Fairness Doctrine Unfairly Promoted

Campus Report ^ | May 1, 2008 | Bethany Stotts

[bs9021]

Fairness Doctrine Unfairly Promoted

by: Bethany Stotts, May 01, 2008

Believe it or not, a conference at American University provided strong representation for last summer’s anti-conservative study, “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” In the study, the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Free Press authors conclude that talk radio has an unfairly high conservative bias, with conservative ideas monopolizing 91% of radio programming aired by the nation’s top five broadcasters...

(snip)

Now the CAP and Free Press representatives are again pushing for “structural” changes to alter the “balance” of progressive and conservative programming. Their forum: the Washington College of Law. Consider the following:

• Free Press published University of ChicagoProfessor Cass R. Sunstein’s 1995 book, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech.

• Both CAP and Free Press representatives were invited to speak at the AU conference.

• A representative from the Media Access Project, Andrew Schwartzman spoke at the conference. MAP openly favors the return of the Fairness Doctrine and opposes QVC’s home shopping network because it doesn’t serve the “public interest.” He said, “As far as I’m concerned...

(snip)

As AIM has reported in its book, The Death of Talk Radio, content regulation has a chilling effect on radio programming, leading to less quality content and more bureaucratic paperwork. It also involves government inspection of what people say, even if only to determine the ideological slant of the program. Do we really want the government to be deciding what is liberal or conservative?

This point remains especially cogent, since the designers of the CAP/Free Press study specifically warned that their intention was to ensure equal representation of liberal values as a protection against the unfair radio dominance by the conservative media....

[Puppage]

conservative ideas monopolizing 91% of radio programming aired by the nation’s top five broadcasters...

Hey, Air America had a chance. People want to listen to & debate FACTS. They do not want to listen to hate,whining and partisan politics.

[Tzimisce]

...I’m sorry, what part of “Congress shall pass no law...” do you not understand?

[meyer]

In the study, the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Free Press authors conclude that talk radio has an unfairly high conservative bias, with conservative ideas monopolizing 91% of radio programming aired by the nation’s top five broadcasters...

Did the study also note that both the television and print media have an unfairly high liberal bias with brain-dead liberal, socialist, tree-hugging ideas monopolizing over 91% of the content of those media?

[Puppage]

Did the study also note that both the television and print media have an unfairly high liberal bias with brain-dead liberal, socialist, tree-hugging ideas monopolizing over 91% of the content of those media?

Now, that's a damn good point!

[centurion316]

Things you can count on:

Sun coming up in the morning

Taxes due April 15

If the Democrats win both WH and Congress in November, talk radio WILL be shut down.

[muawiyah]

The folks doing the study obviously have not listened in on Spanish language radio ~ it is predominantly FAR LEFT WING to a degree not imagined possible in English language radio.

I would imagine these pukes didn't check out the Spanish language radio because of three things (1) They don't understand Spanish (2) They don't think it's worthwhile listening to Spanish language radio and (3) They don't care for Spanish speaking people.

[Yankee]

McCAIN INTRODUCES TALK RADIO LEGISLATION

Arizona Sen. John McCain has introduced federal legislation to protect talk radio shows from the reinstatement of past rules that required dissenting voices be given equal time on their shows.

McCain and fellow GOP Senators John Thune of South Dakot and Norm Coleman of Minnesota have put forward legislation preventing the reinstatement of the ‘Fairness Doctrine.’

The Fairness Doctrine was done away with in 1987 but previously required political radio shows to offer equal time to opposing viewpoints as part of their Federal Communications Commission licenses.

A number of Democrats and liberal advocates want the Fairness Doctrine put back in place. They do not like the fact talk radio is dominated by conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham.

McCain said imposing such rules would stifle free speech and there are plenty of political viewpoints in the marketplace.

Conservative radio talkers have criticized McCain for his stance in favor of immigration reform.

I just wanted to toss this in because on other "Fairness Doctrine" threads there have been comments indicating that McCain would do a "me too" against talk radio.

I'm not enthused to have McCain as our nominee, but I refuse to join the "ain't a dime's worth of difference" crowd either.

[SunkenCiv]

Google Shuts Down Anti-Obama Sites on its Blogger Platform
Publius’ Forum | 6/29/08 | Warner Todd Huston
Posted on 06/29/2008 1:53:36 PM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2038256/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/fairnessdoctrine/index