And since the fox network got lawyers involved to legally secure their right to lie to the american public, what would you assume about their validity as a news source?
The logical fallacy is to assume that just because they secured the "right to lie", that they are going to use it at every opportunity. A similar question might be if someone wanted to lower the drinking age to 18 (if they were, say, 19), that they personally are wanting to go out and drink, or that someone wanting to pass a law for same sex marriage actually wants to get married as a same sex couple. While it is possible that these cases are true, it is also possible that the person has some other reasoning, for instance Freud advocated people have lives of sexual freedom, but he himself was very reserved in that respect in his own life.
Oh yes, and it's also based on a lie (well, loaded question.) Read the rest of my post; Fox didn't sue for a right to lie, they were only appealing a lower court ruling that they had fired an employee wrongfully (read the rest of my post, I'll give a play-by-play of the article.)
Though to your credit, it is a harder fallacy to spot since Human intuition tends to have us think that if someone is working toward something, they have a vested interest in using the outcome one way or another. But yes, Kuhilinar is right. After all, as he used for an example, Al Gore and the 2000 election. Does Gore bringing in the courts indicate that he wants all future elections decided by courts instead of the public? Surely not...although that one has two logical fallacies in it. ^_^
To the subject at hand, I see now, it was a conflict between two different conventions of the Dem party. Eh, I still say it's an act of cowardice, but I see what the conflict was about. Though taken to the logical end, this means Republican candidates should have nothing to do with CNN (which is just as biased as Fox) or MSNBC and that debates should only be on main networks or CSPAN...which is kind of the way it worked out in 2000, I think.
As for the lawsuit, that's like Kulindahr said. When you get lawers involved, things get mucked up. Makes me wonder all the time why 95+% of elected officials are lawers...
This one though:
Andreus said:
you have become a republican apologist
...is a logical fallacy. Attack on the person rather than their arguments. Usually you see this one when someon can't mount a proper defense of their own argument (or proper attack against the opposition's), and so they attack the person or the person's credability instead and conveniently leave the arguments themselves off to the side.
Oh, and to clarify, Fox wasn't fighting for the right to lie to people. Read the article again...CAREFULLY. For those less savy with stuff like this, I'll give you the play-by-play.
A woman and her husband worked for Fox.
As an "investigative team", they prepared a report on Bovine Growth Hormone (BHG).
The Fox network took the report and was ready to run with it.
Fox higher ups (execs and the like, basically lawers that don't do their work in a courtroom) decided they wanted a different, in this case, fallicious report.
Fox network sends the report back and requests the "investigative team" use quotes and such that they know to be fallicious.
The woman and her husband refuse and threaten to tell the FCC. They are fired from Fox.
A few years later, the woman and her husband file a suit AGAINST Fox for being wrongfully fired.
The woman is found to have been wrongfully fired and awarded sum of money. Oddly, though her husband was under the exact same circomstances, the jury did not award him anything and said he wasn't wrongfully fired (at this poine, one should be thinking something along the lines of "WTF??") The jury cited that a news network souldn't be able to spin or lie in reporting public news.
The case is appealed to a higher court by Fox. In a typical appeal system, the higher court is merely supposed to check on if proceedures were proper in the lower court, make sure the judge and lawers didn't do anything screwy, and that the jury did it's job right and wasn't tampered with, ect. At least, that's how it works in Texas. In THIS case, though, since the jury cited a "rule", the court decided to examine that rule by looking in the FCC guidelines.
Either of it's own violition or the request of the Fox lawers (the article doesn't say which), the court decided that the FCC rule on this matter was not of high enough calibur to be considered a law, and ruled in Fox's favor.
The result: The court found that the woman and her husband were not wrongfully fired.
...what the result was not: Fox didn't start the suit, only an appeal. As such,
Fox wasn't sueing or tieing up the courts to GAIN the "right to lie", rather, they were simply appealing a lower ruling that they had fired a woman wrongly and needed to pay her.
What else the result was not: While the ruling has set precident (in the way that court rulings do), it has not cemented a right of the press to lie, nor has it made into law a document that the press may lie. Though some of you may not understand this, courts do not make laws, legislators do. Further, the FCC is more akin to the Executive branch, that is, one that enforces rules rather than makes them (as odd as that sounds.) Neither the Florida nor US Legislatures have passed into law a document that a news network may lie; thus there is no such law, nor is there a "right to lie" (although it's possible that in the future some other court may reference this case as precident.)
So, got it all straight? Let me sum it up:
Fox didn't sue for a right to lie, they appealed a ruling of wrongful job termination.
There is no new law on the books aserting a "right to lie", only court precident, which changes with the seasons.
Now then, if anyone else says that Fox sued for the "right to lie", we all can know that they are either lieing intentionally, or they simply misread the article and are lieing unintentionally, or from their own bias lieing to spin the article in favor of their own views. We done here? Rebuttle anyone? ^_^ Honestly, what would people do without me around to simplify things...
