A tip of my walking hat goes to The Waterman for bringing the opening graphs of this John Gizzi column at Humanevents.com to my attention and putting his two cents’ worth on the subject as well. Hopefully this marks a return to blogging for The Waterman, if even just for his school’s summer break.
The premise of both is a push by Nancy Pelosi and company for restoring the Fairness Doctrine, which radio broadcasters followed for decades until it was put to bed by President Reagan. Almost immediately came the birth of talk radio as we know it, a medium that is dominated by conservatives like the aforementioned Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, as well as the more libertarian Neal Boortz. On the other side, liberals like Al Franken, Ed Schultz, and their comrades on Air America have a much tougher time keeping an audience.
One commentor on Gizzi’s post wondered if the Fairness Doctrine would extend to National Public Radio, which is notoriously left-wing on a national scale. Leaving aside my prejudice against any government involvement in radio programming, I suspect that may fall under the same rules as your local newspaper, which toils under no such restriction on presenting equal viewpoints and for the most part doesn’t. Rare is the editorial page that presents both sides of a particular issue; I think the only time I’ve seen that attention to equality is the editorial pages of USA Today and it’s been years since I read the paper. And even if a newspaper does devote its editorial page to both sides of an issue, reporting has no similar standard.
Nor is there any thought of doing the same to television news. Study after study shows that more affirmative and positive coverage goes to left-wing issues and candidates, while the conservatives and their pet issues are belittled or ignored. A prime example of this is the Long War, where the only coverage anymore seems to be of the rare setbacks in the effort. The mulitude of successes in Iraq and Afghanistan only seem to get a lot of play on conservative internet sites, where bloggers from both sides compete on a relatively level playing field.
I know Rush railed a bit against this today, but I’m going to go ahead and project what could happen – after all, I’m doing this more as an opinion piece than hard news.
Let’s turn the clock ahead a year and say that the Fairness Doctrine is reestablished by the House and after surviving a valiant but futile filibuster attempt in the Senate after a few RINO’s sell out, the measure is signed by President Barack Obama. (Are those three scary words or what?) I don’t think Rush immediately loses a large number of stations but lesser lights like Laura Ingraham or Mark Levin would probably see their radio shows dropped in a number of markets due to the coordinated complaints of left-wing groups just chomping at the bit to take down some of these thorns in their side.
So where do these folks go? Well, some may get into internet broadcasting and that’s where the trouble for us bloggers could begin. As has happened in many an instance, liberals take one little step to start the trek toward domination and absolute power and incrementally usurp more and more freedom. Like the frog who’s unaware of the water in the pot heating up around him until it’s too late, most people don’t notice their rights taken away until they have none left.
It may take an election or two but sooner or later Democrats (if they stay in control of Congress) might decide that perhaps the equal time restrictions should apply to the internet and that websites like the ones affiliated with the radio broadcasters I noted above also have to be linked up with websites which provide an opposing point of view. The fear I have is that some ISP’s may just decide it’s not worth it to have politically-oriented websites and drop all of them, leaving information distribution in fewer hands.
I’m certain some of you are reading this and thinking that Michael has gone off the deep end of the conspiracy pool. But think about what used to be property rights in this country, particularly where “endangered” species or wetlands are involved. Perhaps free speech will win the day and the Fairness Doctrine will be beaten back as permanently as can be done inside the Beltway. But pay attention to the debate because those who wish to control the information you have access to could be targeting the internet with their next salvo should the effort to hush Rush pull through.
I have to say on the freedom of speech end I agree with your premise of censorship. However, I disagree with your view of the medias’ portrayl of the 100 year war evaluation, it is something we never should have been in anyway and now we are all just sick of losing good people for King George and his friend’s personal agendas.
I also have to say that President Mc Cain, or more accurately,Bush’s third term are more scary than anything else I can think of at this time in my life. I am truely fightened for my country and my family’s financial future if Mc Cain wins.