Of course, one could counter that the Supreme Court did strike down the Fairness Doctrine, however controversially and disputedly, but that’s not the argument extreme libertarian types are making. They assume their position flows naturally from the First Amendment itself, when there exists a grand tradition of experts in Constitutional law, whose knowledge of the matter would far surpass that of newsgroup ranters, who’d disagree.

As for the nuts and bolts of Charles’ system, I’d agree with it if it set a very basic framework but did not try to get down to the details. For instance, make the incentive a one-time thing, rather than something on a grading scale, which would be doled up at which point a program reaches a certain threshold of perceived legitimacy. There are legal traditions upon which to support such measures. Free speech, for instance, was always more rigidly protected when the speech in question was political in nature. Obviously, this requires the courts to discriminate between what was political and what was not. Along similar lines, the courts could distinguish between, say, promulgation of celebrity gossip and meta-analysis of celebrity gossip.

As I’ve said, though, I remain mostly agnostic on the issue. I don’t buy the argument that only government can infringe upon free speech. By that standard, a child being fed round-the-clock propaganda inside a cult enclave is enjoying lively free speech, whereas if the government intervened it would be tyranny. Since all private power is derivative from government in some way, I think for “freedom from” type rights to have any meaning, government should provide a baseline against which powerful private interests cannot impinge. But many proposals to put the hammer down on fluff news and corporate media seem to rely on something of an expanded Roth test - and I am no fan of the Roth test. Personally, as long as the Internet remains free and it (a) continues to supplant traditional media and (b) produces citizen bloggers who make pundits obsolete, broadcast and cable news can go skinny dip in a pool for all I care.

As far as comparing what Charles has proposed to a Fairness Doctrine, I disagree (leaving aside my viewpoint on the Fairness Doctrine itself). IIRC, the Fairness Doctrine basically said that a broadcaster had to give time to proponents of multiple sides of a given question. But that’s not what Charles is proposing. He’s proposing that the government promote the presentation of substantive content in a news broadcast through various incentives. The Fairness Doctrine, as far as I know, was more of a timing measurement of which side got the most coverage; there was no judgement as to the substantiveness of the coverage, so you could satisfy it by giving equal time to a reasonable person from one side and a whacknut on the other (or at least someone who was not nearly as effective an advocate for their position).

And that’s the point. Having the government judge what’s substantive and what isn’t gets them into the business of interfering with free speech. It enables, even requires, the government to be issuing value judgements on what’s important and what isn’t, what arguments are valid and what are not. But that function belongs to the public, not the government. The government could not help but be self-serving if it had that role. So I don’t accept Charles’ proposition as workable.

I find myself in broad agreement with your remarks on changing high school curricula. As a note, there’s a change being made in the science curricula in some schools in the Chicago ‘burbs. They’ve decided to reverse the presentation of the science subjects. Physics first, then chemistry, then biology. Usually it’s the other way around. The reason for the usual order is that the math needed to teach the associated science subject at a reasonably sophisticated level gets more complex as you progress from biology to chemistry to physics. But physics is more basic; chemistry depends on it, and then biology depends on chemistry. So it makes more sense from the science side to teach physics first. That’s the way I was taught it at MIT; every freshman regardless of major takes two semesters of physics and a semester of biology or chemistry, as well as two semesters of calculus. Then if you’re going to go into chemistry or biology you’ve got the background for the more advanced material, and if you’re going into engineering you have the basic math you need (although you’ll be taking more) and an again basic understanding of the materials you’re working with. I think what they’re doing in these schools is to accelerate the kids’ math in freshman year and even in 8th grade so they’ll have the algebra they need to handle high school physics (which is Newtonian anyway and you can cover the basics in that without calculus).

Charles, what you are proposing is that a) the government will make a value judgement as to what kind of free speech is best for us, and b) take money from us to enforce that judgement. Uk. Double uk. Double-plus un-good.

Or as someone just said on Free Republic, 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.

In effect, what Charles is advocating amounts to a Fairness Doctrine. You could arguments for and against that, but you can hardly argue that it amounts to dystopian government totalitarianism. This country has actually gotten considerably more Orwellian, both our government and our media, in the years since the Fairness Doctrine was repealed. Coincidence? You decide.

fyi, I’m kind of a leaner on the Fairness Doctrine - I’m still on the fence, but my body is pitched forward toward the pro side and my ass is almost off the thing.

I’m all on board with teaching formal logic in high school. Fully in context as a branch of philosophy, it belongs in college, but we can integrate the gist of it into English and Math. English should be broken up into two subjects - literature (reading) and composition (writing), both of which should ideally be compulsory. No more of this horrible mashing of the two with awful “discuss the use of foreshadowing in Romeo and Juliet” type essays. Also, both classes should contain a strong public speaking component.

As for math, I remember taking (and winning) a fair few math contests back in my day, and the problems you encounter there cut very close to pure logic - formal logic and mathematics are close cousins, after all. Most only incidentally involved numbers or calculations, while many involved “Bridges of Prague” type scenarios. Looking back, the high school math departments (I assume equivalence for Canada and the US) had it exactly backwards. Teach everyone the kind of “simple” math that nonetheless compels you to think. Teach math and science specializers complex number planes and Taylor series.

Which is why I spend hundreds of hours a year in Scouting. I’m the last guy you have to lecture on that topic.

But my opinion is based on my observation of the attitudes towards youth sports and education in my area, the Chicago suburbs. Athletic achievement is held in much higher esteem by both the youth and the parents than academic achievement. Parents who will spend $1000’s to buy their kids equipment, register them in travelling teams, hire them private lessons with coaches, spend money transporting their kids from game to game and take hours doing so wouldn’t even think of spending anywhere close to that amount hiring them tutors or having them take extra classes unless as a last resort because the kid is flunking out.

Having teachers teach opposing points of view is a good thing. But I want to give the kids the tools to evaluate those points of view. We seem to spend a lot of time worrying about perceptions, judging things on emotions and how that makes people feel. We need to start emphasizing logic, deduction and inference and how to use them.

As far as getting rid of standardized testing - how would you recommend that it be determined that kids are being effectively educated in reading, writing, math, science and history?

We need to spend some time in American education teaching people how to think; too much of it is spent teaching the kids what to think.

As far as reading and writing skills, I’ll go you one further and extend it to science and math as well. In my estimation, the training of public school teachers concentrates far too much on educational theories and not enough on giving them an education in the subject matter they’re going to teach. You can’t teach what you don’t know.

Then you have to look at what the schools spend their time on. There’s a lot of time that’s not spent on developing these skills. That needs to change.

Finally, there’s the issue of the parents. It’s my experience in the Chicago suburbs that ensuring their kids have a full social and athletic schedule seems rather more important than developing such skills though homework and other study. It’s interesting that Asian parents tend to be a strong contrast to this general trend. I think that this is likely why I see so many Asian kids when I’m interviewing MIT applicants.

I believe that American kids are by and large trained (both in and out of school) to be consumers, not thinkers.

Again, this is a point based purely on anecdotal evidence with methodological problems. But I can’t help but think it’s an important issue.

Or as someone just said on Free Republic, 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.

*thinks*

Whatever it was.

In the broadcast era, a strong case could be made that the news media, using a limited and public resource, owed the viewing public good news programs that were substantive. In the cable era, that case is much much harder to make. There is no realistic limit on the number of channels, and networks and programs with audiences smaller than the hard-news segments that we’d like to see thrive and prosper - as do hard news programs. They just aren’t rammed down the public’s throat; people can watch them, or not, as they like.

For the dwindling population that has broadcast-only, the tax-and-subsidize approach you suggest is very appealing, in a world where I trust the government. I don’t trust the government. Do you?

(Quick stat: as of three years ago, 87% of US households have either cable or satellite TV. I’d bet it’ll be effectively 100% by decade’s end.)

Which leads us to point 3). True, broadcast TV is using public property and thus is a fit subject for governmental regulation. But my guess is that if the government’s regulatory power was exercised in such a fashion it would simply mean that people would either turn to a non-broadcast program or just not watch it at all.

The other thing is, how do you create structures that exempt newscasts from having to make a profit? About the only way that I can think of is to ban commercials from being broadcast during that time period. And even then, an “infotainment” news program will likely lead to a better “lead-in” to their after-news programming than an informational news program would. Then there’s the interesting problem of determining what kind of information is in the public’s interest and which isn’t - something that you very definitely don’t want the government doing.

The problem with the news as presented by TV, radio and newspapers is not the media. It’s the consumers thereof. Trying to force people to do what you think is good for them is rarely effective if they have any viable alternative.

It ran 3 months and failed miserably. People just didn’t watch it. They want their entertainment, they want the TV news to think for them. So, while you say that the TV stations “should” put on more information and less entertainment, TV stations are in fact not in the news business. They are in the business of selling advertising.

Three points, though.

1) Even something that fails miserably, by TV standards, can still have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of viewers, depending on the time slot and the network’s expectations. You can also “fail” by getting decent ratings but bad demographics (for the purpose of selling advertising).

2) Just because one serious newscast failed to get decent ratings, doesn’t prove that it would be impossible for any serious newscast to get decent ratings.

3) We could also change the rules of the game by creating structures which exempt newscasts from having to make a profit. The networks have no legal entitlement to the airwaves; we can and should require them to do some broadcasting in the public interest as a condition of allowing them to use public airwaves.

I agree. However, here in Chicago a test case was run on this very principle. Carol Marin is a very popular TV newscaster in the city. She had a lead role in the (IIRC) Channel 5 (NBC) news. She quit that job after a lot of success in it on principle after the station’s management decided to spice up the newscast by hiring Jerry Springer as a political commentator.

Some time later she managed to convince one of the other major network broadcast stations in Chicago that there was a market for serious TV news in Chicago. They gave her the 6:00 news slot. She produced the show and was the lead anchor. No entertainment news, no fires, no murders, just hard news, political, social and financial. It was a great newscast, packed full of substance and no fluff, no entertainment.

It ran 3 months and failed miserably. People just didn’t watch it. They want their entertainment, they want the TV news to think for them. So, while you say that the TV stations “should” put on more information and less entertainment, TV stations are in fact not in the news business. They are in the business of selling advertising. You can’t blame the TV stations for not trying to sell something people don’t want to buy. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

Ya know, if you people insist on droning on endlessly about this, maybe you could just move the discussion to another thread? Thanks

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