Posted by
Chris on Thursday, August 28, 2008 12:17:57 PM
Democrat leaders are calling for the return of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" .
First, a little history via Wikipedia:
The
Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the U.S.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that required the holders of
broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was (in the FCC's view) honest, equitable, and balanced. The
United States Supreme Court has upheld the Commission's general right to enforce such a policy where channels are limited, but the courts have generally not considered that the FCC is obliged to do so.
[1] The FCC has since withdrawn the Fairness Doctrine, prompting some to urge its reintroduction through either Commission policy or Congressional legislation.
[2]
Aside from being a bureaucratic nightmare, and difficult if not impossible to enforce justly (after all, who decides what's balanced?) this looks a lot like sour grapes from the liberal/progressives in Congress whose ideas can't hack it in the marketplace when they actually have to be defended and examined and talked about. That is to say, they can't attract a very large audience, and I think it's because talk radio is about argumentation, among other things. The left's ideas don't do so well once their premises and first principles (note that I say first principles, not their policies or issues of the moment) are questioned in a sustained discussion. There are many smart liberals, but their intelligence is not what's questioned here. It's their worldview. Thomas Jefferson once described George Washington by saying of him that his mind, while not of the very first order, was great and powerful. I've often wondered if this meant that Jefferson thought of his own mind as being "of the very first order". And maybe it was true; Jefferson was certainly brilliant. Yet even if Jefferson was "smarter" than Washington, from what I know of them, I would probably describe Washington as the wiser of the two. It's not just the raw mental processing ability, but the solidity of the thinking, that matters.
That said, let's say for the sake of argument that the Fairness Doctrine gets hauled out again and debated in Congress. Here's a new argument (as far as I know) against it: political views are not formed only by discussion in public newstalk forums, but also indirectly by artistic media. (That's why "artistic" speech is so important to them, right? And to conservatives, too, but differently. That's a side topic worth exploring sometime, but not today.) So why not also apply the Fairness Doctrine to everything that comes out of Hollywood? For every movie with a liberal theme, there would have to be one with a conservative theme. Likewise pop music songs, and sitcoms. There are only so many movies made each year, only 40 spaces in the top 40 songs. Why not regulate those, too? It may not be a perfect argument, but maybe there's enough of a point there to make some lights go on and make people realize that having the "Fairness Police" referee what has become an almost unlimited number of news outlets is bound to be a mess. Tellingly, there is serious talk on the left of wanting to have the Fairness Doctrine apply to sites on the Internet. Sheesh. Talk about Big Brother watching you. Why don't we all just move to China?