Because they have no worthwhile ideas of their own, the Leftists must find a way to break the near exclusive hold the Right has on the use of talk radio to spread their conservative ideas. The Left has tried talk radio several times in several ways and failed each time. This is, they say, unfair and the imbalance must be rectified. The way to do this obviously, since they can’t compete, is to destroy conservative talk radio.
Using (or abusing) the great power of the United States Congress, the Democrats are going to throw their weight into an effort to muzzle those who do have effective ideas. Queen Nancy and her cohorts in the House are moving forward on a bill to implement what they call the “Fairness Doctrine.” As Orwell described in his novel 1984, this is “Doublethink,” a way of conveying an opposite meaning to fine sounding words and phrases.
Nothing is really fair about the Fairness Doctrine. It not only prevents the market for ideas from operating properly by inhibiting freedom for those who want to listen exclusively to their own type of commentary; but it requires radio station operators to provide time to those people whom their audience is not interested in hearing and will tune out. In tuning them out, they tune out legitimate advertisers and thus deny the broadcaster his revenue.
As a matter of fact, the FCC recognized the fallacy of the doctrine when they dropped it 23 years ago:
In 1985 the FCC discarded the policy after deciding that it restricted journalistic freedom and “actually inhibit[ed] the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and in degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists,” according to a Congressional Research Service report.
So the Democrats will not even pay attention to Congress’ own report. They are intent on only one thing: silence (read censor) conservative talk radio. It is aimed at the conservatives because there is no liberal talk radio; no one wants it, and no one will listen to it.
And, if you can’t win an argument any other way, you can always resort to sarcasm as does Rep. David Obey (D-Wis):
“We ought to let right-wing talk radio go on as they do now,” he said. “Rush and Sean are just about as important in the scheme of things as Paris Hilton, and I would hate to see them gain an ounce of credibility by being forced by a government agency or anybody else to moderate their views enough that they might become modestly influential or respected.”
That’s why they need the Fairness Doctrine; they have no rational ideas of their own.
