Yip Yap Times

Fairness Doctrine: Trojan

The Democrats have been yip yapping for some time about the dominance of conservative talk shows in the AM band. As explained in “The Fairness or Unfairness Doctrine?”, a few of the proud of the extreme left, comprised of the likes of Hillary Clinton, Dick Durbin and Diane Feinstein, have figured out what to do with the likes of Rush Limbaugh—demand the return of the old FCC Fairness Doctrine. This is the same Fairness Doctrine that lapsed in 1987 because it didn’t do what the FCC thought it would do: air both sides of a controversial story on the three available nightly TV news shows.

With the wide variety of media outlets provided by twenty-first century communications technology, debate should theoretically happen among broadcasts and print media. But with the playing field tilted almost vertical in favor of liberal news, we need a Fairness Doctrine to ensure that other viewpoints get a chance to be heard. But conservatives will never demand a fairness doctrine to level the playing field because they believe in the free speech doctrine.

Like dangerous malware buried deep in legitimate web downloads, the Democrats’ dangerous agenda behind their campaign to reactivate the Fairness Doctrine is buried deep beneath high sounding words like “fair” and “balance.” Thanks to conservative radio and the tiny number of right-thinking people sprinkled in the mainstream media, a huge segment of the American people understand the intent of the liberal Democrats’ sudden concern with media fairness. Couple this with Indiana Congressman Mike Pence’s Broadcasters’ Freedom Act and a sure routing of the Democrats’ offense to limit the First Amendment is all but guaranteed.

The party of the left knows it has no real justification to summon the Fairness Doctrine back from the dead. But they will do whatever it takes to be unchallenged, such as whining a lot or using a strategy of lies, bigotry, intolerance and character assassination. Cybercast News Service reported that the Democrats intend to push for the regulation by linking talk radio to hate crimes. They have requested a federal study of how licensed broadcasting facilities have delivered “messages of bigotry or hatred, creating a climate of fear and inciting individuals to commit hate crimes.” If your ideas aren’t acceptable to the ears of your hearers, then ram them in with federal chop sticks.

The predominant success of conservative radio hosts has resulted from the free market mechanism as many news analysts have explained. The failure of Al Franken’s “Air America” had nothing to do with denial of air time—it just sucked. National Public Radio would probably crash and burn too if it wasn’t getting propped up by the American taxpayer. Liberal talk show host Stephanie Mills told Sean Hannity in a recent interview that liberal radio is not failing in the free market. We had only to look at the success of her own show, about which she boasted a rating quadruple that of any other show, to see this.

“Why is radio 90% conservative and only 10% liberal?” she asked, implying the automatic success of any liberal show if it were allowed on the air. Lefties, being far too holy to understand the profit motive behind free markets, refuse to accept that liberal claptrap isn’t popular with the majority of radio listeners, and therefore it isn’t popular with a majority of radio investors. Her big idea to solve the inequity in the AM band is to force investors to air more Al Franken and go bust and be happy about it.

The liberal left is at war with the First Amendment. If liberal radio is so popular, then it is apparent that the Democrats’ proposed study of hate crimes in talk radio will be limited to conservative shows. The goal is to impose Orwellian “hate speech” codes on any media outlet or person that exposes the left’s true agenda. Ronald Reagan said it best:

“The framers of the First Amendment, confident that public debate would be freer and healthier without the kind of interference represented by the ‘fairness doctrine,’ chose to forbid such regulations in the clearest terms: ‘Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’... History has shown that the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and competition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee. [The ‘fairness doctrine’] simply cannot be reconciled with the freedom of speech and the press secured by our Constitution. It is, in my judgment, unconstitutional. Well-intentioned as [the ‘fairness doctrine’] may be, it would be inconsistent with the First Amendment and with the American tradition of independent journalism.”

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fairness doctrine

posted by Lisa @ 4:59 PM