Posted on 11/12/2008 9:05:45 AM PST by Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!
Barack Obama’s transition team has tapped former FCC Commissioner Henry Rivera, a longtime proponent of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," to head the team looking for the man or woman who will soon give Democrats a 3-to-2 advantage on the Federal Communications Commission.
It’s another troubling sign that Democrats are serious about trying to reinstate the long-defunct FCC regulation, which can more aptly be described as the "Censorship Doctrine" because of its chilling effect on free speech. In effect from 1949 to 1987, the Fairness Doctrine was an obstacle to open discussion of public policy issues on the radio; its removal in the Reagan years spawned the robust talk radio marketplace of ideas now enjoyed by millions.
While talk radio hosts often warned during the campaign that free speech could be trampled by an all-Democratic majority, the broadcast networks have failed to react to this dangerous threat to the First Amendment. A review shows the broadcast networks — whose affiliates could also be regulated — have failed to run even a single story mentioning the push for a new Fairness Doctrine.
The most recent mention of the Fairness Doctrine was on May 30, 2007, when in an interview on CBS’s The Early Show, Al Gore bizarrely called it a "protection" that was removed during the Reagan years.
But there has been news to report, as Democrats have been more than candid about their plans. On Election Day, for example, New York Senator Charles Schumer justified regulating political speech. "The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC to limit pornography on the air," Schumer told the Fox News Channel. "You can’t say, ‘government hands off in one area’ to a commercial enterprise, but you’re allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent."
In late October, Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman told a New Mexico radio station how he "hopes" the Fairness Doctrine returns so radio will be more to his liking: "For many, many years, we operated under a Fairness Doctrine in this country. I think the country was well-served. I think the public discussion was at a higher level and more intelligent in those days than it has become since."
Democrats have launched various attempts to control of broadcast content since the Fairness Doctrine’s demise in 1987, but the push has become more insistent in the past couple of years. After the failure of a liberal immigration bill in 2007, Senator Dianne Feinstein told Fox News Sunday that she was "looking at" a new Fairness Doctrine because "talk radio tends to be one-sided....It's explosive. It pushes people to, I think, extreme views without a lot of information." As with Schumer and Bingaman recently, none of the broadcast networks thought Feinstein’s threats worth reporting.
Journalists aren’t known for turning a blind eye to free speech issues. In 2003, ABC, CBS and NBC ran 33 stories on criticism of the Dixie Chicks for speaking out against President Bush and the Iraq war. ABC’s Jim Wooten darkly warned: "All this has reminded some of the McCarthy Era's blacklists that barred those even accused of communist sympathies for working in films or on television."
When Democrats first pushed to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine in 1987-88, both the New York Times and Washington Post came down strongly on the side of free speech. In a June 24, 1987 editorial, the Post called the concept of a Fairness Doctrine repulsive:
"The truth is...that there is no ‘fairness’ whatever in the ‘fairness’ doctrine. On the contrary, it is a chilling federal attempt to compel some undefined ‘balance’ of what ideas radio and television news programs are to include....The ‘fairness doctrine’ undercuts free, independent, sound and responsive journalism — substituting governmental dictates. That is deceptive, dangerous and, in a democracy, repulsive."
Now that the Left is gearing up to suffocate talk radio, the media’s First Amendment solidarity seems to have been eclipsed by their loyalty to the would-be censors of the Democratic Party.
Good, maybe Rush can buy it cheap and make it an ad sponsored free satellite radio service.
I can still publish and distribute. Besides, I picked up a few tricks while hanging out on Free Republic these past 10 10 years.
Anxious to go!!!
10 10 = 10.
Simple answer. None. The Sheep want this government, and will not listen to you.
Yes, so long as their only “killer app” is Howard Stern.
Add Rush to the lineup, and they’ll be _very_ solvent.
However, The Hildebeast and The Zero are true believers and are thus, much more dangerous.
“We need to stop referring to this proposal at ‘The Fairness Doctrine’”
The Censorship Doctrine.
With the said, I do not believe that the current Supreme Court will uphold the fairness doctrine as it has in the past if the doctrine as reinstated is an attempt to regulate speech (as opposed to regulating access to the public airways) or does not apply or is not enforced equally against broadcast television. In fact, I'm not convinced that the SCOTUS will uphold the fairness doctrine at all because the rationale for upholding the doctrine prior to 1987 no longer exists in that, unlike then, there are currently unlimited opportunities for the public to obtain information and divergent point of view, including broadcast TV and radio, cable TV and radio, satellite TV and radio, and most importantly, the Internet. Remember, the purpose of the fairness doctrine as previously upheld by the SCOTUS was not to guarantee equal access to the airways for the benefit of those people trying to deliver a message, but to ensure that the public, who owns the airways, is able to receive divergent points of view.
Congress will use the interstate commerce act to stifle satellite, cable and the internet. You can also bet that they will push for hate laws to prosecute internet posters who post anything remotely conservative.
Sometimes, the best thing for “sparking” a movement is a government trying to supress it. Remember how well the Romans did with trying to supress that pesky Christianity....
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 9:20:04 AM · 20 of 32
John 3_19-21 to Don Corleone
“God help us all if a President Hussein and a filibuster proof Senate happens in Nov. The Democrats will DESTROY America as we now know it.”
The FIRST thing that will be destroyed will be sites like FR. It will be hard for the dems to sell day-for-night with all this truth talk going on all over the web.
The first thing they want to control is what the “truth” is.
For forty plus years they have been lulling the sheeple to sleep through legislative and judicial social deconstruction, and now (should they win) the only thing holding them back is the uncontrolled web.
This will be Job one .
Mark my words.
J.C.
Supposedly there were some kind of regulations agreed upon with the merger of XM and Serious. I never did hear the details, but I’d bet that it gets government oversight now...
They will have fun tracking down posters because they do not use real names.
The problem with taking out am radio is that many people are awakened from their dark sleep of liberal “enlightenment” by a bit of Rush here, and a bit of Hannity, Levin, Ingraham, Quinn and Rose, etc. here and there.
We won’t have the opportunity to wake there people up (it happened to me).
there = these.
my fingers are tired.
Can we file a preemptive lawsuit to require ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Foxnews to put more conservatives on the tv airwaves?
This crowd was trained in secular colleges by the likes of many Ayers & Dohrn professors from radical SDS, which had 100,000 member in 1968 and decided to become educators...they determined the future working class of America would be college educated...see how it worked.
As for ABCNNBCBS, as well as NPR, it would be vociferously denied that these aren't balanced, and thus they would not need to be balanced. Since subjective (read: no) standards, rather than word counts or similar standards, will be used, it'll be hard to prove bias. They'll skate, while Limbaugh and the rest of talk radio, which makes no pretense of balance, will be the only radio affected (since left-wing talk radio has already gone bankrupt).
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