Posted on 06/29/2007 8:15:32 AM PDT by hardback
What ever happened to liberals' support of free speech? First, it was "lobbying reform" that targeted grassroots communications. Then it was "hate crimes" legislation that tries to figure out what we are thinking. More recently, it's "card check," payback to the big labor unions that would take away the right of employees to secret ballot elections on unionizing the workplace.
Worst of all, however, have been the recent calls by liberal congressmen to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine, the ironically misnamed government regulation requiring broadcasters to present competing sides of controversial issues. Enacted in 1949, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) put the Fairness Doctrine in place in order to "afford reason able opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance."
Though it never ruled decisively on the issue, the U.S. Supreme Court stated in 1974 that the doctrine "inescapably dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate." In 1984 the court again concluded that the doctrine was flawed and that the rule limited public debate.
Accordingly, in 1987, the FCC abolished the doctrine, insisting that it had grown to inhibit rather than enhance debate and suggested that, due to the many media voices in the marketplace at the time, the doctrine would be ruled unconstitutional.
But now, 20 years after its demise, the Fairness Doctrine has new life. Senator Diane Feinstein says she's "looking at" bringing it back and Senator John Kerry insists it's needed to correct the "imbalance" in the media. Trent Lott, meanwhile, dismayed his conservative friends when he said we have to "do somethin g" about talk radio because of the criticism of the immigration bill from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham.
Those looking for ways to muzzle or render ineffective conservative talk radio have been bolstered by a new report from the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank funded by George Soros, which charges that 91% of weekday talk radio is conservative, compared to the nine percent that is liberal. Attacking the "right-wing domination of talk radio," the report then ominously suggests that this imbalance is a violation of the license standards that require radio stations to act "in the public interest." John Halpin, a senior fellow at the center, concludes, "There is little free speech or free choice in a market system that pushes out one-sided information 90 percent of the time on the radio."
All this would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous.
The Left already dominates nearly every aspect of public life in this country, from the public schools and academia to the entertainment industry and every other media venue -- the big three networks, cable, public radio, public broadcasting, newspapers, etc. Another study last week showed that nearly 90% of political giving by journalists went to Democrats.
The heavy-handedness with which liberals combat conservative supremacy on the airwaves stands in contrast to conservatives' response to the near monopoly liberals enjoy in every other media venue. When conservatives needed a response to the left-leaning network TV stations and liberal PBS and CNN, Fox News was created, and now it regularly receives much higher ratings than its competitors. When conservatives wanted to compete with National Public Radio, conservative talk radio was created to meet that demand.
Indeed, while the Left's animating philosophy has always been, "If you can't beat 'em, regu late 'em," Conservatives, clearly more confident in the persuasiveness of their ideas, simply told themselves, "if you don't like the news source, make some of your own!"
It's telling that liberal criticisms of talk radio come at a time when public confidence in the media establishment has reached an all-time low. A 2005 Harris poll found three times as many Americans (62 percent) said they did not trust "the press" than did, with 58 percent revealing distrust of TV news. In contrast, only a third of respondents (33 percent) said they did not trust the radio.
While the Left tries to convince us (and itself) that conservative dominance of talk radio stems from some sort of structural problem or "market failure," the truth is far more elementary. Conservative talk radio succeeds because it is virtually the only place half the country can go to hear a conservative worldview. It succeeds because conservative ideas resonate with many Americans.
To put it another way, in a fundamentally conservative country where most of the media lean left, conservative talk radio IS the Fairness Doctrine.
Though it sounds absurd, the idea that the government should control political views expressed on the public airwaves could become law. All it would take is for a Democratic president to appoint an FCC chairman who supported the Fairness Doctrine, giving liberals a 3-2 majority on the commission and enabling them to enforce any regulations passed by Congress.
That is why Congressman Mike Pence, himself a former radio talk show host, has unveiled legislation preventing the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. The Broadcaster Freedom Act would "prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from prescribing rules, regulations or policies that will reinstate the requirement that broadcasters present opposing v iewpoints in controversial issues of public importance." Pence's legislation would, in essence, prevent the government from rationing free speech, something Congressman Pence calls "an existential threat" to not only the conservative movement but also our First Amendment rights.
Earlier this week, liberal Senator Dick Durbin added his name to the fast-growing list of senators who support reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, smugly declaring, "I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they're in a better position to make a decision."
I couldn't agree more. That's precisely why the Fairness Doctrine must be defeated.
Thank you for this post. BTTT
"I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they're in a better position to make a decision."I have this old fashioned idea that speech should be free.
As Rush has said in the past “I am equal time!”
Let these Liberal Dictators hear our opinions on their bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. You know the arrogant elitist’s names, but start with Feinstein and Reid and move down the list.
Exactly what I’ve been saying for years.
Now if they REALLY wanted a FD then they would be laying it out for real, but I know that they have analyzed exactly the impact of such as doctrine and ran like hell.
This is all lip service and even a dem can’t be so stupid as to allow Rush to have EQUAL space on the NYT, for example.
Then BOR gets equal time on the WAPO, and Neil gets equal time in LA and so forth and so on...
This is all sound bites for the Democrat’s own PR machine that we know as the MSM, ie, The Matrix
A great piece by Jon Keller of WBZ-TV Boston:
Kerry’s Bad Call
Sen. John Kerry, adding his voice to a growing chorus of congressional Democrats demanding restoral of federal enforcement of “fairness” in broadcast political coverage: “One of the most profound changes in the balance of the media is when the conservatives got rid of the equal time requirements. And the result is they’ve been able to squeeze down and squeeze out opinion of opposing views. I think it has been a very important transition in the imbalance of our public dialogue.”
Where to begin?
First, Kerry’s statement is patently false. If he – or you – have hard evidence of “opposing views” (opposing to what?) being “squeezed out,” send them along and I’ll print them. I won’t hold my breath, because you can’t honestly find any. In today’s media environment – print, broadcast TV, cable TV, HDTV, radio, internet, etc. – I challenge you to find an opinion anywhere, no matter how far out on the fringe, that doesn’t have a ready outlet of some kind. Kerry isn’t mad about opinion being squeezed, he’s upset about opinion (often, admittedly, masquerading as fact, as in some of the more vulgar smears against his war record) he doesn’t like. A wild guess – George W. Bush heard and saw plenty of media coverage in the 2004 campaign he didn’t like either. An odd symmetry there, don’t you think?
Second, Kerry is a bit hypocritical here. The old fairness doctrine called for all legally-qualified candidates to be given equal time and included in debates. If Kerry protested Ralph Nader’s exclusion from the 2004 debates, I must have missed it.
Third, Kerry and his fellow whiners are completely missing the point about the new media landscape. A million flowers are blooming there. Some give off offensive odors. Some can poison you. News consumers have to be careful about which ones they swallow. But protecting the audience from nonsense overdose can not intelligently be argued to be the job of the federal government. Just because the marketplace wouldn’t support Air America doesn’t mean that a vast right-wing conspiracy has hijacked the airwaves, is suppressing liberal thought, and needs to be reined in by federal cops. Air America did a poor job of programming and promotion. Some of its hosts were too shrill – others were too dull.
Last time I checked, it was a fifty-fifty country when it comes to presidential politics, a fact that suggests there’s a huge audience available to left-leaning talk radio above and beyond NPR. Is trusting the voters and the marketplace to reward competent liberal broadcasters with ratings and clout too much to ask of Kerry and company? Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh and company are thankful for the huge boost in public standing they’re receiving from this ill-advised crusade against them.
Well, praise the Lord that it received a stern setback in the House yesterday, where that body voted 309-115 on an amendment which specifically prohibits funds from the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill being used by the FCC to enforce the "Fairness" Doctrine. We can credit Mike Pence of Indiana for that amendment!
>>he’s upset about opinion (often, admittedly, masquerading as fact, as in some of the more vulgar smears against his war record)
well, I don’t agree with THAT part, but...”smears”? No,
truth.
bump this entire thread!
I don’t like Gary Bauer.
His groups do more harm than good.
>>Gary Bauer: Conservative Talk Radio IS the Fairness Doctrine<<
But this time he is right.
The notion of “balance” is abused when it is suggested that “Republican-Democrat” are the sides to be balanced.
A more apt balance would be Socialism vs. Libertarianism, with mainstream conservativism being more like the true balance point.
Good to hear from Gary Bauer again. He couldn’t be more right about this!
The term “Market Failure”, as the left means it, “failure of the market”, is an oxymoron.
The market doesn’t “fail” - you can fail in the market, but the market itself just is.
Of course, the left looks at the outcomes and determines that the disparate outcomes must be due to discrimination of some sort. (It is, people “discriminate” between listening to their crap and good talk radio).
It’s funny, though, that they don’t EVER look at the “outcomes” of their agenda and see how those outcomes are invariably worse than the “problem” they were trying to fix.
He also said that if it does happen, which he doubts, that he will start broadcasting via the Internet, and if congress really wants serious problems, let them start messing with that.
There are liberals who preach the need for “diversity of views” in calling for the return of the Fairness Doctrine because they bridle at the high ratings of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and other conservative broadcasters who currently have more public favor than the comparatively fewer liberal commentators. But these liberals ignore why we have the First Amendment.
Support for free speech is fundamentally different than a liberal/conservative debate over policy. It is absolutely unacceptable for ANY politician of ANY political philosophy or party to suggest using the power of government to suppress opposing political views. ANYONE who would make such as suggestion, whether it is John McCain, Trent Lott or Diane Feinstein, is not fit to serve in Congress because they have violated their oath to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution. This is one issue we need to absolutists on this issue and make very clear that even the suggestion of suppressing free speech is unacceptable from our elected leaders.
Whiel Gary Bauer is correct, I still find him creepy in a Joseph Goebels kinda way.
Maybe its just me....
Is that actually going to kill it? Or are they going to be able to ressurect it again in a week like they did with shamnesty?
Oh I’m sure it’ll reappear again, probably in a Senate bill somewhere. But Pence’s amendment makes even this more difficult. IIRC, the FCC is funded through the FSGG Appropriations as part of the executive brance mechanism (someone please correct me if I’m wrong about that). Unless Pence’s amendment is stricken from this bill in Senate conference with the House, it will be part of the bill the Senate will pass at some point, which would then mean that the legislation for FY 2008 will include this specific prohibition. Given the House’s broad support for the amendment (half the Dims even voted for it), trying to remove the bill will provide problematic in conference, and the House may even demand it’s restoration as part of the instructions to conferees.
I’m guessing that trying to come up with a separate Senate bill which would then authorise the FCC to do what it had previously been prohibited from doing would be either non-germane or dilatory (since it would deal with a previously passed bill), and might even be out of the Senate’s competence since spending bills (and a bill making that separate change would affect the way funding was allocated/allowed in the present appropriations bill) are Constitutionally required to begin in the House. Pence was very clever to make the prohibition of the Fairness Doctrine tied to the use of FUNDING for the FCC. That creates all kinds of potential Constitutional hassles for the Dims.Unless the Senate wants to pass a toothless bill instructing the FCC to enforce the Fairness Doctrine, while being denier the right to use any of its budgetary allocations to actually do so.... Plus, a separate bill, if it were passed in the Senate, would probably fail in the House, based on what we saw yesterday.
While this particular vampire isn’t staked through the heart yet by any means, we did at least rub a little garlic on it.
How true!
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