I can’t even count how many hours I’ve spent in the past year arguing about some BS charge, trying to get something repaired under warranty, or even trying to redeem an valid coupon that was sent to me. I’ve reached a point where I’m exhausted in trying to fight these kinds of things but I feel like I can’t just let any of it go. Sometimes I wish I could hire a Karen, it would be 100% worth it.
For a long time, the US actually had something called the “Fairness Doctrine” which required broadcasters to present matters of public interest in a way that was fair. So if you had a guy on a show that said the president was a lizard person, that show also had to have someone on to refute that opinion, or the media company could lose their broadcasting license.
The Fairness Doctrine was repealed by the Reagan Administration in 1987, which immediately resulted in the rise of conservative talk radio, who could say whatever they wanted without having to present the opposing viewpoint, and they didn’t have to worry about losing their license.
The rise of conservative talk radio led to Fox News, which led to the election of Trump.
Interestingly, less than a year after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, a conservative political nonprofit corporation was formed called Citizens United, led by a man named David Bossie. The goal of this organization was (and remains) the creation of media that supports their goals of restoring “traditional American values”, which consists entirely of right-wing documentaries and attack ads.
In 2008, Citizens United made a documentary called “Hillary: The Movie”, which was basically a movie-length attack on Hillary Clinton, who had announced in 2007 that she was going to run for president in 2008.
At the time, there was a law called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which essentially banned any attack ads that name a federal candidate from running within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days from a federal election, if the ad was funded with money from a corporation (including a nonprofit) or union.
The Citizens United nonprofit corporation knew this, and sued the Federal Election Commission, arguing that not being able to show their attack ad was a violation of their constitutional right to free speech, which, very importantly, had only ever been interpreted to apply to human individuals, not corporations.
The Supreme Court was dominated by conservatives in 2010 (and still is), and they ruled that corporations did in fact have free speech protection, that not allowing attack ads funded by corporations that were not required to disclose the source of their funding before elections was a violation of the constitutional rights of corporations, and subsequently nullified the part of the law that prevented Citizens United from showing their attack ad, while also removing almost all limits on the “speech” that corporations could engage in without repercussions and also happened to confer legal “personhood” to corporate entities.
Incidentally, David Bossie (President of Citizens United) resigned from Citizens United in 2016 to take a job as deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.