Yes, the UK’s Ofcom has more regulatory power than the USA’s FCC; no, Ofcom is not ‘the government’.

Also, worth noting that the FCC has investigated and fined everyone from Howard Stern to CBS for Janet Jackson’s ‘wardrobe malfunction’.
Also, until 1987, the FCC enforced the Fairness Doctrine, backed by the courts: “In 1969 the United States Supreme Court, in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, upheld the FCC's general right to enforce the fairness doctrine where channels were limited.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairn…
But @jaketapper is right to highlight the very different media regulatory - and cultural! - environments in the US and UK media right now.

I just personally think it’s more complicated than ‘freedom’ or ‘First Amendment’.
Also worth pointing out that, according to Reporters Without Borders’ annual World Press Freedom Index, the UK is at 35, and the US is at 45.

The heavily-regulated Nordic countries take the top 4 spots.

rsf.org/en/ranking

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More from @mehdirhasan

19 Feb
"This [Texas] disaster, this crisis, has helped to reveal that, these days, the United States is less superpower & more failed state. That's what we'd call another country going through what we're going through."

From my @MehdiHasanShow monologue tonight:
"Is [American] exceptionalism that we are now exceptionally bad at handling crises? Exceptionally inept when it comes to basic governance?"

My 'failed state' opening monologue, on the Texas crisis and beyond, from the start of the @MehdiHasanShow tonight:
Impeachment. Insurrection. Half a million Covid deaths. Lack of universal healthcare. Mass shootings. Crumbling bridges. Shoddy roads.

Is America a failed state?

My post-Texas opening monologue tonight on the @MehdiHasanShow:
Read 4 tweets
20 Jan
I love how people think this is some great ‘own’ or ‘gotcha’ of my tweet.

So Obama being the first black president wasn’t worth celebrating even though he droned innocents?

Or is the new rule that only south Asians should never acknowledge their heritage or achievements?
Pretty sure I’ll be holding this administration to account on foreign policy more than most of the armchair generals on Twitter, but it doesn’t mean I can’t also acknowledge history and culture today.

Some of us can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Others just want to pose.
But apparently acknowledging that something historic happened today, and that the new Vice President of America eats idlis, now means I support drone strikes.

Hey, who knew?

You got me!
Read 4 tweets
16 Jan
*THREAD*
Last night, on the @MehdiHasanShow, I gave my top 5 reasons why I believe the far right domestic terror threat is more dangerous than even Al Qaeda after 9/11.

At number 5:

Al Qaeda didn't have cable news channels endorsing its world view.
At number 4:

Al Qaeda didn't have the president of the United States or his daughter inciting them, or praising them during the attacks as "special people" and "American Patriots":
At number 3:

Al Qaeda wasn't umbilically connected to the U.S. conservative moment and the GOP; didn't have sympathizers in the House GOP caucus who spoke at its rallies and offered cover for them.
Read 5 tweets
16 Jan
I see the @KellyannePolls rehabilitation tour continues, with the aid of @RealTimers and @billmaher tonight.

Some of the audience cheered her entrance.

A 12-minute interview in which Maher mentioned the close to 400,000 dead Americans on her and her boss's watch... zero times.
Bill Maher, interviewing Kellyanne Conway tonight, didn't bring up any of her 100s of lies from the past 4 years.

He did however wish her a happy birthday, thanked her for picking him, and he thanked Trump for (defying international law) and moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
Clarification: I missed this, but this did happen *in passing* but doesn't count as an actual Covid question or holding of account:

Conway: “I mean, you can’t deny that many people are better off.”

Maher: “Well, they’re not better off now! A lot of them are dead.”
Read 4 tweets
12 Jan
"Too many in the media bottled it. At some point we have to own this. Donald Trump and his mob succeeded in getting this far because we, the media, failed. We failed you."

I have been waiting four long years to say this. It's important.

Pls watch/share:
"Many of us in the media have rightly been rightly slamming Republicans..for enabling the worst excesses of Trump. What we haven't done is taken a long hard look at ourselves, our own role in enabling him."

My mini-rant on the #mediafail of the Trump era:
"The sad reality is that a lot of black and brown voices in the media...we were calling out Trump long before others...and without much support from our peers...the U.S. media has been too white, for too long."

My mini-rant on the @MehdiHasanShow tonight:
Read 4 tweets
4 Jan
From trump's opening lines, very first remarks, in the 1-hour call is this

"We won very substantially in Georgia. You even see it by rally size, frankly. We’d be getting 25-30,000 people a rally, and the competition would get less than 100 people. And it never made sense."

Lol.
"You know, every single state, we won every state. We won every statehouse in the country. We held the Senate, which is shocking to people," Trump says on the call, not realizing how much this undermines his own argument of rigging by the Dems.
It's kinda astonishing just how many times Trump does his 'people are saying' 'people tell me' BS routine to Raffensperger on the call. Someone who
s been in as many court cases, on both sides, as Trump still doesn't get his unnamed 'people say' literally has no value whatsoever?
Read 10 tweets

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