Changing Channels

C-SPAN's Brian Lamb on how unfiltered reporting and media competition are transforming American politics.

Thomas W. Hazlett from the March 1996 issue

(Page 9 of 9)

Reason: So you're not exercised about this threat of media concentration people talk about.

Lamb: I'm not. I'm not worried at all that Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner or Time Warner or any of these people is going to become too big, as long as there is total deregulation. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Don't put an artificial government [barrier] in the middle of this.

We're going to make it because one thing we know about this country is that it loves diversity. It loves choice.

Reason: What about the current efforts to regulate the Internet?

Lamb: The Internet might turn out to be the most important deregulation of voices in the history of the world, and it's unlimited. It will go forever. If you put restrictions on the Internet, people will get around them. They will figure out ways to send information in code. They'll get around anybody that stands in authority in the middle and says don't do that.

We're better off just having people set by example what they think is right and wrong and putting down obscenity and libel laws when people do go over the line and let it be decided in a court of law. It's clumsy, but having some human being, the czar of the Internet, sit somewhere and decide what is right or wrong, will not work, it will not last, and in the end it will be a waste of time.

Reason: The V-chip is very popular with liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. What do you think about the regulatory measures proposed to deal with violence on television?

Lamb: I wish it would work, but parents have the ultimate responsibility and it's hard for me to know how you're going to determine who judges what's violent.

I don't happen to like violent movies. I don't go to them. But I don't have any children either. When I was being brought up my parents created the environment for me, but they basically left me alone and I had to learn to not like or like things on my own. And no matter how moral they were or no matter what their rules are, today I have a whole different set of rules than what they had.

There's an awful, awful lot that comes out of Hollywood I think is despicable--for example, the Oliver Stone movies as history/entertainment. I don't like what he's done with the movies, so I don't go to them. I worked for Richard Nixon, and we saw what Richard Nixon was all about and the mistakes that he made. I don't need somebody skewing the facts to know that it didn't work out too well for him.

But I am devoted to history, and this network is devoted to history. We like to tell it like it was and like the historians see it, or go back and look at the documents and let you make up your own mind.

However, Oliver Stone should be able to be in business forever. If people want to go watch that stuff, that's their business. Should the government regulate that? Of course not.

Reason: Thank you.