Courtesy of Terry Hastings, this piece from Roger Aronoff, who in his Feb 10 Media Monitor column discusses the Democrat push to bring back the old FCC Fairness Doctrine, provides a nice gloss on my post earlier today on the declining standards of avowed objectivity in American media:
George Clooney has talked about returning to the days when everyone had the same “fact level.” By that, he means he wants to return to the “good old days,” as he sees them, when “The News” was a neat package presented from on high by Walter Cronkite […] What Clooney fears is the increasing number of news outlets geared toward news of interest to conservatives […] on talk radio, on the Internet and some on cable news [that have] have undermined the liberal media monopoly that used to exist.
Realizing they are losing influence and are on the defensive, liberals are moving to re-establish the Fairness Doctrine, a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule that required broadcasters to offer equal time to opposing views of those expressed on the airwaves. The result would be a government bureaucracy monitoring what goes out on the air and making broadcasters and commentators reluctant to discuss controversial political issues.
Accuracy in Media founder Reed Irvine had opposed the scrapping of the Fairness Doctrine, believing as many conservatives did at the time that it actually provided an opportunity for conservative voices to be heard. But after the Reagan Administration dropped it, conservatives were able to get their views out and succeed through de-regulation of the media marketplace. It was a tremendous victory for true media diversity and free expression. And that is what scares the liberals.
Indeed, the dumping of the Fairness Doctrine led to the boom in talk-radio, which preceded the Internet, the Blogosphere, and the success of Fox News, a mostly center-right leaning alternative to the mainstream broadcast and cable networks.
Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal, the online publication of the Manhattan Institute, has written an outstanding article that examines the implications of so-called “campaign finance reform” and the efforts to restrict our speech, and access to the Internet and certain talk-radio shows, all in the name of fairness and equal access. It is chilling, it is frightening, and it can potentially happen, though ultimately I believe it will fail.
Anderson, also author of the book South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias, says that the “irony of campaign-finance reform is that the ‘corruption’ it targets seems not to exist in any widespread sense. Studies galore have found little or no significant influence of campaign contributions on legislators’ votes. Ideological commitments, party positions and constituents’ wishes are what motivate the typical politician’s actions in office.”
He says that McCain-Feingold, the latest incarnation of campaign finance reform, is a scary step toward the regulation of politics. It “makes it a felony for corporations, nonprofit advocacy groups, and labor unions to run ads that criticizeâ€â€or even name or showâ€â€members of Congress within 60 days of a federal election, when such quintessentially political speech might actually persuade voters.” This ultimately led to the explosion of spending by the so-called 527 groups (for their IRS designation) and spending, by groups like MoveOn.org, in which the money is much harder to track, and the accountability is vastly reduced.
Anderson also explores the move to restrict speech, including talk-radio, perhaps Fox News, and even the Internet, by talking about “fairness,” whether as part of the Fairness Doctrine, or by utilizing the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to determine what writings on the Internet might unfairly benefit one politician over another.
“What’s really happening,” says Anderson, “is that the Left, having lost its media monopoly, has had trouble competing in a true ‘marketplace of ideas’ and wants to shut that marketplace down.” To back this up, he cites Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, who in a 2003 interview railed against Rupert Murdoch, the head of Fox. Said Dean: “I believe we need to re-regulate the media…so we can be sure that the American people get moderate, conservative, and liberal points of view.” And Anderson cites another mainstream Democrat, Al Gore, who complained of the hollowing out of the American “marketplace of ideas.” He blamed it on the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine “after which Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.”
Part of the irony here is that Rupert Murdoch supported Al Gore for president in 2000, even helping to raise money for him at a high-profile fundraising event.
To demonstrate how real this is, Democrats introduced two bills in Congress last year to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Louise Slaughter of New York state, who introduced one of the bills, said that “Fairness isn’t going to hurt anyone,” while she blasted conservative talk-radio and cable TV, calling them “a waste of good broadcast time, and a waste of our airwaves.”
The effort to regulate the flow of information is under way. In this case, liberals are trying to muzzle conservatives. The liberals are not so liberal when it comes to allowing views that trump their own.
[All emphases mine]
The Slaughter line is my favorite for its absolutely unequivocal Orwellian charm. To paraphrase the NY Democrat, “I support any Fairness Doctrine that puts the government in charge of how people can receive their news, what they are allowed to hear, when they are allowed to hear it, where they are allowd to hear it, and why it must be this way (which, if you’re wondering, is for their own damn good. Because it seems they haven’t been voting correctly recently.”
I noted earlier today that as a remedy to our current state of journalistic affairs, which offers a legacy media proclaiming for “fairness” while practicing barely-disguised advocacy journalism, a more subjective and market-based approach could act as a potential corrective—though the issue is a debatable one (specifically, whether the idea of surrendering an avowed institutional desire to approach objectivity in favor of competing advocacy media is a wise one, as such a could easily lead to consumers seeking out echo chambers that simply parrot their views), what is clear is that deregulation has certainly been a boon to free speech. And any increase in free speech is, to an electorate we rely upon to keep informed and interested in public policy, both enabling and ennobling.
The danger of a reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine is that it seems to confuse very obvious and unabashed partisan political analysis with “news”. Talk radio, for instance, is not “news” in the sense that there remains a discernible difference (both talk radio and the NYT are news analysis outlets nowadays, but only talk radio admits as much)—and so the government presuming to tell talk radio hosts what they must broadcast seems to me a direct violation of Free Speech, which means that talk radio and the political blogosphere, in their currrent incarnations, would need to be restructured entirely, or else shut down completely, in order to comply with the fairness doctrine.
For its part, the NYT , because it is already taken to be “objective” by the pretend standards of current journalistic thinking, would suffer only in that it would be forced to quote Pat Buchanan or Chuck Hagel or Arlen Specter or John McCain more often…
Let’s see……which party is it that’s always accusing the other one of trying to turn back the clock on civil rights?
If it was just airwaves they might have a chance, but it appears to me that the internet is too wide open to regulate. I think the cat’s already out of the bag. And that’s a good thing.
The marketplace of ideas is just that: a marketplace. If your ideas aren’t selling it’s due to one of two reasons, 1) you aren’t selling them effectively, or 2) they weren’t very good ideas in the first place.
The fact that the Dems want to skew the playing field in favor of equal time clearly highlights which of the two reasons above we’re working with. Americans aren’t stupid and they’re not ill-informed about what Democrats stand for. So the fact that a majority choosing to vote Republican is causing Democrats to rue free speech? That’s insane and it means the time has come to reject this party utterly and get a new one with a better message and some truly ‘progressive’ ideas.
I don’t think it’s fair of you to call Slaughter’s line “Orwellian,” Jeff. After all, it wasn’t particularly long.
Amazing how the liberal army cried foul when there were calls for balancing the blatant left-leaning tendencies of NPR and PBS funded by Joe Tax Dollar while disguising their cause as a MoveOn “Save Clifford The Dog” campaign. Then the equal leftist outrage at the audacity of college students’ (and parents flipping the bill for a college education, and deep-pocketed alumni) demands for a place of learning free of political intimidation and indoctrination.
But when the revenue/ratings-driven radio waves in the private sector show what the listening public wants to hear, why it’s just not “fair” and must be “corrected” by the federal government.
Aren’t there other charitable organizations that left-leaning radio stations can soak to maintain their basement-dwelling ratings?
<objective†by the pretend standards of current journalistic thinking, would suffer only in that it would be forced to quote Pat Buchanan or Chuck Hagel or Arlen Specter or John McCain more often…</blockquote>
AFAICR, the “Fairness Doctrine” never applied—and still wouldn’t apply—to print because the FCC regulates broadcast and cable, but the Supremes won’t let anyone regulate newspapers. So the NYT would keep on telling half-truths and outright lies all it wants.
We are talking about the paper of Duranty, after all. The one that refuses to discuss its own role in the stories it likes to claim are important.
My counter to any of these proposed rules, whether it be a return to the ‘fairness doctrine’ or institution of blasphemy laws in the West, is to propose that we’ll carry out any rule you want, but we get to implement it.
Media unfair? We’ll fix it! Let me see… give the SBVT equal time with Kerry, and require every newspaper that runs a liberal cartoonist to have a conservative one. Oh, and we get to judge what is conservative. That’s fair, right?
Any rule based on relative qualitative critera is a magnet for abuse by whoever gets to make the decision. And anyone who proposes such a rule is always convinced that the people who would be implementing such a rule are fair and impartial, just like they are.
As Civilis points out, while “Who wins” and “Who loses” are important – don’t lose sight of “Who decides” and “Who cares”.
Jeff- How do you view the South Dakota law highlighted by Instapundit and Powerline that would require state universities to give an accounting of how they’re providing students with varied liberal and conservative viewpoints? Is a Fairness Doctrine in the academic context any less troublesome to free speech? In that context, liberals seem to believe in the status quo marketplace that is filling academia with liberal professors, while conservatives advocate for governmental intervention because “free speech isn’t working.”
We complain about liberal media posing as objective, and we complain about liberal professors and rules committees posing as moral guardians of the good and true. Should we be wary of “winning” these arguments, for fear of undermining free speech, and instead gird ourselves for eternal complaining wherever the need arises, with the seemingly modest hope of keeping the car out of the ditch on either side?
TW: probably
WashingtonMonthly just ran a piece on the sunday talkingheads being heavy on the right. FAIR used to do these sorts of studies, but looking at more than just left/right. Also looking at whether we’re booking generals or academics to talk about war, etc…
I think its atrios or someone else that started bitching about the creation of panels with an rightist ideologist against a reporter—a double whammy: reinforces the idea of a liberal media and also silences the liberal voice, because that reporter has at least a responsibility for objectivity—if not actual objectivity.
Lately I think someone over at National Review has started to think this is silly.
Given all of that, its hard to see how a fairness doctrine is workable. Equal time/access for candidates is about it. Or maybe mandatory access.
ss —
For me, the problem in universities is less about the classroom as it is about hiring practices. And I find that institutions holding themselves out as champions of diversity who hire along consistent ideological lines are where the trouble lies.
I don’t think laws should look into what’s being taught in the classroom; but I do believe that more intellectual diversity in hiring would solve many of these problems.
Same can be said for the MSM, the majority of whose members are self-identified Democrats. You can change the culture by breaking up the clannishness of the institution involved.
We should bring the same sort of thinking to boardrooms. More diversity in terms of views important to the workplace, like unions, safety, compensation, profit, etc… Would solve a lot of problems.
They have the majority of the newspapers in the US, but they can’t get their message out.
They have PBS, but they can’t get their message out.
They have NPR but they can’t get their message out.
They have the snarky network news readers but they can’t get their message out.
They have 60 Minutes but they can’t get their message out.
They have Hollywood but they can’t get the message out.
They have Air America but they can’t get their message out.
So force the conservative broadcasters to carry their message for them. Sure that will work.
Just as soon as they figure out how to FORCE people to listen to them wherever they turn up.
Hey, it worked in North Korea…
haha. Aw man. Ever listen to Marketplace on NPR? Yes. *they* have you.
Actus, stop digging the hole you’re in!
More diversity in the boardroom? The board is elected by their shareholder owners–and not by the American public.
Ever heard of property rights? I didn’t think so.
Go buy your own company, and put who you want on the board. Can’t afford to buy a company? Go buy some shares, and offer a resolution of your ideas for a vote by the shareholders.
It’s called democratic capitalism, not communism, and not socialism.
Just like a lefty…got all the answers dontcha, as long as we do it your way.
Diversity. What a concept. It means something, one thing, everything, and nothing, all in the strech of a sentence.
Breathtaking. Hubris.
Yeah, perhaps actus is just one of Jeff’s “other” voices.
They know they aren’t getting their message out, because if only people could hear them, people would agree with them.
I mean, how could anyone not?
You do raise a valid concern, although there are two major practical differences between the proposed South Dakota law and the fairness doctrine. The first was well summed up by our host.
In addition, the South Dakota law targets state universities, and therefore government speech. The government has a right to control what is said in its name by its employees.
Direct government regulation of university speech (a fairness doctrine) would imperil the purpose of the university, which is to provide a comprehensive education. However, progressives constantly argue that a comprehensive education requires exposure to a diversity of experience, and that this justifies selective hiring to achieve diversity. Therefore selective hiring to achieve diversity of political opinion must be a good thing.
Because, of course, executives are against unions, safety, and compensation.
Jesus, actus, could you act more like a Hollywood stereotype? Do you really think this way, or are you putting on an act?
Though I don’t know the specifics of south dakota, the trend is for there to be less government funding of schools, and more tuition payments. While at the same time there’s some push for more regulation. The government wants ot pay less and regulate more. Nice!
But the thing we miss out is why the political opinion of a teacher, as shown by some external data, has an impact on what kids hear in the classroom. John Yoo may be a war criminal and a hypocrite. But I’d doubt that he could mess up teaching contracts or criminal law.
Nobody is against those things. But there are diverse views out there on them.
I’ll come out and say that I’m against unions.
(Go ahead… aske me why.)
Surely, you’re not saying government regulation of university hiring in the name of diversity is wrong, are you? Or are you insinuating that all government regulation is wrong? Or is it just regulations proposed by Republicans?
Substitute any other qualification for which we insist on diversity in university faculty for political opinion, and tell me the statement isn’t equally true. There is certainly enough anecdotal evidence of institutional political biases that I’m willing to consider a legislative remedy.
Okay, Joe, why?
(Personally, it probably crystallized when the union kneecapped my brother for voting against a strike….)
I’m just saying its funny that at the time that we are funding less and less of education, and have students pick up more of the tab, we are also going to make more demands of how that education is to be, as opposed to letting the students decide with their tuition dollars. Just as they are being asked to pay more, their money talks less.
I’ve never quite bought that these factors need to present in the classroom. But some of them, like race, are definately things that are brought into the classroom.
Anyway, I don’t think most universities hire with much of a care about classroom performance. At least not above adjunct level. At least I get this from reading the blogs of law professors talking about hiring.
Prof. Goldblatt had a great article at NRO about the Academic Bill of Rights. He has many reservations; for one, it would become an affirmative action program for conservatives. But he follows with this:
“Still, after sitting through 90 minutes of “Academic Work and the New McCarthyism,” it’s hard not to sympathize with Horowitz’s efforts. The panel began with a talk by a youngish assistant professor from Kingsborough Community College. She announced that she’d “adopted an antiwar curriculum” for her freshman English class, then recounted how she’d designed her syllabus around readings meant to expose the lies and treachery of the Bush administration.”[…]
I asked her whether she’d have a problem if a colleague of hers suddenly decided to adopt a pro-war curriculum, and whether, more broadly, she’d have a problem hiring a new teacher who seemed likely to take such an approach.
She replied that she did not currently serve on hiring committees, so she had no control over who joined the faculty at KCC…but she would indeed have a major problem if a colleague of hers were to adopt a pro-war curriculum. […]
An older man was the next person called on; he turned in my direction and said that he’d served on many hiring committees and that he would never hire a teacher who seemed likely to adopt a pro-war curriculum…for the same reason he wouldn’t hire a teacher who seemed likely to espouse creationism or intelligent design. The issue isn’t political, he explained. It’s that the theory is simply wrong. A pro-war curriculum would, by necessity, be rooted in falsehoods and false logic. The classroom, he insisted, is a place for truth. […]
The next comment was also addressed to me, by a young man sitting in the back. He said that, in theory, he would not be opposed to hiring a teacher who supported the war in Iraq…but that situation was unlikely to come up because people who teach in the humanities are trained in critical thinking, and no one who thinks critically could support the war in Iraq. […]
In retrospect, the panelists and audience members for “Academic Work and the New McCarthyism” inadvertently made the strongest possible case for the Academic Bill of Rights. If you’ve come to equate support for the war in Iraq with creationism, then you’re no longer capable of critical thinking on the subject; you’ve surrounded yourself with too many like-minded people. If the ideological bias of academia turns faculty minds into mush, imagine its effect on students.”
Their ‘critical thinking’ sure does sound a lot like ‘circular thinking’.
As for the Fairness Doctrine, I’m open to a fair swap; Fox for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and PBS. It amazes me how liberals get their panties in a wad over one network when they have so many. Why, it’s almost as if they trying to quash dissent–but my critical thinking tells me that just isn’t possible.
Besides, they created Fox by their unwillingness to tell it straight.
Because I was a union officer. I saw firsthand the way that unions exist to:
1) Provide jobs for people who’ve made union organizing their profession (i.e., people who make their livings off the work of the people who pay dues);
2) Defend the incompetent;
3) Replace work and initiative with politics;
4) Provide a forum for socialist proselytizing;
5) Provide an infrastructure for Democrat politicians.
And that’s just for startes. Silly me, I had thought that unions existed to help employees get better pay and working conditions. I’ll tell you this: If I owned a company, and workers decided to unionize, I’d close it.
Say this thing succeeds. What result will occur that won’t end in failure? I don’t mean failure and long-term, I mean “failure so retched that nobody benefits, and DC wipes it off the face of the Earth as quickly as you can say ‘bonehead’” kind of failure.
1. The more likely result is that it will quickly ascend to the Supreme Court (too much money is at stake for it not to). The Supreme Court will (especially now – thank you, Mr. President)strike it down hard and fast. They have to, because (see above re: money).
2. In order to assure maximum use of their quota, the Right and Left will present the most extreme faces of their ideology. This will open the divide further, making honest discourse an ever harder to obtain goal. Panic in the streets, poodles doing it with dalmations, etc.
Oh, and are blogs on the innernet braodcast, or print?
tw: “actually” having nothing to do with this subject, but has anyone coined the phrase “Politeratti” yet? Can’t decide if were talking Chuck Shumer/Joe Biden, or if we’re talking Bill Clinton/um,… Bill Clinton, but it has promise.
We have to get proactive on Actus’ complaints, dammit!
Screw the Fairness Doctrine!
To hell with academic diversity!
The Supreme Court needs to immediately mandate a Constitutional penumbra that requires the Democrats be allocated an equal number of Congressional seats as all other parties combined…
I should also add that it is a form of thievery to take a paycheck for teaching English, Journalism, Art, History, etc., when you are in fact teaching only “Bush Sucks”. And it is a theft from the student who paid for a real education–not to be coercively indoctrinated.
If you want to be a politician, run for office.
Otherwise, Shut Up and Teach.
“At long last, sirs, have you no sense of pedagogy?”
You’d be happy with the changes the AFL-CIO made to deemphasise organizing.
We’ve already found these things to be proper. Specially for the airwaves. I don’t think the same cases would hold for cable though.
Fairness Doctrine? OK.
I want “Firing Line” back on PBS.
I want George Stephanopolous to trade off alternate weeks with Jonah Goldberg on This Week,
I want Oliver North on the editorial board of Bill Moyers’ NOW.
Anybody else have any suggestions?
Is stephanopolous still an ideologue or is he making a claim to be a journalist?
-Reduce CBS from 24 hours a day to one and abolish CNN;
-Fund CATO and the Federalist Society’s new broadcast operations;
-Insert “Not” in front of “All Things Considered”.
What do we have then? A pair of new broadcasters to counter the alphabets with FOX to balance the communists at the PBS/NPR debacle.
tw: Just a few improvements.
Stephanopolous is the guy whose only job was to keep Clinton’s fly zipped and couldn’t even do that right. Sometimes known as “The Fifth Monkee” before the new haircut…
Good ideas, all. But I think in this case, Fairness = Noam Chomsky’s Opinion Hour and Ramsey Clark’s Legal News. And a oversight board run by Mary Frances Berry.
Good point, MayBee. After all, the real lefties swear that ABCNNBCBS, etc. skew too far to the right. Hell, I’ve been friends with some of these people, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that they think Eric Alterman has a conservative bias.
I’ve only twice or three times listened to Rush Limbaugh’s show (on the recommendation of Camille Paglia, c.1994), and I thought it was well-done and boring (though being reminded of the “Spatula City” song from UHF was nice)â€â€a decent, mostly populist (because Rush was a pretty average guy then) counter to the official spins of the time, but too Party-loyal to hold my ear. And he talked about the Fairness Doctrine too much, because the same regressive push was underway then.
Everyone I knew who heard him back then thought basically the same, or that Rush just did a funny, informative show, no caveats. So Gore’s “hate-monger” remark is bafflingâ€â€unless you read Gore as a powermad demagogue who speaks with no reference to reality. Likelyâ€â€he’s a politician. Or does he believe what he says? Possibly. Democrats seem to think very strangely.
You know Gore’s never heard the show, if only because he’s got other shit to do all the time. So he’s seeding or repeating a decree, making or reinforcing propaganda. And almost everyone I know who hasn’t heard Rush toes the Gore line to this day: “hatemonger” “dangerous” “brownshirt”â€â€you know the Litany. It doesn’t vary.
Likewise, I’ve never seen Fox News, don’t know who Hannity is, and haven’t read more than three lines of Coulter; I just don’t find Republican arguments interesting (because they’re obvious), yet I’ve been accused of “parroting” their “talking points” and being in “lockstep” with their “marching orders,” solely because I’m anti-Democratâ€â€for reasons Democrats just can’t process.
Are their minds collages of received ideas, therefore so must be mine and yours? They take orders, they believe without seeing, therefore so do we? They emulate television, so we’re all blank-slate zombies? Maybe. It explains their love of state-controlled media at least.
Before the last election, a frustrated Republican friend of mine lamented that he and I could more easily sit around a campfire with Osama and Hitler and have a rational political discussion than do the same with our Deaniac friends, because at least those two bastards have minds of their own. Felt true.
There’s some unbridgeable gap. The big names are just evil shits, but J. Random Democrat is…fucked up somehow. It’s frightening, franklyâ€â€like meeting a schizophrenic with his fists up. Hopeless.
I think you grossly understate the amount of state university tuition paid by governments. Sure, that may be decreasing, but it is a lot. It’s also completely irrelevant to my point. As for students deciding via the market, an in-state student in my state may very well be forced by economics to choose a state college with in-state tuition rates to apply to. Leaving them with only institutions with a self-perpetuating political bias to choose from does them a great disservice.
Sure, but how does race have an impact on what students hear in the classroom, and how does that differ from the impact of the political leanings of the professor?
Which is why if you wrote a rule mandating a quantitative definition of fairness, most of those screaming for a fairness doctrine would probably say “Never mind.”
Unless they’ve eliminated it entirely, probably not.
Who said the market was going to be nice to the poor?
I don’t know. It would depend on how the students perceive race. But the point is race is perceptable in a way that politics might not be.
Who said it was the job of the market to be nice?
TW: You have to explain things slowly to actus.
That’s my point. Who said it would be? who thinks it would be? that’s not its job.
Actus,
More generally, do you think it is reasonable to suppose that government-funded institutions (universities, whatever) don’t take, espouse, or promote an overtly partisan stance? This is done in some respects in cases relating to campaigning with government resources, but there are (perhaps) a few arenas in which this isn’t strongly policed.
Thoughts?
BRD
Sure. The problem is I keep hearing about how these people are taking partisan stances because of things they do outside of the classroom. That doesn’t make much sense.
But there’s nothing wrong with taking a stance that aligns with a political party’s views. Say one takes the stance that tax cuts are self-financing, but comes at this due to economics research.
Actus,
From my perspective, I had one PoliSci Professor whose ideological view was essentially a green/feminist critique. Not, as you may guess, anywhere remotely near my views. And this Professor was of immense professional and academic help, didn’t let even the tiniest hint of her views cloud the course material. I would recommend the Prof in a heartbeat and bend over backwards for them.
This, I felt, was a fine and shining example of academic professionalism.
I think a different (and more accurate) way of viewing the problem – when an academic is both being politically assertive AND unprofessional. This would also extend to the notion of denying people tenure not because they held extremist views, but rather because they held relatively common views other than those of the people already in the clique.
But I digress, am I correct in thinking that you agree with the assertion that, in general, people should preach personal partisan politics on the public dime, or at least in venues that are not explicitly intended for such displays?
BRD
Does this extend to a press secretary proposing a partisan view while being paid by the public dime? Or a presidential advisor? I think that’s allowed.
I think we ought to look at public financing of elections. So I think that’s allowed there too.
I’m ok with say, someone at NASA having a view of a scientific issue that aligns with a particular political party. It’s a bit more problematic when someone there says their job is to make a particular political view look good.
I agree that partisan politics doesn’t belong in a classroom, but that’s not because its a government financed school, but because it gets in the way of the mission.
But overall, I don’t think a blank prohibition on partisan activity by people who have government connections are going to work. Government contractors are going to make political contributions, government workers are going to attend rallies, etc…
Actus,
I think I agree broadly with you in your last comment. There is definitely some difficulty with those politicans who are, by definition, partisan (e.g. staffers, press secretaries), but the whole notion of requiring professionalism (especially as regards partisan leanings) I think is something that could most assuredly use some improvement.
BRD
Nothing wrong with professionalism. That fits in with the fact that some positions are political appointments.
Keep repeating: It’s all for my own good, it’s all for my own good…
OK, how about this:
If Fairness is such a good idea, why not apply it also to metropolitan daily newspapers that dominate their market? Back in the old days, the Fairness Doctrine didn’t apply to them because most faced a competing cross-town daily.
This is still just a battle in the last war. Stern (no peace be upon him) is polluting Sirius beyond the reach of any such restriction. Rush would be the same. We are near the obsolescence of AM and FM, with their carcasses divided up for parts that will amount to MUCH more than today’s whole. The principle is bogus but, as with much that exercises our Progressive Superiors, moot.
Jeff (or anybody)—Why can’t we drop the “liberal” moniker and just call these folks “socialists?” That’s what they are. They hide behind the name of their party (“democrat” sounds nice and warm and fuzzy) but they now embody what we fought against during the latter half of the 20th century.
Why don’t we call them what they are? Maybe if we did, Joe Public would prick up his ears and say “WTF?”
As Neal Boortz has often pointed out, the leftist agenda simply will not stand up to critical scrutiny. The liberal stangle hold on news has long prevented alternate voices from being heard. Fortunately we are moving beyond that era. Not even the Fairness Doctrine will muzzle the blogosphere.
The democratic party has always been selective in its definition of freedom of speech. Here in Georgia, they also silenced the right to vote in outlying areas. Visit:
http://unstuckonstupid.blogspot.com/2006/02/sandy-springs-freeing-hostages.html
for more information regarding the selective disenfranchisement of Sandy Springs residents.
Actus has equated a college professor (paid for with public funds) to a political appointee (paid for with public funds). That is an interesting idea. If the fairness doctrine passes, I suggest that Harry Reed, Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton be prevented from making partisan comments without immediate time being offered in the media by Anne Coulter, Sea Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Jonah Goldberg. The failure to do this will result in multi-million dollar fines and the loss of their broadcast licenses. Damn, I like that idea. Thanks for bringing it to mind.
Is Actus a creation of Karl Rove of simply one who engages mouth before brain is fully functional?
I think the distinction was rather a difference between the private press and the public airwaves.
This explains the massive amounts of anti-war voices heard as the war was gearing up. And the dearth of pro-war ones.
Why mix politicians and pundits? Is there no elected person that can counter a Clinton?
I’ve just read through the thread. Many good observations here, but also some other things that aren’t so good.
Actus and I don’t overlap very much on our politics, but that’s not why I’m commenting. He (she?) has been the target of a number of direct ad hominem insults here, yet always maintained a cool demeanor and respectful tone in reply.
I judge a person more by their character than their politics, and in this regard, must judge Actus as one of the best posters in this thread. People who present a view different from our own in a way that allows us to examine their argument without bristling in defense or anger are doing us a service. A service that is in all too short supply these days.
Peace.
The result would be a government bureaucracy monitoring what goes out on the air and making broadcasters and commentators reluctant to discuss controversial political issues.
And I thought the Left was against domestic surcveillance.
Of broadcast tv?
It seems that I heard of a Journalism school (University of Tennessee?) that did research to chatr the influence that CBS News had on public opinion during the Vietnam War. As I understand it, they graded CBS news broadcasts as pro-neutral-or anti war and established a Pro bias up until TET 68. At that time Walter C declared the war unwinnable and the bias shifted to anti-war. Public opinion was shown to follow the shift in the attitude of the network. CBS sued the university to suppress the research claiming copywrite infringenment for using broadcasts that had been recorded and archived by the journalism school. Is this true or a myth?