The story of our times is a faint signal obscured by a great deal of noise. Every once in a while a tiny glimmer of truth peeks out. Consider the following article published in The Atlantic: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism. The article lays out a case that Facebook stands poised to deal the death blow to the so-called Fourth Estate, the media apparatus that purports to keep us all informed. Adrienne LaFrance writes:
Zuckerberg uses abstract language in his memo—he wants Facebook to develop “the social infrastructure for community,” he writes—but what he’s really describing is building a media company with classic journalistic goals: The Facebook of the future, he writes, will be “for keeping us safe, for informing us, for civic engagement, and for inclusion of all.”
These functions are, of course, believed to be firmly in the purview of traditional journalism. Everything must be interpreted before consumption. The masses are not smart enough to make up their own minds about what is being said. Journalists are the educated, the connected, the nucleus of society for what is moral and ethical. The edifice creates the civic engagement needed to hold politicians accountable. Even if one commands an empire whose subscriber base is approximately a quarter of the population of the planet, respect must be given. In fact, respect can be demanded unabashedly even from the President of the United States.
It’s also not Zuckerberg’s responsibility to solve a broken business model in journalism.
It is not a problem with journalism in general that is causing papers to fail, it’s just that the traditional revenue stream was captured by usurpers like Facebook.
Is it any wonder that the elite of the Western world are bucking a rising tide of populism? The Internet put every one of us in contact with a great many ideas and the dynamic shifted. No longer do we need to wait until the morning paper is delivered to our door or for film at 11. Old media was slow to adapt and had few enough scruples. New media has practically no scruples whatsoever. The media clamors for recognition, rallying around near-mythical icons of integrity, such as Edward R. Murrow. This is what we were, and still are, or so it goes. It shouts this while the Internet picks all the locks of the gates they’ve long kept, often giving the lie to the narratives that have been constructed. “Information wants to be free” goes the familiar credo in hacker culture.
While the media loses its collective mind over President Trump’s supposedly unfair treatment of it, one ought to take note of his favored tactics. Instead of delivering a carefully constructed speech penned by a team of expert writers, he takes questions unfiltered. Instead of giving the White House press corps an inside track, he uses Twitter to speak to the public directly. Rather than commit solely to edited video interviews, he holds rallies and speaks directly to the people, going so far as to offer the microphone in a symbolic gesture to a random supporter completely unafraid of what the man might say having been given the platform.
Donald Trump is an enemy of the First Amendment, or so we’re told. But that narrative is shattered by simple observation.
Do you have a license for that, sirs?
It’s a trick of language that “the press” referred to by that Amendment has ceased to evoke the image of literal printing presses, which anyone could own, and came to mean the journalistic establishment. In reality, “the press” is the people. It is to be found in the spirit of Ben Franklin’s publishing shop, and in the rogue presses of several other founders, often writing under pen names chosen purely because they believed the ideas were more important than the people speaking them. The press is any one of us daring enough to put thought to paper. LaFrance wrings her hands at the notion that Facebook is going to destroy the press, while failing to acknowledge that Facebook is the press and it always has been. It is, of course, not the only press, nor should it be.
By taking his message directly to the people, President Trump is proving that at some basic level that he understands freedom of the press better than the media establishment who have co-opted the term to refer to themselves. It should not need to be said that this recognition is an endorsement of all of Trump’s views or policies. Alas, in a world gone mad, one must disclaim that engaging with an idea is not the same as accepting it. Each time the journalistic establishment blares, “This is not representative of America”, be sure to answer that audacity with whatever platform you can find. Maybe it’s not, but America can speak for itself, thank you.
Corrected to include omitted lines from original
By taking his message directly to the people, President Trump is proving that at some basic level that he understands freedom of the press better than the media establishment who have co-opted the term to refer to themselves.
This is also how we had Bernie Sanders get as far as he did, and to a lesser extent, Ron Paul’s popularity in the ’08 and ’12 runs. Those old youtube clips of him ranting at his coworkers while they marched on.
A lot of media seem to think that cranking up the shrieking is what’s necessary. Reminds me of the global warming hysterics that figured hysteria would move people to act, when if just moved people to conclude they were hysterical.
OT- I found this article about the leftist bent on sports interesting although lacking self awareness.
https://theringer.com/how-sportswriting-became-a-liberal-profession-dc7123a5caba
Conquest’s Rule of Bureaucracy: Any organization that is not specifically conservative will eventually end up being progressive.
Most of the comments are similarly lacking in self-awareness.
Cue up the obligatory gif of Nelson Muntz pointing and saying “Your medium is dying!”
These people are sorely mistaken if they think this is a winning strategy for … accomplishing anything. I lurk on a number of sports blogs (mostly in the SB Nation universe), and their mods tend to go to great lengths to keep politics out of the discussion. Unless I’m very much mistaken, an awful lot of people dive into sports fandom precisely because it’s a refuge from current events.
Not to mention that sportswriters as a group are maybe the dumbest people alive. If you’re looking for political analyses, you’re better off looking almost literally anywhere else.
What, you don’t want the world shaped by the likes of the powerful intellect of Mitch Albom?!?!?!
Ha ha.
Testing:http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-824ebAZxibk/T-HTm_ne8II/AAAAAAAAAF4/-u6cOkY3ZXc/s400/Nelson+Muntz+-+haha.gif
COMMENTStill a test.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-824ebAZxibk/T-HTm_ne8II/AAAAAAAAAF4/-u6cOkY3ZXc/s400/Nelson+Muntz+-+haha.gif
I’ll just put this here.
Glad to see I’ve not been the only one having this problem
It just seems from a business perspective if you assume half your audience is left or right then there’s no good reason to alienate either half over something that has nothing to do with the content.
It’s like a masturbation addiction, they can’t help pull their dick out in front of everyone even though they know nobody wants to see it.
I think it’s basically a groupthink bubble cultivated among a class of people who spend every waking moment on Twitter.
This is right.
and its not anything that says anything ‘good’ or ‘bad’ about Trump or his silly messages. or populism. what it really says is, “I don’t need you anymore” to the Journalist-gatekeepers.
And that’s something far, far more threatening to entire class of highly-privileged people than Vladamir Putin’s most dastardly, electricity-grid hacking, vital-essence-poisoning, computer-espionage
The meta-narrative here is what everyone else is missing, and which zero-sum here nails = Trump is just a side-effect of the breakdown of media-dominance.
And all the hysteria you hear from the press really has nothing to do with “Trump” the person, or his policies, or anything at all to do with actual governance – its entirely about an entire class of “Narrative Controllers” being faced with the prospect of their own irrelevance.
Better to seem incompetent than impotent.
I think Obama taught us that the last 8 years fairly well.
Speaking of the Dishonest Media, ABC’s evening news’ take on Trump’s Sweden remark was utter bafflement. They get so literal. There was no terrorist attack in Sweden last night, so what could he mean ?? He’s making things up out of whole cloth!
What he actually said: “you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
Here’s a good analysis:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/02/the-silly-sweden-flap.php
What doesn’t help is Trump’s showman’s patter that everything is always happening. He may have had a meeting last week but he “just” had a meeting with someone. Or Frederick Douglas’s reputation is increasing like “right now”. The media is literally taking these pronouncements literally.
Somebody said that the anti-Trumpers take him literally but not seriously, and his supporters take him seriously but not literally. I think that hits it about right.
Yep. These are the same people who didn’t understand Reagan’s “We just outlawed Russia.” joke.
They didn’t want to understand.
Or the historical revisionism of Reagan and the press corp laughing and making jibes when they were first informed of the existence of AIDS, and it was introduced to him as “the gay plague.” Given that he’d only just heard about it, that name for it does sound pretty ridiculous, and obviously he’d have no way of knowing just how bad the symptoms of AIDS are or how highly communicable and devastating to the population the disease is left unchecked.
They gave a very bad disease a stupid nickname and most of the men in the room laughed on impulse.
Of course, the narrative is that Republicans are evil, and that’s where the media took it.
And gays are obviously stupid people with no agency who can’t do anything until the president says the magic word “AIDS”.
Ted,
Tell your avatar picture to stop looking down on me. It’s creeping me out.
One of the most ridiculous things in the 1990s was people blaming Reagan for AIDS. As if he had been promoting gay sex and sharing needles.
This is fantastic content. Thanks.
Walter Krokite signed off with “That’s the way it is.” Can you get any more hubristic?
Dan Blather, Tom Brokejaw, Ted Mopple, and their ilk had control for so long that generations passed them by. They never updated, they never adapted. And thank god because their “journalism” sucked.
Seriously.
I think the disconnect that has been revealed is that “the press” isn’t an organization or even a set of organizations that like to pass themselves off as “THE press” or the media or whatever. It is an activity that anyone can engage in, namely, the distribution of ideas. The internet radically reduced the cost of distributing your ideas; it used to be that when actual printing presses, and later broadcast media, where the way you distributed ideas, there was a fairly fixed number of people who actually owned the means of distribution. Sure, you could rent it from them to print your own pamphlets or self-publish a book, but the rent was also a barrier to entry into the press.
Their desperate attempt to maintain their institutional status as “the press” is seen in the occasional calls for licensing journalists or the media or whatever. But its doomed to failure. In the meantime, the legacy press has to distinguish itself from everyone else “doing press”. Unfortunately, they’ve decided to do so by setting themselves apart by means of class and ideology. The legacy press these days is identified as being “anti-deplorable”. Which is a fine niche in the communications marketplace (hey, let a thousand flowers bloom), but attempting to define this niche as the entirety of the communications marketplace is a road to marginalization.
The big dogs are trying to form some sort of club.
Indeed, there are a pair of missing sentences in the article about where the photo is before “It is to be found”:
I guess that even unsaid, the idea shone through.
I’m silly. They were used in the intro blub on the main page. 😉
That might’ve been my fault. I’m certain I copied instead of cut when I made the blurb, but human error is what it is. I’ll reinsert it now.
Or collaborating with Facebook to ensure that ‘the mob’ only gets exposed to the content that comes from Established Sources ™
And i imagine Facebook, being slightly more savvy than the Journalists who think they’re doing FB a favor… looks carefully at that idea and thinks, “but what if people start ignoring/rejecting *us*?”
IOW, “what if the same thing that is fucking over ‘the media’ rolls over into our sphere?”
The way they covered the election was a giant-mask-slippage. And it hit them across the board. Lefties who rooted for sanders saw it. People on the right see it constantly.
It was so shallow, and so nakedly partisan, and so intellectually bankrupt, and they basically pretended as though they could simply handwave aside their own dishonesty. “Pay no attention to our inept narrative-pumping!”
People in the media seem very slow to recognize what everyone in the business-world has known for over a century; “market credibility” takes a very long time to establish, but is very quickly damaged. When you ‘fuck up’? (think “New Coke”, or the Tylenol-poisoning scandal) you have to IMMEDIATELY rush to address the threat and protect your brand from being permanently damaged.
I think the press has been an effective oligopoly for so long that they’ve never actually seriously considered there to be any potential threat to their role. “The internet is no different than any other media-channel!” (or so they thought) “its just like Radio or TV or paper”. But its not. The internet allows anyone to broadcast, and they underestimated the effect that ‘giving consumers a voice’ would have.
I think they’ve started to realize that the recent rapid decline isn’t just some ‘temporary bad-spell’ while they sort out the best Business Model. Its actually something more serious, and most of them have no fucking backup plan. So they’re just lashing out at everything else and screaming “Fake News!” in desperation, hoping to protect what little they still have.
Part of it is that a lot of journalists got into the racket as a way of saving the world. These guys see themselves not as documenters of history, but heroes who shape it and direct it in the right directions. It’s a sort of self image that encourages one to rationalize acts like misleading people as being justified by the nobility of one’s cause.
It works so long as their audience has no alternative to alert them to the fact they are being manipulated or mislead.
I would like to point at that this is actually the original and natural state of affairs in journalism. They were not originally objective. In the slightest. What they were however was an alternative to the King’s propaganda. I am no journalistic historian but I would surmise this “objectivity” trope (lets be honest, that’s what it is) is not only not original but fairly recent. Say the turn of the 20th century. I could be wrong on that but I do know the first newspapers and “journalists” were slinging more partisan mud than all of MSNBC could muster in a month.
“…they basically pretended as though they could simply handwave aside their own dishonesty.”
You misspelled ‘are pretending’.
Anyone else see Dan Rather nearly lose his shit this morning while interviewing Priebus when the subject of Trump’s dismissal of the establishment press? I will post it in a day or two if it shows up on the Utube.
I cant wait for someone to respond to their panic with “Look, if you dont want to be called a liar then stop telling lies.”
It is compulsive behavior with them. They dont know how not to. All they know how to do is hammer anything and everything to fit a predetermined narrative.
This goes beyond just the journalistic press. Barriers to entry have shattered in the arts as well- gatekeepers like gallery owners, comic publishers, record companies, book and magazine publishers, all have seen their influence and control diminish badly for exactly the same reason.
It’s making it a lot easier to work your way into fame. Youtube stars are drafted into tv shows or movies. Odd Future came outta nowhere. Instagram Model is a phrase.
Legacy media isn’t fond of that, either – see the hit piece by the Wall Street Journal (2.5 million subscribers) on PewDiePie (53 million subscribers)
pretty much. It’s just fantastic to me that if you want to be a journalist you can be. People might not read it, maybe 50 million people a day click on your website. Creating music is the same. no more sending tapes into the local DJ or record label, hoping and praying they open it and like it. You can start publishing directly, and they come to you.
I think there will be gatekeepers but more in the sense of respected reviewers who can identify and curate good content for their customers.
Nice point. All in all, the production and direction of “culture” is very much up for grabs. News, art, the ability for information to reach an audience has decentralized and will continue to do so.
I think the echo chamber and influence of what isn’t even the “Right”, but really “Not Left” was a serious surprise. It produced Trump the President. And the echo chambers of the “Left” didn’t catch on until the eleventh hour, when all they could do was shout “nazis! alt-right! aieeee!”.
Nice article
McMaster for NSA. Excellent choice.
But does he have a McMistress?
Wouldn’t that be a McSubmissive?
Good article. The traditional media has been in the throes of a slow decline now, between erosion of their revenue streams through competition from alternative channels and the fact that their shoddy reporting and in many cases ideological slant have driven away many consumers and even actively turned them against them. Trump correctly identified and is riding a wave of discontent they were heavily responsible for fomenting in the first place. Some media members recognized this in the aftermath of the election, but by and large they are all doubling down on old tactics.
What really is aggravating is that in a time when we really do need reasonable reporting of goings-on, all we are getting is plenty of spin from both sides. The hysteria and dishonesty that characterizes a lot of TDS reporting (Dead Grandmas! Golden showers!) will make Trump nearly bulletproof to any fair consideration of evidence of actual wrongdoing since so many of his supporters or even people are tuning out all the noise.
*even uninvested people
Just wanted to pop in and say thanks to the admins for providing a platform for everyone to flee to. Some days I would get so bored at my desk I was reduced to doing my job.
+ 2 hour “lunch”
Anybody that is on twitter and pays attention could tell you a person like Trump would get elected soon.
What I mean by that is look at who has more followers. Is it the personality or the person reporting on the personalities? Once people of influence realized “hey, I get more followers than the dickhead writing about me. So why the fuck do I need or respect him when he can edit what I say to punish me if I don’t give him what he wants?”
We are witnessing the beginning of the end of traditional media outlets being gatekeepers of news. And how they adapt to wider availability for people to get news directly from sources will determine if legacy outlets like the NYT or WAPo or CBS or whatever will still exist even in any fashion come 2030, if not sooner.
The invented controversy of Infowars supposedly getting press credentials for the White House press corps was particularly delicious. Make something up for clicks and watch the establishment media shit themselves, further driving the fears of the public. It’s damned funny because it’s so obvious that Alex Jones isn’t going to want those credentials. He built his media empire standing outside the system and pissing on it. Why change that formula now?
Hey, this wasn’t the kind of cocktail party I thought I’d be attending!
Zero Sum Game,
I love you and want to have your babies. Great read.
The media has created their bed and are still happily shitting in it. Glibertarians is what I’m gravitating more to. I look forward to seeing more places like this to help spread truth. That and Thicc Thursdays. (HM, I’m at work so my emoji-skills are on the down low…I will make up for it later)
“Each time the journalistic establishment blares, This is not representative of Americ”, be sure to answer that audacity with whatever platform you can find. Maybe it’s not, but America can speak for itself, thank you.”
*Standing ovation*
I copy/pasted and still managed to screw it up.
You need to get greasemonkey if you’re on Firefox and then get monocle. Trshmnstr is the guy to talk to. It is awesome.
I do the vast majority of my posting on mobile. Actually, so far, 100% of it has been on mobile Chrome.
Originally, “the Press” meant printing, and the occupational group with an interest in press freedom was printers like Franklin. Franklin was like a guy who’d make a Web page for you – you brought your manuscript and your money and Franklin would publish your political tract, murder ballad, sermon, or what have you. Franklin also published his own content, but his customers weren’t required to share Franklin’s views.
Newspapers cropped up with their own presses, but the newspapers weren’t necessarily interested in defending The Media – newspapers were generally (with exceptions of course) linked to a political party and they cheered what that party did, even if their party was censoring someone else’s newspapers. If the editor stayed in his party’s good graces he might expect some sweet printing contracts when his party came to power, and that was a bit more important than abstract free expression.
The model of advertising/subscription supported newspapers began arising and this seems to have marked the beginning of a the media as a guild of content providers. Though the Civil War operated generally under the earlier model of Yay Team, with administration papers saying the antiwar press was abusing freedom of the press, the Lincoln administration got so censor-y that in June 1863, 15 papers – basically Horace Greeley’s Tribune and some smaller papers – came from across the political spectrum to call for some form of responsible press freedom.
Gradually a guild feeling among content providers – and they let radio and TV networks join the guild – came to assume that *it* constituted The Press. So as the guild era was ending, surprise, the “campaign finance” law provided special exemptions for the media while censoring others.
Now we have Internet platforms as a new form of printing press, who knows where this is going?
Net Neutrality?
Good piece. The media is threatened in many ways. Their old monopolies or near-monopolies have eroded. The web vastly lowered barriers to entry. Ad revenue is down: Craigslist destroyed the classified ad business. Traditional costs (printing and distribution) are up. And as the MSM got even more leftist, increasing numbers of readers pushed back or went elsewhere.
However, the MSM can still do hardest and best sort of journalism: pieces that are long and deep. If they can do that with at least a semblance of objectivity, they can survive in some form. But will they, if it means going against the leftist narratives they hold so dear? Here’s an example, right in front of their noses:
I have become so numb to the crying and screaming about everything Trump related that I had not even thought about this angle. I am very glad that I found out about this place while getting irritated at the lack of interesting comments at that other place.
I hope that settings can be adjusted to allow trusted commenters like myself (*COUGH*) to post comments with two links without having to go through the moderation queue….
That’s adorable. And no, there are no plans to change the moderation policy for multi-link posts at this time. SP has enough to deal with.
I figured it would reduce the workload in the long run….
SP does not have to shoulder the burden alone. I have a suggestion. We have MANY talented folks who comment here. We should set up a github (or the like, I care not) account and hand out tasks, then folks can merge them when done and SP/Founders don’t have to do anything except review the merge and accept or deny. And i am not just talking about “Site Coding” I mean legal work, accounting type work, moderation work, Just create a bug list and folks can fork any issue they want to tackle.
Just a thought…
p.s. this also means we can all see what is and can get done. If something you want isnt happening…you could make it happen.
God, now i feel like one of those open source evangelicals.
Sure. My intention was to reduce the workload. I doubt if any of the regulars are suddenly going to spam the site with multiple links for AIR JORDAN SNEAKERS or whatever.
And while I am no WordPress expert, I suspect that there is a setting for “Number of links allowed in comments without triggering moderation.” All I am suggesting is changing that setting from “1” to “2”, which should reduce the moderation workload and have no negative side effects.
I get it but an overall “SP is NOT OUR ORPHAN SLAVE….(she is too well nourished)” approach could help. OR, even simpler would be a post about what needs to be done and “send email here” if you want to help. Just sayin, I want to contribute to the success. For god sakes this is all that keeps me politically sane, if I ever was.
This is true. The default is 2 and that’s what they’re going with.
Purty good for not being an expert.
Kindly turn your head when you cough.
For that, I just coughed directly at you.
You should fart in his general direction, too. I tells ya, Papaya, your avatar is exactly how I picture Agile Cyborg. It’s uncanny!
Ha! It’s from the cover of a late 1940s issue of Amazing Stories.
Looks like Milo may be out at Breitbart (after getting disinvited from CPAC). Discussions going on this afternoon, and allegedly multiple senior people ready to walk out if he isn’t shitcanned.
Interesting. He has enough personal following to probably make his own brand.
Where is this rumor being reported?
I don’t know or care much *(despite my long winded post earlier) about the fortunes of Milo or Breitbart… but is the relationship one that actually *matters* very much? I’ve never once read his written stuff there, yet somehow i’ve still managed to sit and listen to him talk for 3 or 4 hours.
Whereas i couldn’t name a single other person who writes for BB to save my life. And i don’t think they’ve ever written anything or broke an interesting story, despite a past nearly-2-years where “their topics” (Trump/Trumpish news) have been front and center in the public mind.
shorter = who cares what they do? they seem disposable to me. seems like they’d just be shooting themselves in the dick.
Speaking of decline of the press. I stopped by HnR a moment ago, and holy fuck. Chapman is insane.
They may as well turn off the lights there and shut down what parts of the servers are actually working.
Reason Magazine’s Greatest Hits of The Past Week
– the fact that Trump denies something automatically raises strong suspicions that it’s true
– When I was in high school, other boys loved to draw penises on everything.
– Disclaimer: I won the organization’s 2016 Alumni of the Year Award.
– Free trade and free migration are, then, the core of the true classical liberal (libertarian) vision as it developed in America in the 20th century: if you don’t understand and embrace them, you don’t understand liberty, and you are not trying to further it.
– cop semen
Wasn’t there something about Patriarchal Umbrellas, or somesuch?
Oh, i skipped that one. I’m sure it had some goodness.
(quickly reads)
its basically about how umbrellas were “empowering” because they shielded individuals from prying eyes,
umbrellas were the ‘hoodie and iphone earbuds’ of the 19th century (and therefore *awesome*). Yay, solipsism!
what was that post yesterday? Kafaktrapping? If I was paying attention I think I got it right…
I don’t get it. I really don’t.
I don’t think it’s TDS going on over at Reason. It’s anti-anti-TDS. If that makes any sense.
I popped in this morning and my first impression was: Two Robbies, a Dalmia and a Chapman, though Shikha was at least not writing about immigration.
I don’t actually mind Robby as much as others here, either, it’s just that he’s not a particularly good writer and you can get all you need out of his articles by reading the headlines. With the comments section whittled down there’s just no incentive to click.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with pondering such hypotheticals, as long as you do it consistently. But did Chapman ever look at Obama and wonder: “If Obama were doing the bidding of the Muslim Brotherhood/Iran/Soros/Bill Ayers, would he be doing anything different from what he has done?”
Someone should ask Chapman is the rumors of him having an Obama look-alike sex doll are true.
That hack and his TDS (dont tell me it’s not a thing) are no small part of the reason I left Reason. That and Suderman’s outrageous mendacity.
“You Can’t Professionalize Unless You Federalize”, ladies and gentlemen:
Bradd Jaffy @BraddJaffy 3h3 hours ago
NBC News sources say there was a security breach at JFK today: 11 people got through unattended security lane, 3 who set off metal detectors
Bradd Jaffy @BraddJaffy 3h3 hours ago
Law enforcement sources tell NBC’s @Tom_Winter that the TSA did not notify police for two hours; could not locate any of the 11 passengers
damn.
They might have been pretty busy fondling four-year-olds to deal with that noise.
Excellent article.
It has been really weird watching the media react like they have. Trump is taking them straight on. It’s almost as if they preferred the deception fed to them over the last 8 to 16 years. The thing about Trump is he doesn’t talk down to or lecture people; and this is getting a response.
Lapdog media. He doesn’t stroke them and hand-feed them as his predecessors did. They hate that.
Instead, he prefers the Kick The Dog trope. Warning: TvTropes. I disclaim any responsibility for whatever happens to your evening.
I am late to the thread.
Two things:
1. “The Facebook of the future, he writes, will be “for keeping us safe”
No, thank you.
2. Zero Sum Game just knocked one out of the park.
*Revises list of favorite commenters/contributors*
I apologize if this late post is a tad…necrophiliac…but I just remembered something relevant to the guild-privilege view of “the press” which the media holds.
I learned when I was studying the Fairness Doctrine (RIP) that the Solicitor General of the U.S., Archibald Cox, specifically assured the Supreme Court in the 1960s that the Doctrine would not be used to attack the big TV and radio networks. The case was about a local radio station which “unfairly” broadcast lots of criticism of the Democrats leading up the the 1964 election, and the criticism was from some right-wing minister without guild credentials. The Supreme Court upheld the Fairness Doctrine. Later – surprise! – it turned out that this case was part of a campaign by the Johnson administration to shut down right-wing broadcasters by harassing them with fairness complaints.
The only serious attempt at a Fairness-Doctrine assault on the networks came under Nixon, but he resigned under threat of impeachment (thanks to the investigations of Archibald Cox, which if I were a conspiracy theorist I would consider significant).
So the networks thought they were a privileged guild and they were by definition fair, so the Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t be used to shut *them* down, duh.