So I promised to type this up some time ago, but here are the basics. Several of my friends and I were all sitting around talking about politics. I think it goes without saying that there was a very wide spectrum of political beliefs present, but we, like the populace at large, held a general disgust with the media and its current environment. I think this discussion was timely, because of what has been going on in England recently with FOX news hacking into the phones of several prominent people. The government is holding hearings over a wide range of press abuses from the phone hacking to the paparazzi. Here in the US, there are numerous instances of extremely grievous abuses by Big Media (that includes Fox and all network and cable news) but even newspapers and magazines.
So the challenge lies in the fact, that the first sign of true oppression in a society is when the government moves to shut up or shut down the press. When you have a vibrant or democratic society, they need to find sneakier ways to do it like the “Protect IP” laws recently attempted to pass in Britain, Australia and here in the United States. You can still have an unspoken agreement among the major players that certain stories shall be spun a certain way (cough cough like Occupy Wall Street) but the truth is, I honestly believe in most cases this is simple idiocy, laziness and group think rather than some grand conspiracy.
They’re too incompetent and irresponsible to be in much of a conspiracy.
But how do you hold them responsible? Simply passing a law making certain kinds of behavior illegal is often ineffective, because they will either find clever ways to skirt the rules, or, if the enforcement is effective, then a government will use those enforcement tools to protect itself from embarrassing political stories. The “Official Secrets Act” in the UK, makes the abuses by the DHS in the US look like small potatoes.
So a friend of mine simply suggested the idea that you allow people to request that any footage or notes a media outlet took of them be made public in its entirety, and if they didn’t then they could be sued for damages of libel in a court of law. This is an excellent idea for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it acknowledges that footage taken of an individual should guarantee THEM certain rights, not just the media. It also is an easily objective test. If you film me, I want the entire tape made public. If you won’t do that, you get sued.
That will discourage blatant manipulation which doesn’t carry the original intent of the individual.
Personally, I think we need more than that, but the fact that everyone present could agree on this reform seems like a very good place to start.
