“We won’t be signing off until the world ends,” Ted Turner said in 1980, just before the launch of his latest media venture. “We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event.”

Turner died on May 6 at 87. The world hasn’t ended yet, nor has his project, Cable News Network, but the latter changed the former in a big way.

If you’re too young to remember the pre-CNN era, trying to describe it feels like pulling a fish out of water and showing it a non-aquatic landscape:

On television, “the news” was generally broadcast twice a day, morning and evening, in half-hour local and half-hour national/world shows. Morning network shows included short news segments between entertainment content. Truly earth-shaking events might call for “SPECIAL BULLETIN” interruptions.

Radio stations often carried very short “top of the hour” news updates between their other programming, but prior to CNN Radio (launched at the same time as CNN’s cable television news channel) there were no “24-hour news” stations.

About half of the American population cared enough about “the news” to subscribe to a daily newspaper, delivered to their front porches each morning or evening. Such newspapers — apart from a few big-city publications — tended to be very local in focus, with perhaps a smattering of national stories from wire services like Associated Press and United Press International. USA Today, the first really intentionally “national” newspaper, launched two years after CNN.

At the time of CNN’s launch, about one in five US households subscribed to cable television. Three years later, that number had doubled and eventually approached 90% (streaming options have dragged it down, but the percentage remains higher than in pre-CNN days).

Since CNN’s launch, “the news” has gone from short daily feeds covering pre-deadline events to 24/7/365 real-time coverage of far more things, in far more detail, by numerous and varied outlets.

In theory, that should make the public much better informed than we used to be. We can know more OF what’s happened, and know more ABOUT what’s happened.

In reality, I’m not sure our attention to important facts about important events has really increased.

The 24-hour news environment seems far richer in sensationalism, pearl-clutching, and outrage bait than in useful information about the important stuff.

Former football star leads police on low-speed chase in a Bronco.

One movie star’s divorcing another movie star and it’s getting ugly.

Someone said a bad word on a hot mic.

That’s not Ted Turner’s fault. It’s our fault. CNN and its media children and grandchildren give us what we want to watch, because that’s how businesses make money.

That they’ll keep showing us whatever keeps us watching isn’t news.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Citing anonymous sources, the New York Times reported on May 4, US president Donald Trump is considering an executive order that would require pre-release  “national security vetting” of all new Artificial Intelligence models.

The following day, the US Department of Commerce revealed that three three large AI firms — Microsoft, Google, and xAI —  have already agreed to submit their models for “pre-deployment evaluations and targeted research.”

For obvious reasons, those developments trigger my strong aversion to regulation of anything, at any time, and at any level of government. I can indulge a little — very little — bit of sympathy for the position Trump’s in though:

Individual state governments have been rolling out AI regulation proposals for some time, and that’s just not According to Hoyle.

AI, at least if connected to the Internet, is clearly an interstate and/or international commercial activity, and the US Constitution clearly and unambiguously assigns the power to regulate such activity to the federal government. Specifically to Congress, but in the absence of congressional action, I can see why Trump would want to preempt the illegal state-level schemes with something of his own.

I just wish that something of his own was “none, period.” Here’s why:

“Whatever can happen,” Augustes De Morgan wrote in 1866, “will happen if we make trials enough.”

To which I must add, if “we” don’t make trials enough, someone else will.

AI will inevitably be pushed to whatever, if any, limit it has.

If American researchers can’t legally do it, Chinese researchers will do it.

If Chinese researchers can’t legally do it, Swiss researchers will do it.

If every government on the planet imposes pesky regulations on doing it, people who don’t care about pesky government regulations will do it.

It can happen. Therefore it will happen.

I don’t wear rose-colored glasses … or at least, in poor metaphor mix, I consider those glasses half-full. We can plausibly expect both good and bad things out of AI developed to its limits.

Those  of us who are allowed to avail ourselves of the most advanced AI possible will disproportionately reap whatever rewards it produces.

Those of us for whom maximal AI is forbidden fruit will be more vulnerable to AI’s dark sides.

Since I like rewards and loathe punishments, I prefer to belong to the former group. So should you.

King Canute understood that he could not effectually command the tide. Our rulers should heed the lesson.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On May 2, Spirit Airlines ceased operations after it failed to get the US government to bail it out of the latest in a series of untenable situations — at least two of which the US government put it in to begin with.

As of 2023, Spirit was the seventh largest air passenger carrier in North America, and largest in the “ultra-low cost” category.

Like many businesses, Spirit had taken some hard knocks during the COVID-19 panic, and like many businesses it had availed itself of government grants and loans to stay afloat. By way of recovery, the company explored possible mergers, first with Frontier and then with JetBlue.

The former deal didn’t work out. The latter, which would have made the combined companies the fifth largest US airline, worked out just fine … until the US Department of Justice sued, predicting “higher fares, fewer seats, and harm [to] millions of consumers.” A judge agreed.

Spirit’s stock price tanked. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection twice in two years, reducing the size of its fleet and the number of people it employed in a desperate race to achieve solvency and remain in business. All because the US government decided it, rather than the market, knew what the market needed.

Then, on February 28, the US regime attacked Iran — and, by way of an attendant massive increase in fuel prices, attacked Spirit Airlines yet a second time. That attack proved fatal.

Maybe Spirit would have failed even absent the massive jet fuel price increases.

Perhaps the proposed merger with JetBlue would have dragged that airline down, too, instead of profitably folding Spirit’s assets into a more efficient operating environment.

And maybe all of Ted Bundy’s victims were mere moments away from choosing suicide when he strangled them to death instead.

We’ll never know, will we?

What we do know is that the US government’s murder of Spirit Airlines will almost certainly result in (checks notes) “higher fares, fewer seats, and harm [to] millions of consumers.”

Airlines come and airlines go. Some of the brands I grew up with — Pan Am, TWA, Northwest — have gone under or merged with others in the 21st century alone.

It’s not always as obvious that government was behind those disappearances as it is responsible for the death of Spirit, but you can always count on government to reduce your choices and increase your costs — while claiming to do the opposite.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY