The Fairness Doctrine
The Empire Tries to Strike Back
by Ian Mosley
After suffering a humiliating defeat in which tremendous pressure from the public forced the Senate to kill their own Amnesty Bill, a few Senators have begun talking about creating a new law to muzzle talk radio. The Fairness Doctrine was the law of the land in the past. It forced talk radio to provide equal time for alternate political views. The Fairness Doctrine was revoked shortly before Rush Limbaugh began his career. Once it was gone, ordinary Americans could tune into whatever talk radio they wanted to hear, and a wide range of right-wing and libertarian talk radio shows sprang up and prospered, much to the alarm of the liberals.
As soon as Limbaugh’s career began to take off, the left-liberal politicians have lobbied to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and silence the predominantly conservative talk radio, especially such hosts as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage. The liberals have always hated talk radio because it reveals one of their dirty little secrets: that the people of this country are conservative, not liberal, and that the people of this country DO NOT WANT liberals in power and do not trust liberals with power.
Several times during the Clinton administration, trial balloons on legislation were floated to “ensure fairness and balance” in talk radio by compelling radio stations to give “equal time” to lefty-libs and to force liberal and socialist ideology down the throats of their listeners. The opposition however was overwhelming –often stirred up by the very talk show hosts the liberals hoped to silence.
After losing the battle over the Amnesty Bill, various Senators apparently led by Senator Dianne Feinstein have been talking openly about bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. Feinstein has been joined by Hillary Clinton, licking her chops at the prospect of becoming president and having all that lovely power. According to ABC News, “Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okl, claims he overheard Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, and Barbara Boxer, D-Calf, chatting about how out of control talk radio had become. ‘They said we’ve got to do something about this,’ Inhofe told a talk radio host. ‘That ‘these are nothing but far right wing extremists, we’ve got to have a balance, there’s got to be a legislative fix to this.’ …this comes on the heels of a new study by a liberal group that claims that in Spring 2007 ‘of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative.’ ”
Over the past two decades, liberals have struggled to find some way to counteract the impact of talk radio on the public and on elections. First they tried artificially to create liberal “counterweights” to Rush Limbaugh and other prominent conservative talk show hosts, using the stuttering baboon Al Franken, who demanded a salary of 1.5 million from Air America, which continually teetered on bankruptcy while the other hosts appeared to work for bread crumbs. Air America continues to struggle after declaring bankruptcy in 2006.
Many of the Air America liberals like to call themselves “progressives” (perhaps because this has been a code word for Communists in some circles). Air America frequently runs public service announcements for McGruff, the crime dog, or other announcements on parenting, the arts and music because they can’t get enough companies to buy commercials on their network.
The existence of Air America is the strongest argument against the Fairness Doctrine. All Joe Sixpack has to do is tune his radio to Air America and he can get all the liberal fairness he wants. The only problem is Joe Sixpack likes listening to Rush and the right wing talk show hosts, and he stubbornly refuses to change the dial. The truth is Americans don’t want to listen to liberal talk radio –even when offered a whole competing network. It’s not a matter of fairness; it’s a matter of choice and free will.
After the defeat of the Amnesty Bill, however, a few arrogant blowhards on the Republican side have joined the likes of Hillary and Feinstein in pushing the Fairness Doctrine. ABC reports “Even Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., has complained about talk radio as of late, saying last week ‘Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem… I’m sure senators on both sides of the aisle are being pounded by these talk-radio people who don’t even know what’s in the (Amnesty) bill.’ ”
The same article quotes Limbaugh as responding ” ‘The people that he’s actually complaining and whining about now are the ones that tried to defend him (Lott) when everybody else was throwing him overboard when he made those joking comments at a tribute to Strom Thurmond,’ groused…Rush Limbaugh.”
In other words, talk radio has proven to be a two-edged sword for the likes of Trent Lott and George Bush. Maybe some day, talk radio will turn against the Iraq War and quit being such obedient cheerleaders for a pointless meat-grinder.
It will be interesting to see how long talk radio is allowed to exist in its present form, now that our lords and masters have figured out that it’s a danger to them and that an angry mob can be roused to scuttle the Amnesty Bill, which would have been their “NAFTA and GATT” betrayal for the current generation. What if real revolutionaries start to get talk radio shows with millions of listeners? The whole two-party system could one day be overthrown.