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- Photo, Shutterstock. Helen's Place LLC remembering Ben Franklin and his quest for good moral character and perfection.
Helen’s Place LLC, Update: June 14, 2024
Over a slow erosion of American values since 1987, many Americans have come to believe that we should get rid of any information that’s personally hard to accept, and instead believe, say and do whatever we want to without limits.
But it’s possible to remember a time when Americans knew that living without respect for others – including lying or repeating lies – was unacceptable. Telling the truth was valued, and Americans worked hard to improve their character through self-reflection and constructive action.
Benjamin Franklin, the Age of Enlightenment and Scientific Method
One of the greatest examples of a self-improver, was Benjamin Franklin. He rejected the religion he’d grown up with due to its harsh Christian dogma, but believed that without moral rules to live by chaos would follow. So he created a system to perfect his character which he called the Thirteen virtues.
After devising his system for self-improvement, Franklin set-out on a quest to learn as much as possible about the known world, and began inventing things along the way.
In doing so, he became a key player in the Age of Enlightenment – where humans explored the physical world and at the same time made discoveries in science, medicine and mathematics. Art, music and the great ideas of writers and philosophers proliferated during his time.
But at the root of everything Franklin accomplished, was a desire to be a good human being and benefit society.
This is why he gave his discoveries – patent-free, to the world, including his invention of the lightning rod after proving that lightning was a form of electricity.
According to Phillip Greenwalt, “One of the better-known disciples of Enlightenment principles in America was Benjamin Franklin. In his writings, Franklin reflected on the way people view their own responsibility, how they are better themselves as individuals, and scientific experimentation.”
The Scientific Method Franklin used, popularized by Francis Bacon, meant that before declaring that a theory was true, experiments had to be conducted. They required rigorous testing and fact checking to validate and prove the theory. It was expected that educated people often had telescopes and instruments for conducting research.
A person could expect to get ridiculed for making up facts – therefore ethical conduct was required to honestly report findings.
Franklin helped craft American independence and worked to secure America’s freedom from Britain. He knew that democracy works by remaining in balance through checks and balance rules. Allowing diverse viewpoints served as a deterrent from lying.
The Fairness Doctrine History
It makes sense that in the U.S., high moral standards still existed during the time that radio and television were invented and regulations established to make their use fair for all Americans.
This explains why The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) worked hard to establish the “Fairness Doctrine” to ensure that differing points of view were presented on news programs.
The Fairness Doctrine required radio and T.V. stations to provide equal time to opposing viewpoints. It was in effect from 1949 to 1987.
Then in 1987 The Fairness Doctrine was eliminated during the Reagan Administration for a number of reasons: It was thought to be unsustainable due to the invention and large number of independent cable television networks not under control of the FCC, as government overreach, and as an infringement on 1st Amendment free speech rights.
It was also assumed that The Fairness Doctrine wasn’t necessary anymore because people would adhere to ethical standards and tell the truth on their own.
But the FCC decision was naive and didn’t take into account the reality of how people actually behave without checks and balances – because when people have the opportunity to live in silos with one-sided information reflecting their own self-interests – they do.
What was overlooked was the fact that despite grand ideas and practices carried over from The Age of Enlightenment and scientific community, people never stopped behaving hideously throughout history, including the FCC itself on numerous occasions.
It turns out that people can be incited to immoral conduct including violence by whatever means is deployed by bad actors – with the aid of mob affiliates and propaganda – to influence them.
Unfortunately, the FCC forgot history – including the French Revolution and use of guillotines, our own Civil War, World War I, World War II with gas chambers, and countless atrocities under dictators. These actions occurred alongside advancements in human knowledge.
It appears that in the absence of truthful, respectful, differing viewpoints that keep people honest – chaos follows due to the breakdown of society into tribalism.
This chaos leads to corruption, and corruption presents lots of opportunities for thieves and politicians looking to enrich themselves with money and power.
Then the human reaction to chaos is totally predictable: Dictators take power by promising to stop the chaos and a return to simpler times by enforcing law and order according to their rules.
After people put diabolical leaders in charge because they don’t remember the past, they have to fight to get their freedom back – if they ever can.
Results from the Elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in America
Without good leadership and communication rules, when the Fairness Doctrine ended in 1987, the erosion of American culture and the chaos cycle began.
This problem has since accelerated with the increased use of one-sided radio and T.V., the invention of the internet, and the creation of artificial intelligence (AI) software (available to the masses in 2023 with ChatGPT).
One-sided communications has led to the proliferation of disinformation and spread of misinformation so that many Americans don’t know the truth at all – living in a fake world.
It’s easy to understand how people were manipulated to reach this point, because they tuned in to radio programs, T.V. networks, or social media aps that presented propaganda with few or no facts, and no safeguard alerts to the truth. They also frequently hung-out with only like-minded people who echoed their beliefs.
Today, assuming that what they’re seeing and hearing is legitimate, many people actually don’t care whether a story is true or not.
Many influencers, including neo-fascists, seek to persuade people toward bad conduct.
This conduct includes supporting wannabe and established dictators, hating immigrants, LGBTQ, and people of one political party or another.
And while Americans appear to understand that under the 1st Amendment they can say and do just about anything they want to – many think they’re independent thinkers too – when in fact they’ve fallen victim to mob mentality, and fear mongering. Many don’t realize that they’re parroting diabolical beliefs and talking points.
It’s clear that this psychosis was not supposed to happen in America and didn’t happen overnight. Without checks and balances, the situation simply crept up on American society due to the absence of education and training to be on the lookout for false information and resist it.
Other Evidence of Chaos in America without Fairness Doctrine
Sadly, we can now see the loss of ethical conduct everywhere as society breaks down – from the radio airways to TV networks, our Congress, and the Supreme Court.
Recently for example, the unethical behavior of Supreme Court justices Alito and Thomas showed them using their authority for power and self-enrichment, and not following the code of ethics established by the Supreme Court to police themselves.
Instead, they’ve demonstrated by recent decisions, that their intention is to exploit the law for conservative, political purposes.
Unlike Benjamin Franklin, these justices feel no obligation to protect and preserve the law and higher ideals for democracy and the good of all Americans.
Additionally, mob rule now exists in digital platforms and no longer requires the physical presence of a crowd.
Digital mob rule, can, however, still be organized and people summoned to geographic locations – as occurred when the Jan 06 gathering stormed the U.S. capitol in 2021.
In real time, current events leading up to the 2024 Presidential election, prove that America needs new media rules and laws more than ever to protect our democracy against those trying to destroy it and exploit people for personal gain. Challenges to lies and making people aware of facts and the truth is critical to America’s survival.
Establishing a new fairness doctrine for the digital age – which corrects the problems of the old one – would go a long way to solve the chaos created by eliminating it.
While this is unlikely before the 2024 election, it’s still worth considering.
What a Revised Fairness Doctrine for the Digital Age Might Look Like
At stake is the free United States of America. It’s survival – which requires preventing prejudice and hatred by mob rule, takes more than words.
It takes legal guardrails, and a well-educated citizenry working every day, to preserve and protect our democracy and rule of law.
America cannot stand without stopping dissemination of lies – which is fuel for the right-wing movement.
This is why the key premise of the proposed new FCC “Communications Fairness Rule,” should be:
People’s right to identify whether something is true or not is more important than a person’s right to lie.
Therefore, the new rule would be modernized to center around truth verification, and not equal time to opposing viewpoints as with the old law. Instead, “Trust but verify,” (a saying made famous by Ronald Reagan who eliminated the original Fairness Doctrine), would be the new standard for Americans to follow with the help of new technology including fact checking and labeling tools.
To assist in the verification process, the FCC would be modernized to have oversight of all forms of media, in partnership with Homeland Security and the FBI to ensure that proper labeling of information and fact checking was available to anyone reading or watching.
Bots and hacker disinformation from Russian, China, other countries, and U.S. entities seeking to do Americans harm, including child pornographers, would be identified and taken down.
The new rule would also test for truth, and require people to identify their name, news source and location – when posting communications – or label themselves as “anonymous or unidentified source.”
The new labelling would make it easier for Americans to decide whether the communication was credible or less credible.
If content was partially or totally fabricated – it would be labeled appropriately such as “the information on this station represents the views of this network and may not be factually accurate.”
Individual programs or posts created using AI would require labeling such as: “The content in this post or program was partially or completely created by: AI computer graphics, AI sound clips, or AI generation.”
Action Whether There’s a New Fairness Rule or Not
Yes, it would be helpful to have a new Fairness Communications Rule, but without it we’ll just have to go it alone to fight against the present chaos. American’s have been here before – during the Civil War against slavery, and fighting McCarthyism.
Understanding how we got here again in America, helps put American Culture in perspective. Everyone concerned about the rising chaos can do their part to stop it as follows:
- We can keep in mind that – yes, people have the right to lie under the 1st Amendment, unless sworn to tell the truth in a court of law; but just because we have the right to lie doesn’t mean we should – because lying is wrong.
- We can always challenge people with a version of – “Really – what facts do you have to support that? Or “How do you know that’s true?”
- We can believe that people are inherently good at their core, but that it sometimes takes reminders and prodding to get them to do the right thing. This is why we can set guidelines for our children and/or students to help them tell fact from fiction in what they’re reading and watching.
- We can vote and pick out the best leaders with the highest moral character we can find. This means sometimes choosing between the lesser of two evils.
- We can be vigilant about what we’re reading and watching to ensure that it’s from reliable, fact based sources.
- Most importantly, we can self-check our own moral character – remembering role models like Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and other great leaders, legal minds and historians – to help us do the right thing, and discern what the right thing is.
The bottom line is that we can hold fast to our moral compass directing us to remain in a truthful, fact-based world – regardless of what happens around us. Our virtues will help us survive the chaos with calm resolve as our center of gravity. The fight for truth will require steel.
Related audio/video recording:
Example of one-way non-factual communications without Fairness Doctrine deterrent rules:
Former U.S. President, Donald J. Trump and his son, Don Jr., conducting disinformation campaign in real time via smartphones = directing fabricated information to Trump’s Truth Social platform, and Fox News, and echoed by members of Congress.
This occurred while in the middle of Trump’s N.Y. Hush Money/Election Interference trial underway in the next room of a N.Y. Courthouse.
YouTube, Sky News Australia, May 29, 2024, “Trump and Don Jr sneakily ‘cranking out mean tweets’ in courthouse.”
Other related articles you may be interested in:
Author discusses what was wrong with the old FCC Fairness Doctrine terminated in 1987.
CATO Institute, Paul Matzo, January 30, 2021, “Sordid History of the Fairness Doctrine.”
Article presents a time when advances in human thought were made:
Battlefield Trust, Phillip Greenwalt, “Age of Enlightenment”
Article is about Franklin’s interest in developing moral character through his 13 Virtues.
Helen’s Place LLC, June 12, 2024, “Benjamin Franklin’s Quotes and Meanings: Perfection Quest.”
Helen’s Place LLC is an information and educational materials company celebrating English Language Arts, Cognitive Science and the love of birds.
It’s the maker of printed instructional, educational, and teaching materials for children and adults in the field of English Language Arts and Cognitive Science.
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