"We will never live in the light of truth if we choose to dwell in the darkness of hate."

No famous person is credited with that quote. It was said by an ordinary man … me. And if someone as unremarkable as myself can recognize that America is on a path of mutually assured destruction, fueled by hatred and blindness, then maybe there's hope for those at the top of the power pyramid. However, it is they who are setting the agenda for America's debates.

My hope is waning, however, every time I tune in CNN to watch one single program that purports to bring "people with differing views together" to "engage in meaningful debate on the issues of the day". The program is Newsnight with Abby Phillip, and it is the only CNN program I watch from my perch thousands of miles away on another continent. I watch it for one reason and one reason only, to see if the panelists will actually debate today's pressing issues openly and honestly, absent rancor, name-calling, disparagement or denigration of our leaders and our government.

And every morning at breakfast time here in Europe when the program is sent six hours earlier in the U.S., I suppress my gag reflex when the moderator talks over and interrupts the conservative guest and repeats her signature admonition, "hold on" to put him on pause while she engages in filibustering and then turns to her progressive, left-leaning guests and allows them uninterrupted pontification time.

There is no doubt that Ms. Phillip is smart, but she is also cunning and duplicitous. She is a Trump-hater as are many, if not most, of her panel guests. To stack the deck with guests who share her ideological views is her prerogative. It is, after all, her show, and she is on CNN, after all. That is the freedom of the media marketplace, to be able to profess fairness, but deliver something vastly different. This bait-and-switch, though, is not anywhere approaching the kind of balanced debate that my head and heart search for.

At this point I have to say that Ms. Phillip is not alone. There are many news outlets that seem to have forgotten or never learned the concept of fairness in reporting or in debate situations. This goes for those networks on both the right and the left. And while the goals of the "fairness doctrine" that was first introduced in 1949 and subsequently strengthened in the 1960s, repealed in 1987, and fully removed from the Code of Regulations in 2011 may have been noble, they have been found to be unworkable and unmanageable. Licensed broadcasters must still devote reasonable time to covering controversial issues of public importance. Stations cannot ignore major public issues and have a duty to inform the public about significant political, social, or economic controversies.

The "why" of that was obvious back in the day when the airwaves were scarce and licensed by the government.

The "how" of the tone their programs were presented was more of a gentlemen's agreement that mirrored the civility of the times. Mud-throwing, name-calling, and other tactics were self-regulated. People (broadcasters and guests) were mostly civil and gave each other the time to make their points without interrupting them or castigating them in public, or as it is called today, "gaslighting" them.

Today, all bets are off. Decorum and respect are the casualties of a 24-hour news cycle and competition for "eyeballs" and are also a sign of the black and white (not races) times we are living in, when opposition has morphed into hatred. This is not an excuse for bad behavior; it is just one explanation.

Thankfully, we Americans are free to choose who we love and who we support, and that freedom also gives us the right to choose hatred over love and to express that hatred with words and even actions against those who are deemed unfit or unworthy of even a modicum of the benefit of the doubt, or, fairness. Today, our judgments and opinions are not formed principally on the media reporting of Edward R. Murrow during the war years of the 40s, or on the nightly news of David Brinkley and Chet Huntley, or for some, on Walter Cronkite.

We've moved on and are now exposed to hundreds of thousands of media "influencers," many of whom have chosen to beat the plowshares of their big media forebears back into swords.

Billionaires are now in charge of major networks and newspapers. The podcast class encourages disinformation, disagreement, and dissent, and has no compunction about using character assassination, innuendo, or wild speculation in place of honest information dissemination and civil intercourse.

The centerpiece of the Fairness Doctrine was that when an issue had multiple sides, opposing views must be represented; that the coverage had to be fair, balanced, and non-censored, though not necessarily giving equal time to all sides.

Stations were responsible for ensuring viewpoint diversity, but they were not required to give airtime to every individual who requested it. They were allowed to have their own editorial views as long as opposing views were allowed, but they were not required to give mathematically equal minutes for each side -- only reasonable opportunity.

The media had very specific responsibilities, and so did the government. It was a basic covenant: The FCC argued that because broadcasters used the publicly owned spectrum, they had a duty to serve the public interest. Therefore, the government could legally require fairness and balance without violating the First Amendment (at the time).

The bottom line for the FCC was that broadcasters must present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that is honest, equitable, and balanced.

It could not regulate the man's tone or mien, nor his media, and there is the rub.

In a country that has free speech as one of its principal building blocks, every man or woman is allowed to act foolishly and be as disrespectful and caustic as he or she wants, providing that his/her actions do not constitute unlawful behavior.

And as I said at the outset, we can hate or love whom we choose and believe as our heart and head tell us. Still, when abject hatred for one person like that is being exhibited towards our current president, it makes arguing impossible, the big victims are the truth and the lost opportunities to move forward to a better, more equitable, and civilized U.S.

My religious upbringing encourages me to hate the sin and love the sinner. Still, at some point, we must accept the fact that the sinner has become hardcore, "turned" by the blinding hatred that has descended on America like a dangerous storm cloud that has burst and has washed away our good nature and sense of fairness.

If we choose to stay out in that storm, we will be drenched to the bone and swept away by its surge a,nd America will be left with a barren landscape where only hatred can thrive.

Stephen Helgesen is a retired American diplomat specializing in international trade. He has lived and worked in 30 countries over the course of 25 years under the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush administrations. He is the author of fourteen books, seven of them on American politics, and has written more than 1,500 articles on politics, economics, and social trends. He now lives in Denmark and is a frequent political commentator in Danish media. He can be reached at: stephenhelgesen@gmail.com       

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