Posted on 09/18/2008 10:59:00 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
The return of the Fairness Doctrine continues to be invoked as an argument against giving Democrats more control of the government.
In an op-ed in The Washington Post Thursday, conservative columnist George Will warned that "unless [Sen. John] McCain [R-Ariz.] is president, the government will reinstate the misnamed Fairness Doctrine."
The doctrine, which was pronounced unconstitutional by the Federal Communications Commission in 1987, required broadcasters to cover both sides of controversial issues. Its decline was matched by the rise of rough-and-tumble political talk radio and the vast majority conservative, led by Rush Limbaugh.
Will sees that format threatened by a Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) administration teamed with a Democratic-controlled Congress, arguing instead for the benefits of divided government. "Liberals, not satisfied with their domination of academia, Hollywood and most of the mainstream media, want to kill talk radio, where liberals have been unable to dent conservative dominance," he wrote.
Obama, via his press secretary, told B&C in June that the candidate does not support reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine and sees the issue as "a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible."
But more recently, a campaign surrogate told a C-SPAN TV audience Obama had not taken a position on the doctrine.
(Excerpt) Read more at broadcastingcable.com ...
He's so desperate he's telling his true believers to get in their neighobors' faces about what racists they are if they don't vote for The One.
That's better than any thousand attack ads McPalin could run.
I get infuriated at the Orwellian term “Fairness Doctrine.”
It is the the “Republican/Conservative/Independent/Libertarian Free Speech Thug Cessation by Marxists Doctrine”
wouldn’t it be something if the evening news had to give conservative balance to their leftist talking points?
Amen. Let Bambi go negative and just keep putting a microphone in front of Biden.
The looney left is making McCain’s ads for him!
LOL
VRWC would need to set up offshore internet “pirate” sources to overcome this. How far off the coast would Rush need to get to be outside the jurisdiction of Baraq?
Sort of like Google’s “data barges”
It should be called the Unfairness Doctrine.
We’ve had a taste of freedom. We’re not going to let it be taken away again.
Of course he will try to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine to silence anyone who doesn’t agree with him. If you don’t believe the Democratic Party leaders on their desire to impose it all you need to do is listen to his comments about how voters are listening to bad sources of information and the two attacks he directed his followers to make against WGN when they had guests that he didn’t like. The two attacks are cyber versions of the tactics used by the Brown Shirts prior to taking power and by Woodrow Wilson’s people when he was in power. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Democrats and Barack Obama try to install the systems that Woodrow Wilson wanted in WWI to prevent opposition to his programs.
So how many conservatives anchors would be added to the alphabet networks readings of the nightly news?
Don’t blame this on George Orwell. Call it what it is, Stalinist. George Orwell’s books were a crticism of Stalinists in the US and UK.
If the “Fairnes Doctrine” is ever reinstituted in the future, its a guarantee that the battle will be settled in the federal courts. Maybe even reaching the SCOTUS. Call it what it is. The FD is an unconstitutional, anti-free speech political tool of the leftwing.
“It should be called the Unfairness Doctrine.”
Why? Are you not aware that freedom is slavery.
My newspeak is double-plus good.
“It should be called the Unfairness Doctrine.”
Why? Are you not aware that freedom is slavery.
My newspeak is double-plus good.
You have to figure every law the government proposes is the reverse of whatever it's named. The government could propose "Apple Pie Day" and I'd figure it was really "Cow Pie Day".
The airwaves are already ‘open’.
It’s just that Marxism doesn’t sell. So laws must be passed to cram it down our throats.
We could demand Rush Limbaugh be given air time ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR etc....
wouldnt it be something if the evening news had to give conservative balance to their leftist talking points?_____________________________
But that’s just it; The Fairness Doctrine would never be applied to the MSM. Afterall they don’t editorialize the news, they report it.
Folks, if Obama get’s in; prepare for The Fairness Doctrine.
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