The Death of Discourse

I would say that the primary cause
Of the death of discourse, was the ending of the “Fairness Doctrine” which basically allowed those who leased various portions of the airwaves to only allow the point of view of those who leased portions of the radio and television spectrum to be broadcast, and those with views that contradicted them to contradict them in the same place.

This largely was the result of the assertion that those who leased access to the airwaves were purchasing ownership rights to them rather than their being allowed to utilize somthing owned by the public for the public good.

This interpretation flies in the face of almost a century of law regarding the nature this medium. Regulation of the television and radio spectrum became necessary because if anyone could broadcast on any frequency they wanted to at any time and at any particular signal strength, no telecommunications would be possible at all. It would also be possible for one person to completely jam broadcasts they did not agree with so an internation convention was created to govern the rules under which television and radio operators could transmit.

In the 1980’s the United States decided it was not going to abide by portion of these regulations which also required that the all broadcasters were being given the right to use these forms of transmission as a public trust, rather than as a completely private medium.

Television companies, and radio stations do not own the airwaves they broadcast over. National governments do.

There have been other instances in which governments have prevented free discourse over television and radio, and now satellite communications. While the clearest case of this was the sort of radio and television programming that was allowed in the Soviet Union, where dissident opinions were not allowed access, there is little difference between the Soviet method of killing discourse, and the free market methods, where a small number of people with a particular political agenda buy up the majority of stations in given markets, stations with the right to broadcast high wattage signals, that can cover an entire state, and often have multi state ranges, leaving only low watt signals that must get off the air by sundown to prevent them from interfering with the high powered stations at night. This applies to radio, but also has implications for television. It really does not matter whether discourse is controlled by a totalitarian state, or a totalitarian market, the end result is the same. The situation in the United States is that large, single interest ownership has created a situation not all that different than existed in totalitarian states. If one corporation, or a small number of corporations controls what can be said on any particular medium, what exists is not discourse, but propaganda.

Alternative opinions are primarily broadcast using smaller local stations in some cases using the low powered stations that do not require licensing at all.