Fairness Down Your Throat


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Free Speech: Terrorism and oil aren't the only stand-out issues this year. A President Obama and Democratic Congress could empower a multimedia thought police whose long arms extend even to the Internet.

More than 20 years have passed since the Reagan administration sent the so-called Fairness Doctrine to the ash heap of history. In so doing, it ended a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of free political speech that managed to survive for almost four decades.

Those old enough will remember how afternoon sitcom reruns were regularly interrupted by some little old lady or wild-eyed activist being given several minutes of "equal time." The mind-numbing interludes were how TV and radio complied with that erstwhile Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation requiring "balance" on the airwaves.

In the years since the Fairness Doctrine was scrapped, America's elite media establishment, which had thought its comfortable position of power was permanent, has been rocked by a free speech revolution courtesy of talk radio and a whole universe of bloggers. Their instant fact checks and counterpunches have dethroned the Big Three TV networks, as well as the New York Times and Washington Post.

Yet an alarming proportion of the public seems to think government-imposed "equality" should govern the airwaves. A Rasmussen survey this month found 47% in favor of requiring all radio and TV stations to provide an equal share of conservative and liberal political commentary.

( The same poll, however, found 57% opposed to making political Web sites and bloggers provide opposing viewpoints.)

The noises we now hear from Democrats in Congress about legislatively reinstating the Fairness Doctrine are really cries of defeat. As much as they've tried, liberals have found it impossible to compete with conservatives on talk radio. So they want to rig the game in their favor by forcing stations under law to accept liberal content no matter bad the ratings are.

Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have threatened to impose a revamped Fairness Doctrine, while on the other side of the Capitol Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ill., has collected 198 signatures and needs only 20 more to force a floor vote on his Broadcaster Freedom Act explicitly outlawing the Fairness Doctrine.

Human Events political editor John Gizzi reported in June that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told him and dozens of other reporters she supported a new Fairness Doctrine and would not allow Pence's bill to reach the floor if his discharge petition fell short of the 218 signatories needed.

A 21st century Fairness Doctrine, however, would have to extend beyond the airwaves to accomplish its purposes of government-regulated "balance" in the opinions available to the public.

After appearing at the Heritage Foundation in Washington earlier this month, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell gave a videotaped interview to the Media Research Center and warned that "whoever is in charge of government is going to determine what is fair, under a so-called Fairness Doctrine, which won't be called that — it'll be called something else."

And McDowell asked: "So, will Web sites (and) bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views, rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?"

According to McDowell, "this election, if it goes one way, we could see a re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine." But McDowell believed it would be given a different name and "intertwined into the net neutrality debate."

(The term "net neutrality" was dreamed up by Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo as a euphemism for using anti-competitive government measures against potential rivals.)

How painfully ironic it would be if this entity through which every imaginable indecent image can be accessed becomes policed regarding its political content.

Luckily, the Supreme Court has made it clear in multiple decisions that all it takes is proof that the Fairness Doctrine is "reducing rather than enhancing" speech to bring its constitutionality into question — a view embraced even by liberal justices like the late William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. That governmental muzzling of bloggers reduces speech wouldn't take a lawyer very much time or effort to substantiate.

The days of the Dan Rathers and Ben Bradlees deciding where and how we get our information are gone. The fact that Democrats want to take us back to governmental restriction of the dissemination of knowledge and opinion is — like the drilling issue — something John McCain and congressional Republicans can and should run with all the way to the end zone this year.



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