Another Question for all of you.

[silveradept]

Many thanks for your responses to my previous questions about making meaning for oneself in a cosmic world that produces no external justifications.

This is not about cosmic issues. It's about something completely different.

As you well know, I follow politics, sometimes with zeal, sometimes with snark, occasionally with snarls.

However, having also watched several improv comedy shows here and there, the two mixed. Weirdly.

So, the following question:

What would the state of discourse be if every time someone who the population relies on to be honest, like a politician or a journalist/commentator, were subjected to a bleep censor every time they uttered a demonstrably false statement?

I'm not sure whether the bleep censor would just be over the part of the statement that made it untrue, like bleeping a "not" or a figure that's incorrect, or whether the entire statement would simply be bleeped out. I think bleeping the words would make things much more interesting. In print, a direct quote would have the redaction bar over the offending part of the statement.

I'm sure there would be accusations of media bias as to when the bleep censor was applied and to whom.

And there would have to be an allowance for live programs, as one cannot fact-check a speech in the middle of it sufficiently to apply the censor to anything novel. By the time the media programs start playing clips, though, they should be fact-checked enough to apply the filter.

I don't know which way things would go - whether there would be actual honesty in politics, the weaseling would get to a point where nothing could be demonstrated to be untrue, or whether we would have major speeches that could only be heard live, as any replay would simply be a rather long application of the bleep censor.

What do you all think?

Comments

[tuzemi]

I don't think politics would get any more honest, but rather people would find ways to either corrupt the bleepers or end-user news channels (e.g. Fox) would just flout the system and start bleeping demonstrably true statements from not-batshit-insane people. And thanks to the Moral Majority / Christian Coalition / Tea Party, the line between politics and religion is gone so the bleepers would have to start operating on the 700 Club too, and people would be mighty upset when things like the story Genesis or Noah's Ark (which are taught as literally true) have to be bleeped out since we know from science that those events did not happen.

[silveradept]

I suspect that the Bleep Wars would become part of the politics, with everyone accusing everyone else of bias against them. Knowing a Republican government, they'd swiftly carve out an exception for Christians to say whatever they want in relation to their mythos while bleeping others. I don't know how far the control would extend - maybe networks that carry the 700 Club could successfully argue that nobody expects a televangelist to tell the truth all the time, and so they could sail through relatively unscathed (unless they said something flatly false about world events, maybe.)

There's a lot left vague and unknown in how I phrased the question. I hadn't considered the possibility of religious programming being bleeped.

[hebinekohime]

A subtitle disclaimer (footnote if print) would be a better and more interesting choice, imho.

[silveradept]

Oh? How so, and what did you have in mind as how they would be formatted/displayed?

[hebinekohime]

You could display them like a regular subtitle; a caption at the bottom of the screen, which would give a correction or needed qualification to the statement.

I realize it's purely hypothetical, but if you were to regulate politicians lying over the airwaves then successfully disproving the lie would be more effective than bleeping it. You can't ever filter out all of the noise, but you can give people the information and hope that they use it.

[silveradept]

That sounds like a pretty good way of going about things - disproving the lie makes sense - but if it were displayed at the bottom of the screen, where "news tickers" and the like go, wouldn't that be lost in the noise i nplaces where it really needs to stand out?

[hebinekohime]

Well, they'd have to be legibly displayed and about as large as conventional subtitles (as opposed to, say, the disclaimers on pharmaceutical ads).

[silveradept]

True, but that's still noise potential, considering that there are tickers and other things that are about the same size running on a lot of networks these days. Maybe they'll have to be disclaimed at the top to be noticed or something. Or right in the middle of the screen, where they can't be discounted.

[sethimothy.livejournal.com]

A man should be able to say what he will, and be held accountable, no matter how much of a lie they might be. Furthermore, no amount of blur or censor will stop those words from being spoken, or being meant; meanwhile, "demonstrably false" isn't an entirely easy line to draw especially in politics and social issues and I'd be worried such censorship could be taken further.

Better to let an honest man have the chance to tell a lie than to censor liars from telling what might be the truth, in my opinion, and a censor bar is the same as taking those words from their mouth.

[silveradept]

I thought "demonstrably false" would be vague enough to have been included in legislation and flexible enough to be applied in those kinds of situations based on who was applying. I don't think it's a good idea to have applied, for those reasons and others, but just because it's not a good idea doesn't mean we can't speculate how things would be different.

I think I follow the line that says the easiest way to discredit someone's point of view is to let them talk about it as much as they want and provide persuasive counter-arguments. Censoring only makes it seem like they have a point.

[scribe-of-stars.livejournal.com]

In this day and age, who would control such a tool of censorship? Who would control what people would consider "true" or "false"? Undoubtedly a corporate entity would, just as they control everything else. This system, intended to protect "the truth," would serve only to condition the public to believe that only those statements defending corporate actions have any truth to them; they would think this by default, as anyone and anything anti-corporate would find themselves on the receiving end of the bleep button...unless the information threatened a media parent's rival, of course.

[silveradept]

The system of control is something I left out, but something I did think of. I can imagine Fox and MSNBC sniping at each other, for example, on how they applied the bleep censor, if it were left up to the individual networks. If it were an FCC thing, that would probably be a large and contentious issue whenever appointments came up.

I think exploring who controls it, corporate or government, is a worthwhile thought and helps to shape what you see the possible end product as. Well said.

[scribe-of-stars.livejournal.com]

corporate or government

When you have corporations financing most Congressional and all Presidential candidates in their attempts to win or remain in office, I don't see the difference.

[silveradept]

In Our World Today, that's so very true. In an alternate world where the censor was applied earlier on, what might things have been?