The broadcast licenses and public bandwidth used by these networks for their various stations, and their affiliates, should be rescinded and instead go to patriot media companies, in order to provide fresh voices and a diversity of opinion, which will provide some balance to the rest of the media landscape.
As Harold Feld (a media rights expert quoted by Vice in 2017) said when critiquing President Trump’s concern about NBC (my emphasis):
“We want the government to act as a referee, and to promote media diversity though things like media ownership rules" (see Why Trump Can't Strip NBC's Broadcast Licenses )
Exactly. Vice’s article further notes:
‘There are grounds for the FCC to revoke a station’s license, but the standard for doing so is very high. For example, repeated violations of FCC rules or the commission of serious crimes might be grounds for losing a license. Feld said that it’s theoretically possible to challenge a license-holder for deliberately misinforming viewers in violation of the FCC’s public interest mandate’
Why is this important to be acted on?
Below I refer to multiple cases of all networks deliberately misinforming viewers over many years. And just yesterday, ‘The View’ of ABC, had this to say about how their party should physically fight against President Trump (the inflammatory words used were not disputed by anyone on the panel, nor by ABC management):
Sunny Hostin (from 2.52 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZELjmobgVuY&t=5s):
“It is very clear that Medicare is on the table [for cuts]. It is very clear that Social Security is on the table. It is very clear that people will die. The baby-boomers, the civil-rights generation, they knew what they had to do - they were willing to fight and die for their rights. This generation of Congress, they are NOT meeting the moment [in the way Hostin wants]. This is an existential crisis.”
The free-to-air TV networks are the main source of education for most adults beyond their formal schooling [see note 1] and as such, they should responsibly perform this vitally important role. An educated public is the cornerstone of democracy, as this is the only way to enable voters to make well-informed decisions.
ABC, CBS, & NBC have disqualified themselves from continuing their decades-long privilege to dominate the public’s airwaves, due to their deliberate subversion of democracy, and their extremist hoaxes which incite fear and anger in their followers, and which impact their followers’ mental health, and manipulates them to vote in ways they wouldn’t otherwise.
The networks have subverted democracy by misinforming and inciting the public over many years with various inflammatory hoaxes, and in more recent years with hoaxes about Russia, the Biden laptop, claims of Nazism, & regularly calling President Trump “Hitler”, among dozens of recent hoaxes detailed by John Nolte of ‘Breitbart’ (see note 2).
Further, the commonly accepted rough estimate is that network TV provided 90% positive stories about Harris, and 90% negative stories about President Trump in the lead up to the 2024 election. Over 4 years, for the Democrat cause generally, this would combine to hundreds of billions of dollars of free assistance to just one side of politics.
The networks’ extremist ‘Nazi/Hitler’ hoaxes on President Trump of course have incited several assassination attempts, beginning with Michael Sandford’s attempt on June 18, 2016.
This ongoing incitement of assassinations is the ultimate subversion of democracy, and if the incitements had been finally successful, they could also have resulted in the destruction of the nation.
The networks, in putting their thumbs on the scale of democracy with positive/negative reporting imbalance, were instrumental in creating an incredible 75,017,613 votes for the incompetent and uncharismatic Harris. (Compared to the charismatic and wildly popular Obama’s highest vote tally of 69,498,516).
And in 2020, many Americans answered in the affirmative to the question of whether they would have changed their vote had they been truthfully informed about the media’s Biden laptop/Russia hoax - and they answered yes in such numbers as would have swung that election away from Biden. (see note 3)
Finally, the networks deprive the general public of ever being aware of President Trump’s most important statements and achievements, and in doing so they create an opposition where none would otherwise exist - an opposition that is often feverishly frightened and stressed out, year after year, due to the networks’ propaganda.
(One recent example - President Trump made a public statement on ‘Truth Social’ about Zelenskyy “He can come back when he is ready for Peace.” This would be an obvious headline in reports on the issue, whether the network owners agreed that the President’s idea of peace was good or not. But viewers never knew of this statement. All they heard was that Zelenskyy was mistreated and bullied by President Trump.)
It is time to include new corporations in the privilege of educating the public - which will provide balance, fresh voices and more diverse opinions across the media landscape.