Posted on 01/19/2006 10:03:15 AM PST by Dr. Scarpetta
House Democrats proposed two bills in 2005 to bring the Fairness Doctrine back—and as a law, rather than a mere agency regulation.
New York Democratic representative Louise Slaughter, who introduced the first of the two bills, says that Right-ruled radio is a grave threat to American freedoms, “a waste of good broadcast time, and a waste of our airwaves.”
People “may hear whatever they please and whatever they choose,” she tells PBS’s Bill Moyers, in a statement as incoherent as it is illiberal.
“And of course they have the right to turn it off. But that’s not good enough either. The fact is that they need the responsibility of the people who are licensed to use our airwaves judiciously and responsibly to call them to account if they don’t.”
In other words, people can’t be trusted with freedom but need the supervision of a paternalist government.
Slaughter doesn’t want to re-regulate only radio. When asked by Moyers if she was also proposing the new Fairness Doctrine for Fox News or MSNBC, Slaughter responded: “You bet. . . . Fairness isn’t going to hurt anybody.”
If there’s anything liberals hate more than talk radio it’s Fox News, which has dominated cable news by appealing to conservative viewers fed up with the networks’ liberal bias.
New York Democratic representative Maurice Hinchey, sponsor of the second Fairness Doctrine bill, went so far as to host a special Capitol Hill screening of Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, a “documentary” hit job.
Slaughter, Hinchey, Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders, Washington State congressman Jay Inslee, and several other House lefties have recently formed the Future of American Media Congress to push for a media crackdown.
Finally, in early 2005, an online petition drive called for Americans to “renew the Fairness Doctrine.” The imbalance favoring conservative media voices, especially in talk radio, the petition argued, “results in issues of public importance receiving little or no attention, while others are presented in a manner not conducive to listeners’ receiving the facts and range of opinions necessary to make informed decisions.”
One of the three sponsors of this paternalistic document: Media Matters for America, a left-wing press watchdog group, founded by conservative-turned-lefty David Brock, with help from ex–Clinton advisor John Podesta.
If the Dems take back Congress or the White House, watch out. Nothing would please them more than to drag the country back to the good old days, when liberals didn’t have to put up with Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham and Bill O’Reilly and Matt Drudge and the countless other upstarts recasting our public debate.
The Right—joined by free-speech defenders from across the political spectrum—needs to defeat the liberal regulatory threat before it does real damage to Americans’ rights to express their political views.
President Bush should strongly back Hensarling’s Online Freedom of Speech Act, whose sponsors may reintroduce it soon in the House under regular rules, which require only a simple majority to pass it.
Showing that he gets it, the president has just nominated three reportedly liberty-minded lawyers to fill FEC vacancies, including Robert Lenhard, part of the legal team that challenged McCain-Feingold’s constitutionality.
One campaign-finance reform group described the Lenhard pick as “beyond disappointing”: excellent news for free-speech fans.
In deciding two campaign-finance reform cases in the months ahead, the Roberts Court, one hopes, will show greater enthusiasm for First Amendment protection of political speech than did its predecessor, which should have shot down McCain-Feingold.
If neither Congress nor the Supreme Court repeals this unconstitutional, un-American travesty, we can expect election regulations, in the grim words of Justice Antonin Scalia’s McConnell dissent, “to grow more voluminous, more detailed, and more complex in the years to come—and always, always, with the objective of reducing the excessive amount of speech.”
Thus will our most effective real protection against “the actuality and appearance of corruption”—the First Amendment itself—be nullified.
Lovers of liberty should expose calls to restore the Fairness Doctrine for the fraudulent power-grab that they plainly are. And the Right, in particular, needs to understand how much it has benefited from a deregulated media universe.
It should be confident that it has the right ideas, and that when it gets the chance to present them directly to the American people—as the new media have allowed it to do—it will win the debate.
I live in Pennsylvania, a classic Democrat state of voter fraud each presidential election.
Every time I see "Bill Moyers" and "fair" in the same article, I stop reading.
I don't think libs know what they're getting into. I mean I know they don't. If they want "fairness", which in their twisted minds means somehow derailing conservative talk radio and FOX News, then what do they conservatives will do? Do they think that we will not demand fairness on all the presently lib-dominated alphabet network leftist propaganda-fests? The whole idea of trying to have alternate points of view on every politically-themed radio or tv program is absurd.
They are serious.....and don't call me Shirley.
Who's Shirley???
They long for their good old days of total media dominance.
Watch the movie "Airplane"
Can we introduce it in the universities too? And on the three broadcast networks? And in the media markets of the NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc . . .
I've seen it several times but don't recall who Shirley was. Sorry - I'm old - LOL.
Ahhh, but you miss the point. To the left, the alphabet networks are unbiased and pure. Liberalism just is what is. The liberal definition of a moderate is anyone that agrees with them. Everyone else is a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. But hey the left believes in your rights as a conservative. For example, you have the right (and obligation) to remain silent.
I wonder if the left's real problem with Camp Gitmo is that the conservatives aren't the inmates.
No. Marxists, thru and thru.
FMCDH(BITS)
And the courts. I know the rules for broadcast are somewhat different (government needs to allocate the scare resource of each frequency) but I would hope that enough Bush judges would have a problem with this.
You're exactly right. All democrats need are the votes. Kennedy, schumer, leahy, and biden would lead the vote to convict Bush in the Senate after the impeachment goes through the House. It only takes votes.
I, for one, will never underestimate them.
And watch AM radio disappear entirely.
The "fairness doctrine" was used to apply to all information programs, excepting "legitimate newscasts." That was always their out. Anything aside from newscasts was confined to Sunday nights at midnight.
And newscasts were as slanted as could be. Very Stalinist.
Nor should you. The left has proven that they are out of control and will stop at nothing to impose their will on the people. When they were winning elections and controlled congress, democracy ruled. But once that stopped, democracy became evil. The dems are entitled to power and democracy has deprived them of that right. Socialism through democracy is dead. The only problem for the left is that they have to just win that ONE election before they can pull the plug on democracy. They have nibbled away through the courts, but will never completely achieve their goals until they win an election.
NO ONE hates the idea of Free Speech more than a Liberal...
Thier views can no longer survive in the Arena of CHOICE, and free ideas, so it MUST be MANDATED, and SUBSIDIZED...
Hitler and Stalin would have today's "Modern" Democrat...
Watching the Alito hearings illustrates how infuriated they are having to deal with an opposite point of view. They demand it to be ALL their way.
And Goebbels would be proud.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.