[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: "Would the Fairness Doctrine have been a factor in Berg's employment at GE?"

The short answer is no.

Here's why. He was a liberal, you are right about that. Conservatives generally did not complain about fairness -- as best I can remember and research. So, no complaints no problem.

But what you are doing is inserting a tragic, horrible crime into the argument. The killers were known extremists. You quote them. Do they sound like Rush, Mark Levin, Hannity, any Republican that you know? Any conservative that you know? They're criminals.

Back to the normal day-to-day discourse -- or at least what passes for discourse.

The FCC maintains a log of complaints against a user of the public airwaves. That at least was how it worked. If you read the article I referenced you will have at least seen that some believe that they can document that liberals routinely sent shills to "complain" about fairness at a radio station. The Fairness Doctrine was made into a weapon.

Too many complaints and the radio station owner cannot get his license renewed.

What to do? The owner can permit each and every complainer time on the air and thus make things "fair" or he can drop talk radio and go to AM Top 40 or some safe boring radio.

RE: Fairness Doctrine was intended, not to ensure the truth was being broadcasted - but rather to facilitate the division of the sheeple by constructing a polar dialectic with the Right arranged in opposition against the Left.

Yes, the Right arranged in opposition against the Left. It's how our system works.

It is not the business of government to arrange for the broadcasting of truth. We argue about what is truth. That's our responsibility.

It comes naturally. It's how our system works. It is why we don't have revolutions. We argue it out. We shout at each other. We debate. We are divisive. It's how our system works.

It's not securing rights when the government dictates "truth" and 'fairness."

What is fair? I think the experience of Air America was fair. It flopped. Why? Because our rights ARE secure. We chose not to listen. The Fairness Doctrine would deny us our rights to listen to what we want.

BTW, by the 1980s the courts were ruling that with so many ways to get information passed around there was no longer the need for a "Fairness Doctrine."

[LomanBill]

[But what you are doing is inserting a tragic, horrible crime into the argument.]

 

The Berg case just sticks in my mind as an example of what tyrants will do to silence free expression when they are empowered to do so.

 

I brought it up because I think it's relevant to the discussion.

 

[Do they sound like Rush, Mark Levin, Hannity, any Republican that you know? Any conservative that you know?]

 

Of course not.  I'd say Berg's killers have more in common with the Rainbow Nazis - that's who I had in mind.

 

[They're criminals]

 

I see the actions of Berg's killers as being more consistent with those of the Nazis they admired; and given the sexual deviancy reported among Hitler's Nazi's, I extrapolate that to a not-so-distant future corporate landscape in which corporations exhibiting the moral standards of Ameriquest and Disney / gAyBC become the "norm" - and where speaking out against the transhumanist/homosexual/transgenderist agenda is suppressed, or ever outlawed, as it is in Canada.

 

Additionally,  the likes of the Saudis and Communists are gaining a shareholder presence in the American corporate world; and neither the Saudis or the Communist Chinese are particularly noted for their appreciation of free expression.

 

So I think free expression will soon need all the help it can get - and if that help comes from the Dinosaur Media, then, so long as we can slice and dice their product here on FR,  that's ok with me.

 

[We argue it out. We shout at each other. We debate. We are divisive.]

 

Unfortunately, I have witnessed instances on corporately sponsored on-line Tech support and consumer review forums (not FR) where this is not the case - where the corporate moderators clearly exhibit a bias towards the Rainbow Left's Agenda; and threads are edited to reflect that bias.  

 

Thus my observation that the traditional lines between Corporatism and Communism have become markedly less clear - with some new form of Rainbow Collectivism apparently being birthed in the process.