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The only problem with your assumption is that it is a law that is specifically geared towards media and nothing else. And the thing that you are fearing, which is that government will dominate the media, can only happen when you don't allow a diversity of opinions and that's where we're at now. Many talk radio stations are dominated by one viewpoint that just happens to align with the people who run the government and there is no alternate opinion allowed. That's pretty much what you're talking about in China. In rural areas of America, there are no radio stations at all that have an alternate viewpoint in the entire market. What possible motive could there be for saturating a market with one message and not allowing any other views if it isn't for the goal of brainwashing whole communities of people? The fact that so many people don't even think that there's a problem with presenting one viewpoint 24 hours a day on radio stations and no other is a
frightening thing to me.
----- Original Message ----
From: "Hemstreet, Deborah" <DHemstreet -at- kaydon -dot- com>
To: Diane Brennan <dalaine00 -at- yahoo -dot- com>; Bonnie Granat <bgranat -at- granatedit -dot- com>; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 2:39:59 PM
Subject: RE: marginally on-topic: Question about Fairness doctrine
I think the real problem is the potential for abuse... Beyond
politics...
I think what will happen is that it will cause politics to enter EVERY
aspect of our lives....
Given time and human nature, I can picture a scenario where a politician
felt that the fairness doctrine could be extrapolated to all aspects of
life, advertising, businesses, churches, everything...
We are all pretty much aware of what has happened in other countries. It
starts with a little law "to protect people" and suddenly, it becomes a
dictatorship.
I guess it is politics in a way - but its deeper than that. For example,
how does this impact communication at the professional level?
I'll give you an example. I worked in China for 6 weeks as an "English
Consulant" (typo deliberate - that is what they printed on my
cards...)... A woman gave me a document to review for English. The
problem was that it made no sense to me. So I went to ask her what
certain terminology meant, like the Red Flower Policy, etc. What I came
away with was terms translated into English that ALL Chinese knew what
they meant, but no native English speaker did. So I asked her to
translate what the terms meant. I was told that she was forbidden by the
government to do so.
And so communication and politics entered into professional technical
communication, and I ended up with a very nicely written document in
English that read well, but was absolutely meaningless!
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