The dissemination of lies

I know, I know. I've completely neglected the blog today, due to circumstances beyond my control. I did, however, spend a great deal of time in the car rushing to and fro, and decided to listen in on the "opposition", specifically Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly's respective radio broadcasts - just to get an idea of what their millions of gullible but loyal fans are being spoon-fed about the major issues of the day.

And now that a few hours have passed and my blood pressure has come down to only mildly life-threatening levels (aided in no small part by my naval friend Captain Morgan and a certain questionable substance useful in the treatment of glaucoma and chemotherapy patients!), my question of the day is this:

Where the hell is the FCC?

Without going into intentionally forgotten detail, I have to admit I was stunned by what I heard. Oh, I expected to ideologically disagree with the two hosts and the right-of-center philosophies I knew they'd espouse. And though a little civility from the moral values crowd would have been nice, five years of being characterized as "traitorous", "hateful", "seditious", and "anti-American" by virtually every angry Conservative mouthpiece has made me, like most Liberals, develop a pretty thick skin to all sorts of hypocritical name-calling. So that honestly didn't bother me either.

But what (almost literally) drove me off the road was the ceaseless repetition of blatantly false information. The misquoted, misleading, misrepresentation of known facts. The willful dissemination of lies.

It occurred to me that while the FCC has specific guidelines "protecting" the nation from the (gasp!) sight of a human nipple or the (horrors!) mention of the word "fuck", guidelines which it vigorously enforces under the current Administration, the Commission apparently has no rule governing the broadcast of things that are simply untrue - at least not one that its current chairman Kevin A. Martin is willing to enforce.

And that I just don't understand.

Now it's one thing if the fabricated facts being fed to an empty-headed public by such influential radio figures have to do with Brad and Jen and Angelina. Those tall tales are regrettable, even repulsive, yet in the scheme of things they don't amount to much. But it's another thing entirely when those falsehoods concern matters of grave importance, and are being used to sway a significant percentage of the population toward unwarranted support of issues with real consequence.

Things like Iraq's "connection" to 9/11. The Social Security "crisis". The torture and indefinite detainment of suspected "enemy combatants". The tenor of the Alito confirmation hearings and the big "crying" scandal. The "imminent threat" of a nuclear Iran - or a non-military San Francisco. The "necessary" wiretapping of American citizens.

Unlike some fraudulent gossip about silly Hollywood celebrities, misinformation on these topics affects the nation in demonstrably harmful ways. Bad legislation is written into law. Civil rights are violated and/or eliminated. Potentially violent divisions in our citizenry are fostered and exacerbated.

Young men and women are needlessly sent to die.

Yet despite the seriousness of the consequences that result from this ongoing litany of misdirection, there seems to be no regulatory body charged with guaranteeing that the information dispersed to the American public is actually based on proven fact, or ensuring that misinformation presented as truth (because of the potential harm that can arise based on said deception) is subject to swift rebuke, prosecution, and punishment.

If only Media Matters were granted some real legal power!

It seems ridiculous to me that the FCC will enthusiastically pursue Howard Stern for some trivial monologue about vaginas, but has no mission to prevent Rush Limbaugh from spreading lies about the FISA Court in an effort to excuse and solidify support for the Bush Administration's illegal surveillance activities. Or to chastise James Dobson for hysterical untruths about same-sex marriage. Or to fine any station that allows Ann Coulter to say anything at all!

The closest relevant FCC regulation is one addressing "Hoaxes" - under which I could probably make a case against the broadcasts I heard today, and have been affronted by in the past. After all, Commission Section 73.1217 states:

This rule prohibits broadcast licensees or permittees from broadcasting false information concerning a crime or a catastrophe if: (1) the licensee knows this information is false; (2) it is foreseeable that broadcast of the information will cause substantial public harm; and (3) broadcast of the information does in fact directly cause substantial public harm.

I suppose it would depend on your definition of "a crime or a catastrophe" or what connotates "public harm." But I think many of us would agree that Administration behavior concerning election tampering, 9/11, Iraq, Plamegate, Katrina, NSA wiretapping, torture, SEC violations, to name a few, might just qualify for those labels. So why, I wonder, isn't the broadcasting of false and misleading information about those items seen as contributing to public harm, and stopped at the source?

We continue to live in a society which seems clearly to have its priorities backwards - and it's getting worse by the minute. Have we as a nation suffered greater harm from a glimpse of Janet Jackson's exposed breast, or from the constant reiteration of lies about Saddam's link to al Qaeda. "We report, you decide" only works if we're all getting the truth. The FCC should be charged with doing more than just protecting us from bad words - it should prevent the insidious spread of false ones as well.