2003 12:43:00 PM PDT by weegee (NO BLOOD FOR RATINGS: CNN let human beings be tortured and killed to keep their Baghdad bureau open)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson