Posted on 09/11/2003 10:27:26 PM PDT by The Raven
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:49:53 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Republicans love to complain that they don't get a fair shake from the elites running the nation's airwaves and newspapers. Which has us wondering why they're helping their political opponents muzzle the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
Ever since the Federal Communications Commission's June decision to allow broadcast TV owners to own a few more stations, liberals have been channeling George Orwell -- claiming Big Brother broadcasters are a "threat to democracy" that will stifle "diversity of view." With the aid of many Republicans, they've already blocked the new rules in the House and may pass a resolution on Monday to do the same in the Senate.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I do not understand their thinking at all.
The reason many right-leaning groups (esp. the NRA) dislike relaxing of the FCC regulations is that they're afraid that if smaller market TV/radio stations are bought up by large media corporations run by liberals (such as Tribune, NY Times, WashPost, Viacom, etc.) they will have a harder time running politically incorrect advertisements and such.
To a degree, this fear is correct since in a certain sense, large media corporations do not operate have to respond to the free market because of their size. A good example of this is the broadcast television networks. If ABC, CBS, or NBC decided to present news in a consistently unbiased manner, it would undoubtedly bring them success as FNC has shown. But this doesn't happen because, as former GE CEO Jack Welch argued, the network news divisions are extremely puny portions of the overall revenue pies of Disney, Viacom, and GE.
So any executive who'd like to make his network news more fair generally avoids doing so because to attempt to do so would generate a lot of negative publicity for very little potential economic gain.
Nor is it just the case with the news divisions only. It's also the same reason why you never see sitcoms or dramas with conservative themes while many shows have liberal themes in them.
The issue is a difficult one to sort out and far more complex than the WSJ makes it out to be and there are both positive and negative aspects of the Senate's actions.
_mws_
Trouble is, by and large the people are lazy enough to let a Walter Cronkite do that for them. And a Walter Cronkite only exists when the government suppresses his competition. The FCC created broadcasting by suppressing competition from all but a few licensees, and by a "fairness doctrine" which in fact transferred the "establishment" nature of NY Times journalism to broadcasting, magnifying it with the imprimatur of the government.
If you sued the FCC over the issue of broadcast journalism's leftist bias, journalism would fight a PR war against you. And most judges--most Supreme Court justices--would be tempted to truckle to journalism for fear of negative, and hope of positive, "ink." But on the merits, the fact that broadcast journalism agrees with print journalism is no defense against a charge of bias--the First Amendment protection of the press makes the press presumptively irresponsible. If you can't be forbidden to say what you think, what you say can be wrong.
But since the FCC does have the obligation to apply "public interest" criteria to its licensees, there will aways be the temptation to discriminate against the speech of the honest--who lay out their perspective openly, announcing that they are conservative--and in favor of the arrogant and sneaky, who insinuate (and may be foolish enough to believe) that they are "middle of the road."
And why does the FCC have the obligation to judge what is broadcast? Simply because it engages in unconstitutional censorship in order to create the centralized broadcasting stations which you have the right to shut up and listen to, but no right (in unconstitutional FCC law) to compete with. In constitutional principle, then, the FCC should be abolished or, failing that, subjected to strict scrutiny to assure equality of access to government assistance in publishing speech. An obligation which, if enforced, would presumably look like a C-Span open phones session without rationing of conservative calls. That is, conservative speech would predominate.
Given the left-wing disposition of print journalism, the judges who enforced any such regimen would be subject to the sort of calumny that only Clarence Thomas has heretofore endured. The issue is whether the court could craft and enforce a remedy which would insulate it from the resulting undue influence . . .
You know --I feel the same way....but secretly wish the 'Pubs stay above board and professional. It makes the Dems whining stand out more.
Trouble is ..... the Dem's tactics have worked for so long...they're not going to stop.
Ditto, MNF is the only reason, I turn on over the air TV and for only one night a week, 16 weeks a year. I have been on satellite since they came out and don't think the beltway crowd understand the world has changed.
Every man has a printing press,TV studio, radio and access to a national forum, via the internet.
BUMP for some logic and TRUTH!
. . . which is the complete subversion of the Constitution as ratified.One of my rainy day projects is to rewrite the first ten amendments in today's English (as intended by the founders).
Have you seen my opus on the First Amendment?
BUMP!
The FD is about consensus. It is about the suppression of dissent.
Shocked that Kay Bailey Hutchison and Trent Lott are the Republicans who would support the Fairness Doctrine!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.