The internet itself is far more to blame than either of the factors you cite. Why? Because it destroyed journalism’s traditional revenue model and in so doing murdered local news. Only the biggest legacy news organizations can still make ends meet through a subscription base, so the result is that everyone else is left churning out bullshit clickbait articles in a competition for views.

“Information wants to be free,” was the mantra of the early internet, and that’s nice as far as it goes, but good journalism is expensive and when we gut the revenue stream of an entire industry, we shouldn’t be surprised that what’s left kind of sucks.

People give the fairness doctrine far too much credit, it only applied to your local over the air news channels. Not cable, and it wouldn’t have applied to the internet.

The Fairness Doctrine only ever existed due to the way the broadcast airwaves were divvied up. It had no bearing on cable’s CNN, etc.

Not sure about the Fairness Doctrine’s role, but it saddens me that people don’t seem to be nearly as aware of the damaging effects of the news cycle anymore. People seem even less aware that getting your news online, or through social media, doesn’t protect you from it either.

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If you’ll excuse the ramble: Years ago when the Tea Party (arguably one of the first big far-right movements in the open) started gaining traction in the US, they held a rally in DC. People were apalled, but to my knowledge there weren’t issues where anti-Tea Party counter protesters were attacking Tea Party members with bike locks or concrete mix in milkshake cups in an attempt to injure Tea Party members. (During the time of antifa and Trump supporter protests/rallies there was shit going around online about how to mix quick dry cement mix with fast food milkshakes to make a slurry that would cause severe chemical burns on people. Not sure if that was real or not.) EDIT: I’ve been informed the concrete milkshake thing wasn’t real.

What did happen was that Comedy Central, who (we know now) had already been planning on holding a joke rally in DC to build hype for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s shows even befoe the Tea Party mess, started pushing online into the groups suggesting a separate counter rally.

The Rally to restore sanity (or to keep fear alive, as Colbert was advertising it satirically) started gaining a ton of traction online. At the least, it was an opportunity for fans of Stewart and Colbert’s shows to come out and have a laugh. At best it was a way to show that the Tea Party didn’t have power and was just a bunch of hot air.

I went to the Comedy Central rally. They made it a fum time with guests like Mythbusters, music, and speeches from Colbert (in character) and Stewart. What impacted me the most was the sheer amount of people. If you have a chance check out the bird’s eye photos of the two rallies. The rally to restore sanity easily outnumbered the Tea Party four times over. Thousands upon thousands of people there with joke picket signs, having a fun time.

Stewart’s closing speech has stuck with me, even now over a decade later. It pains me that it seems that even John Stewart himself seems to have forgotten it, or re-evaluated his stance.

I’ll share some the parts I find particularly important:

I can’t control what people think this was, I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear.

They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times.

And we can have animus and not be enemies.

But unfortunately one our main tools in delineating the two… broke.

The country’s 24 hour politico, pundit, perpetual panic “conflictinator” did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder.

The press could hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus illuminating issues here-to-fore unseen.

Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden unexpected dangerous flaming ants epidemic.

If we amplify everything we hear nothing.

There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats but those titles that must be earned…you must have the resume.

Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers or real bigots and Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez is an insult not only to those people but to racists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate.

Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe not more.

[…]

the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false.

It is us through a fun house mirror and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass shaped like a month old pumpkin and one eyeball.

So why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead, eyeball monster?

If the picture of us were true of course our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable.

Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our constitution, or racists and homophobes who see no ones humanity but their own?

We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is, on the brink of catastrophe, torn by polarizing by hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done.

The truth is we do; we work together to get things done every damn day.

Most American don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives.

Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do.

Often something they do not want to do. But they do it. Impossible things that are only made possible through the little reasonable compromises we all make.

[Image of a packed highway on screen]

Look, look on the screen this is where we are, this is who we are: these cars.

That’s a school teacher probably thinks his taxes are too high, he’s going to work.

There’s another car, a woman with two small kids can’t really think about anything else right now.

There’s another car swinging, I don’t even know if you can see it.

The lady’s in the NRA and loves Oprah. There’s another car an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah.

Another car is a Latino carpenter. Another car a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist Obstetrician. Mormon JZ fan.

But this is us. Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong beliefs and principles they hold dear.

Often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.

And yet these millions of cars must some how find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile long 30 foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river.

Carved by people by the way that I’m sure had their differences.

And they do it, concession by concession, you go then I’ll go, you go then I’ll go, you go then I’ll go.

Oh my god is that an NRA sticker on your car? Is that an Obama sticker on your car? ahh oh that’s ok you go, then I’ll go.

And sure, at some point there’ll be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute; but that individual is rare and he is scorned and not hired as an analyst.

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkenss and back into the light we have to work together.

And the truth is there will always be darkness.

And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the Promised Land, sometimes it’s just New Jersey.

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Time and time again I see people with good intentions effectively saying that “making concessions for those hideous reprehensibles is tacitly supporting them” by allowing a group to have a space to speak, hell sometimes by even allowing a group to exist.

Yes, yes, the tolerance of intolerance paradox and all that. That’s valid and important. My point is that far too often I see people jump the gun.

Go ahead and deplatform people calling for your death. Don’t deplatform them because they don’t think your lifestyle choices aren’t valid/okay, and they are discussing that in a separate space from you.

Make an attempt to ignore them, live and let live, or an honest attempt at discourse in good faith as if you are dealing with other human beings.

Again, not if they are actively calling for the end of your life, but far too often I see people stretch that with “they support ideas that align with people who would deny me my existence” as if there’s some sort of idealogical purity standard we all need to adhere to lest we let the wrong opinions in and taint ourselves by the vaguest of “idealogical association”.

Should we be concerned that the majority of painters are nazis because Hitler liked to paint? Of course fucking not.

Most people are not purely the opinions they espouse online. Often there’s deep layers of nuance left unsaid, personal lived experiences causing them to draw different conclusions from what you think.

The world falls apart if everyone out in real life caused things to come to a screeching halt to shout someone down and call for deplatforming or shunning every time they encountered an opinion they found reprehensible.

I’m guess just tired of the extremism absolutely fucking everywhere. From people with offensice opinions and especially from well meaning people who are motivated by their feelings of righteousness to try and protect themselves and others. People insisting that if you don’t literally use every single opportunity you have to speak out against the wrong of the day, then you are actively supporting that wrong.

Just got a general day to day mood of “Sir, this is a Wendy’s”

Oh? I don’t know about the “fairness doctorine”.