A Proposal to (Mostly) Fix Bullshit/Sensationalist News (NO LONGER SUPPORTED)

[Arnox]

EDIT: I figured out this was a pretty bad idea rather early, so nevermind. The original proposal is below though if you still wanna read it.

This is extremely tricky to handle as, you obviously don't want to curb anyone's free speech rights, but I think it's also been proven that the current anarchic system that we have is harming both the public and honest journalists alike. Having thought about this a bit, my proposal would be to institute a certain hour of each day where news sites/stations can broadcast news. Once that hour is up, they can't release any more news stories unless it's an emergency or something otherwise incredibly time-sensitive.

I think that not only would this obviously shut down the bullshit 24/7 news cycle, it would also take pressure off of journalists to get a story out as soon as possible. There's generally no longer a need to have to make a decision between accuracy and speed. Of course, this isn't going to eliminate every terrible news story out there, nor is it going to completely eliminate the pressure to get a story out, but it should at least curb it down to a much more manageable level.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

Not only would that be limiting the press and free speech, but it wouldn't accomplish anything either. It doesn't address any of the real issues. Also, any given hour would be a bad one for any other country. Do you want to stay up to midnight while a country across the globe gets it at noon? If every country could chose their own hour, then any press company could just release from a foreign branch.

 

[Arnox]

Not only would that be limiting the press and free speech, but it wouldn't accomplish anything either. It doesn't address any of the real issues. Also, any given hour would be a bad one for any other country. Do you want to stay up to midnight while a country across the globe gets it at noon? If every country could chose their own hour, then any press company could just release from a foreign branch.

I'll admit this is definitely one of the shakier proposals of mine and I'm not really too behind it. With that said, why does one need to stay up at midnight to watch the news? Just watch it when you wake up. The news stations can and should absolutely keep around older stories.

They could release from a foreign branch, but then they're also bound to that hour as well. So if a US news company decides to headquarter in, say, India or something, I don't know, sure, they may be able to get news out earlier in the day, technically. But ideally, each country will try to set an hour that would be most advantageous to every news station in that country. So India is going to set an hour that will prioritize Indian timezones.

I did just think of one very simple thing I should have thought of. News stations headquartering in countries without ANY such legislation. Yeah, nevermind. This idea just doesn't work at all... Well, back to the drawing board for me.

 

[gaijinkaiju]

how do you define news?
what about breaking news/ developing stories?
like vendor says; whats to stop a news company opening up 24 branches across the globe and having each branch at a different hour.
how do you determine what news is more important than other news?
who is determining what news is more important than other news?
do youtubers count as news?
what about podcasts or journos just tweeting news independent of the company they work for?

institute a certain hour of each day where news sites/stations can broadcast news. Once that hour is up, they can't release any more news stories unless it's an emergency or something otherwise incredibly time-sensitive.

sounds like you're trying to reinvent a newspaper

 

[Arnox]

how do you define news?

This is incredibly hard to pin down. Maybe impossible. I guess a working definition though would be any person or group that reports news on an at least somewhat regular basis and earns money off of such. If an entity reports news on its inner goings on though, then that doesn't fall under the restriction. For example, if Coca-Cola released a blog post saying it was changing how it would bottle its own soda, that wouldn't legally qualify as news.

what about breaking news/ developing stories?

Only if it's an emergency.

like vendor says; whats to stop a news company opening up 24 branches across the globe and having each branch at a different hour.

Nothing. As I said though, that's not what one should be worried about. It's that it would be practically impossible to have this law in every country, so it would render the law entirely pointless. It's something I didn't think about and why this proposal fails.

how do you determine what news is more important than other news?

A piece of news can be classed as an emergency if the public would be physically harmed somehow if they did not know it. As a safeguard, I would also probably say in the law that a news company can't profit off of emergency news.

who is determining what news is more important than other news?

The courts. How you measure what counts as emergency news though is pretty objective I'd say with very little wiggle room.

do youtubers count as news?

This, again, goes back to what exactly counts as news in the eyes of this law, but with my definition, unless the YouTuber is making money off the news, no, they do not.

what about podcasts or journos just tweeting news independent of the company they work for?

Same thing. But they must not earn any money from the news or indirectly from the news company they work for in order for it to not qualify legally as news.

 

[Phiwise_]

This would improve the cable news *shows*, but only in the sense of removing the filler. They'd still say everything they do now, whether it's the stuff you like or dislike, they'd just be forced to say it once instead of waffling on for hours. The news as an institution probably wouldn't move much at all as a result, though. All the reasons and incentives to cover what and how they do now are still there.

 

[Signa]

I like your thinking, but I don't think it will help either. The news isn't sick because they are having to try too hard for the news cycle, they are sick because the people writing the articles are sick people with sick motives. Limiting them to a time frame for posting is still going to mean they are posting their sick ideas, but all at once at the determined intervals.

I don't know if the English language is capable of defining through law what news is defined as, but what we actually need is something closer to charging these agencies with incitement. The problem is right now that the "incitement" is divided among so many people over so much time that it doesn't meet the legal definition of it. But it's still incitement.

I remember some time ago Tim Pool outlined it all when explaining how the 3-letter agencies get around a bunch of legal issues in a similar distribution tactic. He made an analogy to a bank robbery, where one person drops a bag on a floor, someone else finds it and takes it to the back room as part of "litter clean up" and then someone else puts money in it, and only the last person who unwittingly carries it out is the one that did anything illegal, even though it was a group effort (I've probably butchered the analogy, but the point should still stand). Same thing has happened with the news and the repeated assassination attempts, where the news keeps saying Trump is a threat, or the next Hitler, but they all stop short of saying that any action needs to be taken. They leave that up to someone else that hears from every angle that something needs to be done, and so they take it upon themselves to act. News media isn't guilty of a crime, but they are still guilty of what transpired.

 

[Houseman]

Same thing has happened with the news and the repeated assassination attempts, where the news keeps saying Trump is a threat, or the next Hitler, but they all stop short of saying that any action needs to be taken. They leave that up to someone else that hears from every angle that something needs to be done, and so they take it upon themselves to act. News media isn't guilty of a crime, but they are still guilty of what transpired.

The left-leaning portion of the media calls it "stochastic terrorism" when people they don't like do it. Of course, they are never guilty of it themselves.

I like the term "hatemongering", which is basically accusing someone of intentions that would justify preemptive violence against them.

 

[Signa]

The left-leaning portion of the media calls it "stochastic terrorism" when people they don't like do it. Of course, they are never guilty of it themselves.

I like the term "hatemongering", which is basically accusing someone of intentions that would justify preemptive violence against them.

Yup. I'm moving away from using that term since I learned it's actually a math term to basically mean random (thanks James Lindsey). It's not random, it's encouraged. The only thing random about it is who commits it.