FCC appointment re-ignites Fairness Doctrine concerns

The US Report ^ | Aug 25, 2009 | Chris Carter

[Crush]

Democrats continually tell America the Fairness Doctrine is dead. But if the threat of the return of government broadcast censorship was truly dead, there would be no need to keep reminding us.

The latest reminder that the threat of the Fairness Doctrine survives, or more accurately its intended result – the destruction of conservative and Christian talk radio—is the appointment of Mark Lloyd as the FCC's new Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer. Prior to his appointment, Lloyd was a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank funded by far-left billionaire George Soros and others. Lloyd was also a broadcast journalist with NBC and CNN – adding another name to a long list of former journalists now working for President Barack Obama's administration.

A look into the past writings of Lloyd shows that he intends to use FCC regulations as a means to redistribute hundreds of millions of dollars from private broadcasters to public broadcasting. While at CAP, Lloyd wrote numerous reports on the Fairness Doctrine. One, The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, introduces the Fairness Doctrine's 'Trojan Horse' of localism and diversity requirements, and was parroted by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign.

Lloyd wrote in the 2007 report that private broadcasters would be subjected to new regulations that if not met, or if the FCC “could not effectively regulate in the public interest,” would generate an estimated $100 to $250 million in fines.

But broadcasters shouldn't worry as Lloyd and his co-writers determined that the quarter of a billion dollars in fees “would not overly burden commercial radio broadcasters.”

In another CAP report, Forget the Fairness Doctrine, Lloyd rails against radio stations for refusing to carry “popular progressive hosts like Ed Shultz [sic].” Just days ago, this “popular progressive host”...

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

They will try to accomplish the same thing with another law that has a harmless, innocent name.

[bicyclerepair]

On a Miami/Ft. Lauderdale radio station (w/Beck/Limbaugh):

been hearing this commercial lately, call some fed org to support the “local radio freedom” of your local radio stations.

It starts out by saying the gov. is going to hurt and take away this and that from your local radio stations..... sounds like a mouthful of lies to me. Local & freedom - used many times. Remember Beck said it wouldn’t be the fairness doctrine but some localization thing in disguise.

[Buckeye McFrog]

you can imagine that would end up giving us a string of government funded, ACORN-run “public” radio stations spewing crud like Pacifica and Randi Rhodes (no doubt in violation of all engineering standards and interfering with every commercial station still on the dial)

[Cheetahcat]

I thought Benedict Powell's kid was in there?

[Crush]

ACORN already has a radio network (AM/FM) that got its start in Dallas.