About 50 to 70 years ago, the three television networks were required by FCC rules to provide “equal time” to opposing views — when an opinion, especially a deeply-political opinion piece, was aired. There were only three ways to reach that vast and immediate audience, with the impact of color television: ABC, NBC and CBS (and in some more urban locales, there was a PBS affiliate that could be received by over the air broadcast). But even those rules, against the big three, were deemed unconstitutional as Ronald Reagan’s trickle-downers took power. They were tossed, as being antithetical to a free and robust market for ideas. It didn’t help that it was the government — in the guise of the FCC — that was acting, to tell private TV carriers what they must broadcast. Conservatives, essentially everywhere, cheered when the must carry and equal time rules were allowed to lapse.
So — it is with palpable irony, now — that a half-century later, the grown children of those Reagan conservatives in Florida and Texas have passed state LAWS that purport to tell entirely private businesses / social media companies [of which there are now nearly as many (deep double digits), nationwide as there were as to TV, at the very beginning of the cable revolution of the early 1980s] which viewpoints they must carry — or at a minimum, they must provide specific federal court-like adjudications, if the platforms decide to remove any content. [Of course, this is really about being free to use hate speech and lies as political agitprop weapons, in what is effectively a private host’s / person’s living room.]
So — last week we mentioned elsewhere that the Eleventh Circuit had correctly blocked the Florida law. This afternoon, the Texas version, called HB 20 — which had already reached Justice Alito. . . was stopped, dead. Even Alito, in his own dissent from this block admitted that the law at least appeared “facially unconstitutional, under the First Amendment” — as a state government’s attempt to regulate private club speech or silence, based on content. And that is where this will end. But for now, the laws in both Texas and Florida are stayed — they cannot be enforced… until the Supremes get to a full-on merits argument / hearing, and decision.
…Applicants are two trade associations that represent major social media platforms covered by the statute. They challenged the constitutionality of HB20 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, contending, among other things, that the law is facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The court agreed, and it preliminarily enjoined the Texas attorney general from enforcing the statute….
Onward — but if anyone needs a light-house beacon, to guide them to the conclusion, and determine that the GOP has become the anti-business, and anti-freedom party, this would be it.
Two GOP controlled states, both trying to force private companies to carry hate speech (and to force women to carry to term, even in the case of rape or incest). I did not like Reagan, but he certainly is spinning in his grave, at what these frothy nut-jobs try to call a “conservative” agenda. These are… brown-shirts, not conservatives. Out.
नमस्ते
