You know, since President Obama has said he opposes reviving the policy, it should be a no-brainer for all the loyal Democrats in the House of Representatives to join with the Republicans to keep speech free on radio and television.

The Senate has barred federal regulators from reviving a policy, abandoned two decades ago, that required balanced coverage of issues on public airwaves.

The Senate vote on the so-called Fairness Doctrine was in part a response to conservative radio talk show hosts who feared that Democrats would try to revive the policy to ensure liberal opinions got equal time.

The problem, of course, is not one of denying equal time to liberals – if people wanted to listen to liberal talkers such shows would flourish. The problem is that programming in the broadcast industry is based upon what viewers and listeners want to see and hear. Liberal talk radio has failed time and again, even when it has had big bucks placed behind it. Even in liberal Washington, DC, a liberal talk station folded due to lack of listenership. Just as it would be nuts to require that hip-hop stations play a certain number of country and classic rock songs each day no matter what the listeners want, it is equally crazy to tell talk stations that they must program shows that their audience does not want to hear. And rest assured that if the Fairness Doctrine were to return, the next step would be to insist that there be balance in how the unpopular liberal shows were placed – no running Ed Schultz and his ilk at oh-dark-thirty while placing the top-rated national shows (all conservative) during prime listening hours. The end result would be stations abandoning the talk format – and the AM band left barren.

Better to slay this beast now to stop the ideological censorship of the broadcast media.

Posted by: Greg at 10:39 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 345 words, total size 2 kb.