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September 15, 2004
Congress and CBS: A Bad Mix
I suppose this was inevitable. If there's a chance to gain some publicity, some politician will try to take advantage of it, and Representative Chris Cox (R-CA) has decided that CBS's refusal to back down from its almost-certainly forged documents calls for Congressional intervention. I can think of no worse outcome to this episode than for Congress to get involved.
Freedom of speech has already taken a pretty solid beating of late, what with McCain-Feingold. Congress going after CBS could top even that, though. While the first amendment doesn't protect lies, Congress is not the body to make a decision on whether or not CBS is lying or stupid (or even correct). If Congress gets involved, how chilling could that be on future reporting? I don't know, but I don't want to find out, either. Once Congress grants itself the power to regulate the press on the suspicion they're not telling the truth, where does it end? That's precisely the kind of situation the first amendment was written to prevent.
Even if CBS did set out to mislead people, people have the right to try and mislead. One of the missions of the press is supposed to be demonstrating when people try to mislead. That is not the purpose of Congress. Representative Cox needs to stop talking nonsense and let this issue work itself out on its own.
Posted at September 15, 2004 06:30 PM
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Tracked on September 16, 2004 10:17 AM
Andrew,
I agree with you on the free speech point, but unless we get rid of TV station licenses, there are plenty of good reasons for Congress to look at this. Also the FCC, which has in the past revoked licenses for "unrealated" wrongful activities.
Be interesting to see how it plays out.
Posted by: Oscar at September 15, 2004 08:01 PM
Ahhh... Andrew, you linked to yourself there, and your last paragraph makes no sense. "Even if CBS did set out to mislead people, people have the right to try and mislead. One of the missions of the press is supposed to be demonstrating when people try to mislead." Uh -- whaaa? Okay, sure, people -- as in, individuals -- have as much right to lie as anyone. But the press -- yes, the press must search out the truth. But what do we do when the press lies??? And they use a license issued by the government to do it with? Who are we to turn to for justice, our clergymen?
I don't know if Congress should go after CBS yet. But if they keep on lying, and these lies (as usually happens) uncovers an even deeper fabric of lies going back maybe years -- what should be done then? Is there some sort of point where the official justice branch of the government gets to do something? It's one thing to say "boycott CBS" (I do, I didn't watch any of the shows and I will never watch CBS again unless they at the very least issue a huge mea culpa) but what if this has little effect, or the wrong effect (Rather and crew dig in their heels and claim that the moon is too made of green cheese it's just the government suppressed that discovery because it's the green cheese of immortality and they don't want us to have any of it -- or in other words, just keep making shit up because they hate the Bushittlaaaar and want John Kerry in office because he has better hair) -- what are we to do? Just put up with it like we have all the years pre-blog?
Posted by: Andrea Harris at September 15, 2004 08:19 PM
Link fixed, thanks Andrea.
If the situation were to get as bad as you describe and there was no other way to deal with it, then I might endorse Congressional involvement (and Oscar, I realize that Congress can do this, I just don't think that they should). But I would like to believe that we'll see a correction made by the public to the evidence that CBS is no longer a reliable network. Let's give that a shot before Congress jumps in (and probably makes the mess worse than ever, given Congress' batting average).
Posted by: Andrew at September 15, 2004 08:40 PM
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