Posted on 06/29/2007 2:39:39 PM PDT by Baladas
The House voted Thursday to bar the Federal Communications Commission from reinstating the broadcast “fairness doctrine” even though there are no legislative or regulatory proposals to bring back the rule.
Mike Pence, R-Ind., a former conservative radio talk show host, offered an amendment to the bill funding federal financial entities (HR 2829) that would block the FCC from spending money to restore the mandate. The rule, repealed 20 years ago, required broadcasters to present controversial issues in a balanced manner.
During floor debate on the spending bill, José E. Serrano, D-N.Y., chairman of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee, quickly agreed to accept the amendment. But that didn’t stop Republicans from taking to the floor to warn of a free-speech threat on the airwaves.
In recent days, conservative talk show hosts, including Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, have cited public comments by Democratic Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, Dianne Feinstein of California and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois as evidence that Democrats are trying to bring back the fairness doctrine.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
We will see how far this goes. I trust the Democrats about as as I could throw them.
They had the votes to accomplish this? OK. Good. But why do they allow all that other crap to flow through uncontested?
Could the cancellation of John Batchelor and/or removal of Savage from the Boston area be previous actions on the lieberals part, much like their latest mini-putsch to bring back the Fairness Doctrine?
The vote was 309-115. They had a lot of Democrat help. That's how it got through.
What crap has gotten through 'uncontested'? What bills have passed the House unanimously?
Every hack politician who’s ever supported the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ should be turned out of office, having not the most fundamental understanding or respect for free speech. I’ve never heard anyone suggest it should be applied to the MSM regardless of how twisted and biased their stories are.
This really means nothing. The Dems are just biding their time. They can’t bring back the Fairness Doctrine now because it would just be vetoed. If (when) they get control of the White House, then they can go for it. And this little piece of legislation will be blown aside in a heartbeat.
Is this writer lazy or what? Instead of citing Feinstein and Durbin's comments directly, he cites Rush and Sean... More likely to give the aura of 'baseless fear' on the part of the conservatives...
Yes, the “my enemies are too crazy to be believed - they’re downright paranoid!” tactic.
Lazy? It’s a pretty short article, and intended to be that way. Adding the material quotes would have made it longer and taken time to hunt down; and they are killer on those deadlines. (Note that this isn’t a NYT article, but syndicated).
It should be written as an endorsement of the 1A. It should be pointed out in the bill/law just how tyrannical and stupid such a “fairness doctrine” is.
The KKK never gets their say, nor do Libertarians, and rarely do bonified Communists. So where do you stop guaranteeing a right to counter someone else's speech (on their dime)?
As usual, the Democrat party shows that its symbol, the jackass, is descriptive of the party.
If they were able to revive the anachronistic “Fairness Doctrine” as they call it, it will have little effect on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, or any of the other talk show hosts. All they have to do is change delivery systems for thier programs. Howard Stern provides an instructive example of this. When the FCC squeezed Stern off the air, he moved to satellite radio, and is taking it all the way to the bank big time. Limbaugh, Hannity and all the others have satellite radio and the Internet as options for distributing their programs, and the listeners can easily move to those media.
The biggest victims of reinstitution of the so-called Fairness Doctrine will be owners of local AM broadcast stations that rely on talk programming for their livelyhood. Many of them will simply go off the air and the FM talk stations will go back to music. The satellite companies will make out like bandits and the Internet will be used even more heavily to distribute such content. I hope the “Fairness Doctrine” is dead, but if it comes back to life, Rush and Sean now have alternatives to AM radio to deliver their programs.
I neglected to say, the overall “balance” of political programming will remain the same. Conservatives know how to entertain and inform in a commercial environment and make money doing it. Liberals do not.
WABC isnt a station to allow one of their own to go after America's Mayor.
What a sad, bad idea. I don’t know what supporters of this fairness doctrine are thinking. It’s probably a shot at Fox News, but it’s like going about fixing the wrong problem.
Dems hate Fox News. I hate it too, sort of. I think their political commentary is totally biased to the right, more than most of the political commentary on CNN and MSNBC are biased to the left (yes, you read me right). But I think Fox has the glitz/salesmanship thing down. I do like some of their coverage because I think they get pretty pretty good interviews, but point is most Dems hate Fox News, and I’m thinking the idea behind the this new fairness doctrine push is to force conservative radio and Fox News to change — to sort of ruin them.
It’s unwise, anti-capitalist logic. Fox and conservative radio succeed because people listen and watch, so the ad dollars are there. There’s a market for their drivel (no offense), and if there’s a market for it, so be it. That’s the American way.
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