Maybe someone said this and I missed it. However, I just finished Ronn Owens book, and according to him, the equal time regulations were abandoned by the FCC years ago.

He was thankful for that. Being a San Francisco Radio talk show host (the Voice of Reason) he would have been in for alot of trouble if he had to follow equal time laws during the recall election as there were 134 candidates at one point. So if he wanted to devote one hour of each day to one of the candidates that had a real chance of winning, he would have to devote an equal hour a day to every single other candidate. Resulting in 130 days of discussing candidates no one was interested in (with the possible exception of the porn star ).

So the concern about equal time and the law is no longer an issue.

Second is the concern about current election law. As I understand it, that law applies to political advertisements, from issue organizations. This, as was Michael Moores Movie, is a "documentary" and not an advertisement.

So, as I understand it, the new election laws would not apply

Next at issues is whether or not the "documentary" is accurate. Well, that is not really an issue. Freedom of speech allows people to say whatever the want without committing liable or slander.

However, Liable and Slander are cases where the injured party must be able to show real damages. Even if there are lies in this "documentary", I think it would be next to impossible to prove in a court of law that this fill cost Senator Kerry the election (assuming he losses).

So this issue really becomes irrelevant as well.


So, should they be allowed to run this "documentary" so close to the election without having to give "equal time" to anyone else? Absolutely, and the law seems to support this.

I for one feel that most election finance laws and especially the recent reform laws are a severe violation of free speech and should be abolished. If they did not exist, chances are there would be plenty of paid for content from a host of sources to follow any "documentary" about any candidate.

The real issue for me here is how corporate interests and political ideologues have hyjacked just about every single major media source in this country. Regardless of where you watch the news or "documentaries" you are getting a slant one way or the other.

It was once considered the responsiblity of the Media to be a watchdog over the government for generations. Yet these days, selfish interests of media companies, news anchors, news magazine hosts, etc, has resulted in this mission being abandoned.

There were always commentators, collumists, and the Opinion and Editorial sections of the News. But News Reporting, was simply reporting what happened. There were Journalistic standards to follow. It appears that virtually every single news organization has abandoned those standards for their own purposes. Some of those purposes are politically motivated, most are financially motivated.

I doubt we can ever inject the media with journalistic standards again. The only way to do it would be to get the majority of their viewers to stop watching and start writing in that they will not watch until the organization starts following such standards again.

However, the vast majority of Americans choose to watch news sources that lean in their personal ideological direction. They do this because most people prefer not to have their beliefs challenged. As a result it is highly unlikely that we could ever get the majority of the viewers of any "news organization" to do this because the slant that organization takes is likely the slant the views agree with.

At issue here is the attempt by the media to manipulate the public. How we address this, would be a great subject for another debate. I for one, can't put my finger on the answer.