I hope they can pass a law outlawing vanities.
Im sure mcnutts will reach across the isle and sign onto the bill in the interst of bipartisanship.I wish I was being sarcastic.
Change the debate. Insist that the liberals embrace Darwinism.
Only the strongest survive. In media, the conservative talk shows get the ad revenue. They deserve to survive. The MSM is bleeding ad revenue. They should be killed off.
Despite bankrupting talk radio, and in this economy, I think they will do this. The tighter the strangle hold on thought, the less conservatives will be able to make a comeback. They don’t want to defeat our ideas; they want to anhilate out our voices while at the same time lying about how they are standing up for fairness—every tactic is fair game to them.
If we stand by and do nothing, then we deserve to lose all our liberties.
They can and will reinstitute the unfairness doctrine.
Why do you thing that the Drive-by media wanted the RATS back in control.
With a Fairness doctrine in place it squelched dissent for the liberal orthodoxy.
In short, I doubt it. And while there are some quite vocal about wanting to do so, in reading between the lines I just don’t think they want to beat that hornet’s nest. It would take years to just get through the lawsuits that would result.
Have you taken a look at the composition of the new Congress? You bet they can. And will.
The “Fairness Doctrine” was a regulation. Let’s see how it pans out now, attempting to limit political speech. If anyone thinks that this can be implemented again. directed purely at their conservative opposition, without shutting down Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, Huffington Post and a whole host of other liberal mouthpieces, they’ve got another thing coming.
Guess this means Rush Limbaugh gets equal time on ErrAmerica. Maybe an hour of Michael Savage on PBS every week to offset Moyers.
1. Assuming Kennedy is not a complete idiot, there are at least 5 votes on the Supreme Court that would rule any such law as a violation of the 1st Amendment. There might even be more votes than that.
2. Any law that they write would have to be aimed at balancing liberal and conservative viewpoints on talk radio. In response to this the radio networks would toss the marginal right wing shows and replace them with (what would turn out to be) marginal left wing shows. Rush would remain #1 and he would have a little less competition from the right so he would grow stronger not weaker.
Rush has been a listener success because Rush knows how, especially in the past, how to get and hold listeners.
Are you saying that when he really may have one hand tied behind his back he can't succeed and prosper?
Perhaps we can get shortwave radios and huddle around them at night, getting our news from BBC and Rush broadcasting via “Radio Free America” from a bunker in Canada or Eastern Europe
remember when Hillary tried health care and Bubba pushed for all kinds of socialist stuff in his first term?
All he got for it was a Republican Congress in 94.
They may move slowly to avoid that....but we wont know till they do it.
They can go three ways on this.
One is to actually try and go ahead. There’s a fair chance they’ll do this, but it’s bound for failure. There’s really no popular demand they can rely on to back up their efforts to long term resistance in lawsuit. Any attempt would have a very short shelf life in popular good will.
Two to say they’re going to do it, to please their base, but then weasel quietly out of not doing it.
The third is to try to do it by other means, by subterfuge, such as using other bureaucratic regulations, examples minority hiring in media corporations, to bring stations to heal.
If the public rallies enough to block the Fairness Doctrine, the ‘Rats might try the back door route of requiring a large percentage of daily content on radio to be local programming. The argument is that stations should serve the local market. They could only carry a few hours of national programming daily. This would force stations to choose between Rush, Hannity, Levin, and others because they could no longer carry them all. Another idea they’re considering is requiring stations to “celebrate diversity”, meaning that any programming that offends anyone (i.e., blacks, homosexuals, feminists...) will lead to the station losing its license. They basically want all radio programming to be run through the same gauntlet as school textbooks. This means they must win approval of a variety of interest groups.
One way or another they will come after talk radio.
I might not have all the particulars here but the point is--it can be done quickly and easily by the FCC.
The way Dick Morris was talking on Hannity & Colmes Friday night, Congress doesn’t have to do a thing. 0 himself will appoint liberals to the FCC board in June when the current terms expire of Bush appointees, and they will take care of instituting it.
“Considering the level of hate and support offered up by the MSM during the Bush era is it really possible or likely that the Dems will be able to pass a version of the “Fairness Doctrine” that will kill talk radio?”
No it won’t - it’ll kill AM radio. Rush, Hennety and Co. will move to XM radio like Stern - I’m sure they already have their contingency plans all laid out. And a lot of us will get XM radio.
May be time to buy stocks in XM - dirt cheap right now.
About the only case you could reasonably make, is that conservative talk proliferates on the the AM radio band, and that the liberal viewpoint ought to be equally represented there.
However, those pushing for the measure would put themselves in the hypocritical position of having to defend the proliferation of the liberal viewpoint across the VHF spectrum, and on (taxpayer supported) PBS.
If the airwaves belong to The People, then "fairness" has to be applied across all broadcast spectrums.
There is no way that the alphabet networks are going to cleave their broadcast time in half to allow conservatives a nationwide platform for presenting their views.
Why would this bankrupt talk radio? Talk radio exists because there is a market for it, people will buy ads to hear Limbaugh, Hannity, even Ed Schultz. The Fairness Doctrine is outdated and dumb, but it won’t modify this demand. What it could do is force stations to provide opposing views, which could be done in various ways, such as using the new HD digital channels that many stations have the technology for, but haven’t figured what to do with anyhow. Broadcasting is a completely different business than it was when the Fairness Doctrine was in force, and it can and will continue to evolve.
Moreover there’s satellite radio and internet audio which already provide “fairness” via a plethora of channels, and against which terrestrial radio stations must come up with ways to compete anyhow.
There’s a lot of overblown hype going on, in time the media will adapt and new business models will emerge, even if Congress is stupid enough to try to force the issue again.