Mark Cuban has an idea of how to lower the level of partisanship in the country today: Have the government make a law mandating fact-checks on news opinion.
The billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks and star of ABC’s hit show Shark Tank, tweeted about the sweeping and likely unconstitutional changes he would like to see on Sunday night.
Any politician that says they will push for a law that says no tv or streaming network can brand,market or name themselves a News Network unless the 6 most viewed hours of every night is >80% fact checked news and opinion is clearly labeled as opinion only, gets my vote
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 4, 2019
When asked who would do the fact-checking, Cuban said other journalists should do it:
Peer review ? News reporters will hold each other accountable. Sure there will be misses and issues ,but it works fairly well in other originated content industries and would certainly be an improvement over now and In the case of news, reporters accuracy is career impacting
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 4, 2019
What Cuban is describing here is weaponizing the mainstream media establishment against conservative media. One would imagine it would take the hypothetical “journalist monitors” about eight minutes before they ruled that Fox News’ entire prime time lineup was in flagrant violation of the “opinion mandate.” Thus leading to the entirely predictable scenario where the peer review journalists rule that the only way Fox can stay in business is if they re-hire Shepard Smith, and let him anchor all prime time hours.
The fun the left would have with this new rule would then result in companion legislation stretching to blogs and websites, where other conservative or right-leaning publications would suffer a similar fate.
Still, despite the absurdity of Cuban’s proposal, it’s probably only a matter of time before a major 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful picks up the idea and runs with it.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn
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