The answer to bad speech is more speech...

Alphecca has some thoughts on media bias. Just to get us started, this Washington Post article takes a look at the problem.

I'm not a lawyer (but I play one on TV) so I really don't know the constitutionality of this modest proposal. It will never be possible to have unbiased reporting on TV, radio, and newspapers but I'd like to suggest a couple of ideas that might help.

I think it neither could, nor would, pass First Amendment scrutiny -- although a court that would neglect to bitchslap the McCain-Feingold campaign reform act into oblivion is rather unpredictable on that score.

If I'm not mistaken, financial planners or commentators in the media are required to disclose if they own any personal stake or stock in a company they are recommending.

Why not require the same disclosure from news reporters. All TV, radio and newspaper reporters would be required at the start of any broadcast or non-op-ed story regarding a political campaign to reveal if they've donated to or campaigned for any political candidate or party.

So Katie and Matt on the Today Show would be required at the top of each broadcast to fess-up to any contributions they've made to Democrats.

The regulations on financial planners are intended to prevent stock manipulation schemes, so that a supposed impartial advisor can't secretly recommend stocks he owns that are otherwise worthless. If I recall my history these laws were put into place after significant abuses.

The difference is benefit: newsreaders don't get any direct financial gain from electing a chosen President. They may well get indirect benefits from their ideology, but you can't point to their bank balance and call it a bribe. It's more subtle than that. Fairly obvious to a politically-aware individual who disagrees with the bias, to be sure, but much harder to prove in court.

Worse, who do you require disclosure from? The newsreaders? The whole production team? The individual reporters with each story? All of the above? Regardless, they'll drop the disclaimers in the credits and no one will notice, because no one needs to hear everyone on camera announcing their biases every 5 minutes. Furthermore, many of the "editorial employees" of news organizations are banned from making political contributions at all -- just as many journalists answer "independent" when asked which party affiliation they have. The illusion of independence is sufficient.

In addition, just as candidates are supposed to be provided with equal time on the airwaves, so too the Today Show (to use an example of a TV network that has badly abused their Democratic bias) would have to provide equal time to movies and books that attack one candidate or another.

So if the Today Show interviews four authors, each of which has anti-Bush books or movies, they would be required to provide similar interviews to authors with anti-Kerry books or movies. In addition, the interviews would have to be of approximately the same length and appear at about the same time of the day.

This proposal is the news-media version of affirmative action quotas. I need hardly explain to my audience why affirmative action is detrimental to the party it purportedly supports: suffice it to say that equal time does not ensure equal treatment.

Consider for example a candidate rocked by scandals over a long political career, competing against an upstart (such as, perhaps, Schwarzenegger) who does not have a long political history. If scandals concerning the established politician are covered heavily, but there are no scandals concerning the new face, is that media bias -- or an accurate reflection of the facts? What if there are verified, substantiated scandals concerning one candidate, but those concerning the otherwise are a partisan hack job made up out of whole cloth?

One of the services we expect journalists to provide is analysis; that is, we ask them to report to us what is important about a particular event, and often to compile a selection of important events for a news report. Bias can express itself in the selection of stories as easily as in their presentation; how can you give equal time to a story which is not reported at all? How can you apply fairness rules to a journalistic judgement about what stories are "news" and what stories aren't worth the time?

Obviously, you can't; it's a judgement call. If you don't like the judgements being made by a news program, you can start your own news program or try to influence the criteria used by the current programs. Viewers will pick which program to watch based on how closely that program's idea of "news" matches their own.

Furthermore, (and folks, I know this is all a silly fantasy that couldn't ever happen...) they would be required to have follow-ups to such "political" authors if conflicting information should be discovered or if the claims by that author are later found to be untrue. Example: The Today Show interviews Joe Wilson several times about his book and his claims that "Bush lied." They would then have to spend an equal amount of time examining the facts brought about by the 9/11 commission refuting Wilson's charges. The same requirements would apply to newspaper coverage including placement of contrary material on the same page number that the original charges were reported on.

And what about charges refutting the original refutation? Equality of advertising dollars to promote the original program versus promoting the refutation?

There are simply too many ways to subtly include bias. Any law that was passed to ensure fair reporting would simply encourage "journalists" to discover new loopholes.

Worse, it would actually damage the truly radical positions -- for example, the Libertarian Party. Will a news program run a report on the Libertarian party if, by equal time laws, they are then required to provide equal time to the Socialists, Communists, or Nazis? Of course not -- they just won't bother reporting on the Libertarians at all. And the Libertarians are the strongest proponents of true liberty today.

Lastly, since none of this could ever happen, why don't Republicans, or at least some conservative groups file lawsuits (take a page from the Democrats here...) and try to show that ABC, CBS, and NBC have NOT lived up to their promise to provide a proper balance to their news shows -- which to my mind says that they are not broadcasting for the good of the communities -- and that their FCC licenses should be revoked. This can't happen at the small affiliate level but certainly the five stations each network owns themselves could be brought under legal fire.

The problem with this is that there's no real legal case for it. You can't simply sue at the drop of a hat; you need to have a cause for action. While I haven't read the enabling statutes and regulations from the FCC, I doubt that "providing a proper balance" to news programming is involved. There are a lot of community-oriented requirements, like maintaining the emergency broadcast system, and there are requirements concerning "decency" that have recently gotten some attention, but political balance in reporting? I don't think those would fly.

You'd have to get an activist judge, and frankly, activist judges tend to be leftist.

And remember, there is a difference between a news show and a talk or political commentary show. If the networks are going to label their broadcasts as "news" then they must meet certain standards of equal time and fairness. And yes, Fox would have to follow the same rules.

Your mention of Fox brings up an important self-interested argument against your proposal. Imagine that the FCC, the agency charged with administering your proposed rules, was staffed with Democrats. Fox would have to follow the same rules, all right -- and end up broadcasting the same sort of biased output as the other networks. Why? Because the other networks would be setting the standard.

You can't have legally mandated "fair and balanced" programming because there is no objective legal standard to determine what the "center" is. The only thing you can do is let people choose what to watch, and encourage alternative media sources for those who don't feel the mainstream media is giving them what they want.