Farmers Weekly Review

By Nick Reiher

On May 9, 1961, Newton Minow gave his first speech as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to the National Association of Broadcasters.

In it, Minow mourned the death of the “Golden Age of Television,” including such discontinued shows as “Westinghouse Studio One” and “Playhouse 90.” He said “The Twilight Zone” and specials with Fred Astair and Bing Crosby were examples of the relatively few good shows still on the tube.

He offered this suggestion as a way for viewers to see what he was talking about:

“When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better.

“But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland. …”

For his trouble, Minow was mocked by “Gilligan’s Island” executive producer Sherwood Schwartz, who named the ill-fated ship “S.S. Minnow,” because, he said, according to gilligansisle.com, Minow “ruined television.”

As I cruise through the guide on my “Smart TV,” I wonder sometimes what Minow would have thought of “Dr. Pimple Popper.”

But, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have another wasteland that, as vast as it has been before, just got the push to become even vaster.

Last week, the Associated Press and other media reported Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said it’s scrapping its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a Community Notes program written by users similar to the model used by Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

Starting in the U.S., according to the report, Meta will end its fact-checking program with independent third parties. The company said it decided to end the program because expert fact checkers had their own biases and too much content ended up being fact checked.

Instead, the report continued, it will pivot to a Community Notes model that uses crowdsourced fact-checking contributions from users.

So, no more of those annoying notes from the company when we share a meme that has been shown to be misleading or outright false.

Meta said they found too much bias in those cautions. Politicians were thrilled to hear the news. That should tell you something there.

I have been fairly familiar with the First Amendment and its limitations throughout the years. But I had to go back to some constitutional sources to find out if there are any restrictions to what information can be posted on social media, including Facebook.

As I had presumed, having seen some just God-awful lies and false maps to deep rabbit holes filled with printed manure spilling out of the keyboards of people who use various tactics, other than facts, to double, triple and quadruple down on tinfoil-hatted “logic,” there are none.

No restrictions. You can lie like a rug on social media, and you will not be held accountable by law. Some Constitutional scholars say that’s a good thing, because we don’t want government telling us what’s a lie and what isn’t … as if.

Frankly, the lying doesn’t bother me as much as the misleading, which is a more sly way of reducing a complex situation to a case for Dr. Pimple Popper.

“Veterans should be taken care of before immigrants!” “We should take care of Americans before giving our money overseas!”

Never mind that many don’t want to take care of “our own” who are hurting, either. And I don’t recall any Congressional fistfights over taking money away from veterans to give to immigrants.

But, oh, hell, yeah, those posts get people’s blood racing. Here’s something I have started checking: Who is sending these original memes? Sometimes it’s in a foreign language.

Don’t even get me started on AI.

Further, on all types of issues, including pizza and hot dogs, I have noticed alternative spellings – if spelled correctly at all – such as “favour” instead of “favor.”

I would begin to look askance at our neighbors to the north regarding their preference for deep dish and ketchup on hot dogs if that spelling were not consistent with those from other countries learning to use “English.”

I’m not too worried about foreign influence on pizza; even ketchup on hot dogs. But a recent story about Russian and Iran invading our social media system with misinformation led me to ask a few posters if they were denizens of those countries.

The point is, we need to look beyond social media for our “facts.” We need to challenge what we see there even more now, knowing there are people from outside our country trying to stir up things even more than some of those in our country.

Please, please, please … check what you see on social media – anywhere, really – but especially there. Look for the right information; not the one you’re looking for.

Come to the argument loaded with credible facts, and don’t look to “win,” but to learn.

If you accidentally post or repost false or misleading information, delete it and apologize.

And if you’re doing it on purpose, do us a favour and get lost.

Nick Reiher is editor of Farmers Weekly Review.