Arpig
Posts: 9930
Joined: 1/3/2006
From: Increasingly further from reality
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quote:
The advantage is that you and I and everyone else may get to exercise their divine right to practice free speech, agree or disagree or even lie. MY problem is trusting the enforcers to decide what their idea of a lie is, and the chilling effect such laws will have on the legitimate practice of political speech. The forms that are truly unacceptable may be adequately dealt with by the use of oppositional free speech or through the slander statutes. How does a news agency lying in any way insure your ability to do so, remember that lying in the media is a halmark of totalitarian regimes the world over....seems to me that it stifles free speech rather than encourages it. As to your problem, well, as I have repeatedly tried to explain, there are no enforcers deciding what a lie is. If a broadcaster is accused of knowingly lying about something (say like O'Reilly claiming a video of a protest in Sacramento was of a protest in Wisconsin), all they have to do is show that they had reason to believe what they broadcast was true at the time they broadcast it. How to do so, welll show the facts and research upon which they based the story. If that research is later shown to be wrong (say like the famous WMDs in Iraq), well the broadcaster is still in the clear unless they continue to broadcast the original story which has since been shown to be untrue.
Its like the stories coming out of Libya...there were reports of Gadaffi using aircraft to attack the protesters, most responsible news agencies reported just that....the fact that there were reports of it happening. Thus they were not claiming to have actual knowledge of it. This morning I saw a CNN report where the reporters claimed they actually saw and filmed such an attack....thus the original news stories have been confirmed.
However, if a broadcaster aired a story about the Israelis actually being the ones making the air attacks (for example), while knowing full well that this wasn't so, well then when called on it, they would simply have to present the evidence they had that is was so. Obviously they couldn't do so, and thus would be penalised, however if they had some sort of credible source for that story, and had reported it by saying that they had reports or claims that it was actually the Israelis, then they wouldn't have to prove that it was the Israelis, they would simply have to show that they had indeed received such reports because they had only reported that they had been told that.
Its a subtle difference, but it is an important one. Political speech is in no way stifled, unless your idea of political speech requires one to lie. Personally my idea of political speech is just the opposite...it is so important that it requires honesty. Opinion, perhaps erroneous opinion, sure, but outright lies told in the full knowledge that they are lies? No thanks!
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RE: Fox News Will Not Be Moving Into Canada After All - 
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The one thing I would gladly have outsourced to any country (no offense meant to Canada), won't be. *shrugs* M
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