Posted on 04/15/2007 5:28:23 AM PDT by Nextrush
"Freedom is everybody's business, your business, my business, the church's business and a man who will not use his freedom to defend his freedom, does not deserve his freedom."
(Dr. Carl McIntire-preacher who lost radio station to "Fairness Doctrine" in 1973)
Back in the 1970's this controversial radio preacher's right to free speech was championed by the National Association of Broadcasters and the Radio TV News Directors Association.
The attack on Don Imus and his firing, along with Al Sharpton's moves to define what is "acceptable" on the airwaves brings back memories of the "Fairness Doctrine" Days" when "right-wing" radio preachers were attacked by liberals who used government power to bring down their enemies and destroy the First Amendment in the process.
Ironically, Don Imus used a parody (Rev. Billy Sol Hargas) of the real preacher whose broadcast began the chilling of broadcast (Radio-TV) speech in the 1960's and 70's.
Bill James Hargis criticized a liberal man in a 1964 radio broadcast that was monitored by a Democrat Party political operation. Kennedy political advisors dreamed it up as a way to hit radio stations with equal time requests that would tone down the radio preachers pro-Goldwater broadcasting during the election campaign. Radio station owners would be forced to quiet the preachers down under pressure of having to give free "equal time" they couldn't make money on. The Kennedy program became the Lyndon Johnson program after the assassination.
One station owner said no to the equal time demand (Rev. John Norris of WGCB Radio-Red Lion, PA) and it led to a battle with the Federal Communications Commission and the famous-infamous Red Lion decision by the Supreme Court in 1969.
This set the stage for the Fairness Doctrine fight of Rev. Carl McIntire. McIntire believed in a strong brand of fundamentalism that saw evangelicals (Billy Graham) as compromisers.
In fact, McIntire saw himself as the leader of a 20th Century Reformation of Protestant Christianity from the liberal theology and politics of the mainline churches.
Dr. McIntire was a strong critic of the anti-war and civil rights movements embraced by 1960's liberals.
His ego was big and he wanted to dominate things, plus be the center of attention. His followers, many of them women, make him in my mind a Clintonesque figure.
In 1965 McIntire purchased radio station WXUR in Media, PA (a Philadelphia suburb) so his radio show could be broadcast in the area of his church.
The liberals in the community led by the Council of Churches (liberal churches) and ADL (Jewish liberals) went for an advertising boycott first. (Shades of Imus) They got local businesses to stop buying time in the semi-classical music format of the station.
McIntire then filled the broadcast schedule with paid radio preachers so he could keep the station in business.
The liberals went for the Fairness Dcotrine issue next and complained to the Federal Communications Commission that WXUR was one-sided.
They took particular offense with the "Freedom of Speech" talk show hosted by Tom Livezey. On this show a poem was read talking about a dog that urinated on the grave of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Eventually the FCC ordered a shutdown of WXUR over the Fairness Doctrine and court appeals failed. The station was shut down in July of 1973.
In his dissenting opinion on the case Federal Appeals judge David Bazleton put it this way:
"In subjecting WXUR....to the supreme penalty, the FCC...has also dealt a death blow to the licensee's freedom of speech and press. Furthermore, it has denied the listening public's access to the expression of many controversial views. Yet, the Commission would have us approve this action-in the name of the Fairness Doctrine!"
In another irony, the Richard Nixon FCC chaired by Barry Golwater's RNC Chairman from the 1960's, Dean Burch, ordered WXUR off the air. It was a station owned by a Goldwater supporter from 1964.
Carl McIntire's "sin" was in leading hundreds of thousands of people in six (First in April 1970) marches to demand victory in the Vietnam War. Nixon administration policy was to negotiate "peace" with the Communists and get American troops out. (Follow public opinion and win politically, too)
McIntire could point to evidence of that including his being placed on what the liberal anti-Nixon media dubbed the "enemies list" along with anti-war hippies and liberal news reporters.
In addition, ex-White House counsel Charles Colson wrote McIntire a letter of apology from prison after Colson decided to follow Jesus Christ. Colson was known as the "hatchet man" of the Nixon Administration.
The net effect of the Red Lion and WXUR cases was to chill speech on the airwaves and it took a Supreme Court reversal-Ronald Reagan FCC combination in the 1980's to get the Fairness Doctrine on the back burner.
Now we have advertiser imtimidation of broadcasting led by the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Sharpton saying something needs to be done about what is "acceptable" in broadcasting.
Its bad enough that the big advertisers and media companies are intimidated. I sense that liberalism in the form of "diversity" appointments to leadership (leftists under the label of women and minorities) is changing the scheme of things.
Would the National Association of Broadcasters and the Radio Television News Directors Association of today be willing to defend the First Amendment from this attack like they did in the 1970's?
If the Sharpton-Jackson mentality ever becomes official government policy, look out. Then the First Amendment is their toilet paper.
Thus the Golden Rule trumps the First Amendment. He who has the gold makes the rules.
Some of the Defeatocrats are openly pushing for “Fairness”; to them that means shutting down conservative speech.
If I were Rush, I’d be very, very, careful. The ONLY way the libs can elect Hillary is if Rush, Hannity, and Savage are off the air.
Social conservatives have been asking the popular liberal culture, in various ways and in various venues for a long, long time, have you no decency. The liberal culture has reacted by castigating conservatives as only wanting to “impose” values on society or wanting to destroy free speech.
Imus has the right to say what he did. In doing so, he must take responsibility for society finally waking up to what a horrible thing he really said. Thankfully this has provoked society into a self-examination of the consistency and values that were being expressed and these values have (finally) been shown to be lacking in the very values that the left thinks are theirs alone to protect and advance.
The Fairness Doctrine is disconnected from the Imus Hoe Flap. The Left counts Iums as one of its own. If he is allowed to come back, or if a replacement for him is found, that person will be allowed to say the same things that Imus has been saying for years, except this one area will now be off limits. The Fairness Doctrine is not aimed at the Left, it is aimed at every other voice on talk radio.
Happily, we now have the internet, and internet radio. We also have internet streaming media being delivered to cell phones, which are like the portable transistor radios of the 60’s generation. Increasingly, with ever expansion of the internet in wireless forms, it will be easier and easier for alternatives to Big Broadcast Networks and the gatekeepers who have stationed themselves on that media, to spring up.
Like Matt Drudge, who started off with a cheap PC and a dialup connection, anyone with very simple equipment and an almost-free connection to the net can produce his own program of commentary or news and make it available to web sites and forums that would be receptive to it. There is nothing that anyone who doesn’t like it will be able to do to stop that person.
Let free speech bloom, and screw the self-appointed gatekeepers.
The corporations (big advertisers, media owners) are buckling to liberalism for whatever reasons (liberal board members, executives) and the conservatives will need to challenge corporate liberalism sooner or later.
if a democrap wins the 2008 election
an attack on the fairness doctrine is a given.
i hear too many women that i know that watch oprah and rosie
saying that “rush limbaugh and ann coulter shouldn’t be saying
those things”.
Imus isn’t being censored any more than are the Dixie Chicks. He’s free to say what he wants, and his audience is free to turn the channel. His employers are free to call him on the carpet, or even make a show of firing him, if they fear enough people are turning the station.
Its business.
I don’t listen to Dixie Chick songs when they come on the radio, and the radio station knows it, so they don’t play them. I stopped lisening to Imus years ago after he went off on Christians one day (if you don’t like what I’m saying, he said, turn the station, and I did, permanently).
What he said in this case was over the line, and I’m not surprised there are consequences, not legal ones, but business ones, you can’t stay in business if your listeners don’t listen and your advertisers don’t want to be associated with you. Thats not censorship, though. Its the reason producers have to think twice before using Sean Penn in one of their movies, since there are any number of people who won’t buy the ticket if he’s in it.
That is nothing to do with Fairness Doctrine, though. You are right, though, in observing that getting rid of Limbaugh is priority one for the Dems, from the moment they retake the White House. Had Clinton had a few more months in office before, they would have taken Limbaugh out, and they will stop at nothing until he is gone, should they win big in 2008. You can count on it. That has nothing to do with Imus, though. If Imus were going down over “Fairness”, I’d defend him. He’s going down because he used racial epithets that would get my kids a bar of soap in the mouth if they used them. I have no patience for anyone who talks like that, period. Its not censorship, though, its called turning the station.
That is what is happening. Everyone was silent when the came for Jimmy the Greek. And it has escalated ever since.
He stepped on someone's toes, alright, but it wasn't a basketball team.
Somewhere in the night, a smile comes across the face of She Who Must Not be Named (aka "Satan", according to Imus).
But not the freedom of speech to say that 9-11 was a judgment of God against America. I wasn’t aware of FR at that time, what was the consensus of the members here when Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell said God had judged America? Is there an archive?
I don’t care for Al Sharpton
You don’t CARE for him ,that’s it ? He’s the biggest con man fraud street punk going . Do you have a clue who him and Jackson really are ?
You are wrong . Imus was a political hit job. Blacks say 100 times worse about whites on the radio all day long and stupid whites laugh it off. Sharpton is a pupper for Klinton , anyone in NY City knows that . She is promising him a BIG position if he slides the black vote over to her . Imus tore her apart on the radio every day ..Don’t be so naive .
bookmark
There is actually a Soros funded group, the Media Watchdog (I think it's name is) that has a paid person to monitor each right wing talk show and contact the right rabble rousers when a slip-up is made. This was way more than simple public outcry. It was manufactured.
Media Matters is the group . Don’t doubt Klinton’s part in all this my friend .
The bottom line is that Imus’ ratings were so miniscule that he wasn’t worth saving. Howard Stern can get away with saying outrageous things, because he has the listeners.
In 1954 then Senator Johnson authored it.
This Imus garbage is about dumping Rush and Savage and re-instituting government control of the content of radio and TV broadcasts, sometimes known as the “Fairness Doctrine”
Cogent and to the point. Also, absolutely right. Well written.
Dr. McIntire married his secretary of 40+ years at the age of 92, he died four years later of old age. His first wife,
Fairey, died years before.
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