Comments on: Just A Hypothetical Question

By: Ken

Ken — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:39:21 +0000

Of course not. But different networks slant differently. NBC is smug. Fox is defiant and dumb. And so on.

By: Vice Magnet

Vice Magnet — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:17:40 +0000

Fox news is the only media outlet that slants a story? Please tell me you aren't that myopic.

By: RD

RD — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:16:37 +0000

I wonder what distemperate thoughts Ken has shared in private, electronic conversations? WE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW!!!

By: Contracts

Contracts — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:58:41 +0000

"Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" he said. "I mean that, of course, hypothetically."

By: Like a miter soaked in dioxygen difluoride… « Blunt Object

Like a miter soaked in dioxygen difluoride… « Blunt Object — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:25:20 +0000

[...] Just a hypothetical question (Ken) Look, I don’t want to open a can of worms. But here’s my question today: should UCLA fire Jonathan Zasloff for advocating government suppression of speech he doesn’t like? [...]

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:47:26 +0000

Probably not, SPQR. You have to work with it in the original Charles.

By: SPQR

SPQR — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:09:23 +0000

Is there an english language translation of Charles' comment?

By: Jdog

Jdog — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:00:38 +0000

"Well, we could take Woodward and Bernstein out in the woods, strangle them with piano cord, and sodomize their corpses," Nixon said. "But that would be wrong."

By: Charles

Charles — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:22:29 +0000

I think this is all overstated. He's an environmental law prof so I give him a partial pass on Chuck's gotcha on FCC jurisdiction. Let's put that aside and presume that there is – or could be – an analogous governing agency responsible for cable broadcast licenses. (Congress certainly threatens its creation whenever basic cable gets too racy.)

If we turn to his actually question, I thought it was more of a thought experiment about the FCC mandate: if licensees are supposed disseminate news and are instead cash-cow outlets for propaganda distribution, should they be entitled to the "bandwidth." He didn't really make any kind of case that Fox was a lying, scheming propaganda machine – it was assumed among Fox-hating friends that this was the case – and it obviously grows out of an anti-conservative political bias. I also don't think it is a case he can make, given the actual state of cable news across the ideological spectrum.

But if you start from that assumption, and apply it to a hypothetical network that isn't FOX, the question becomes more interesting.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:03:57 +0000

The correct answer to Zasloff's question is that the FCC can't revoke Fox News' broadcast license because Fox News doesn't have a license in the first place -- it's a cable network, and thus not regulated by the FCC. IIRC, we covered that in like the second week of my telecom law class 2L year. So "demonstrated incompetence" it is!

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:41:25 +0000

While we're asking difficult questions, how many licks DOES it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop?

As for Zasloff, firing for "demonstrated incompetence as a law professor by posing non-hypothetical questions any 2L could answer" is such an ugly term.

Couldn't his position simply be defunded? I read somewhere on the internet that California has a deficit problem.