Florida Appeals Court to FOX News: It is OK to lie!

As it turns out the Florida Court of Appeals ruled that news organisations are not bound by law to truthfully report stories they air.

In a ruling last year, the Florida Court of Appeals awarded 24.3 Billion dollars in damages and compensation to FOX News when it overturned a previous ruling that held FOX News liable in the wrongful termination of two of its employees. The previous ruling stated that two employees were wrongfully terminated when they refused to air a story that FOX News had demanded they alter. The alterations to the story would have taken out facts and replaced then with, well, lies.

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The premise under which the initial ruling was overturned was that the FCCs regulations which state that news organisations must truthfully relay the news is not law and thus not punishable in court when broken.

I find it hard to believe that this story didn’t get more coverage even considering that FOX News had the backing of four of the major players in the news industry.

The implications are huge. No other major media outlet stepped up to publicize this story because it protects them from having to do the right thing and protects their ability to pander to outside influences.

I think this marks the official beginning of an era – an era in which the American people have been told that the media does not have to tell the truth and that 95% of them don’t care or never hear about it.

This is a time when information is key – information is power – yet the information is being delivered by powers who distort and outright change the facts to suit their financial needs.

I’ve not trusted the media since I was a part of it 7 years ago and had a story squashed due to the people in the community it could have upset and this just solidifies my position that the media is no longer an effective source of information. They can report unrefutable facts like a team winning a game or that a plane has in fact crashed into a building because there are many different sources of physical and visual proof to back it up. But on anything less they cannot be trusted.

Outside influences are too much for them to bear. And right off the bat politics comes to mind and stories are coming to light where in Ohio a “terrorism alert” was falsely used to keep watchers out of the quarters where ballots were being counted. In this country any citizen has the right to observe the counting of ballots and a so-called FBI terrorism alert (which the FBI deneies issuing) was used to keep the public (which included the media) away from the counting of ballots. The media accepts the so-called warning and few have questioned it. The major media has thus far stayed away from the story.

Consider scientific stories where media outlets maintain that a “balanced story” must prevail and insist on finding or even creating an opposing viewpoint to create the illusion that a story is in fact fair and impartial.

This is a long article but well worth the read. It really creates doubt as to the effectiveness of major media outlets.

And, not surprisingly, politics shows up in the scientific debate as politicians are some of the highest offenders of scientific fact manipulation because the backing of big industry is the cornerstone of their power. They’ll bow to industry and feed the media biased and wrong facts that the media will accept and probably distort so that it seems fair and balanced or so that it meets the requirments of their shareholders.

I apologize that what started off as a simple post about an incredible story turned into a complete rant about the state of the media and some politics, but this really makes me scared for the future of America as most Americans don’t realize what is going on. Nor do I think they care.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Tagged as: faux news media