The Foulness Doctrine
John Fund profiles an effort by Indiana's Representative Mike Pence to permanently ban the "fairness doctrine". The left is pushing to have that assault on free speech reinstated, Pence is trying to drive a stake through its black heart once and for all.
It wasn't that hard for Indiana's Rep. Mike Pence to build media and congressional support for his Free Flow of Information Act, which would protect the confidentiality of contacts between reporters and sources. It passed the House this month by an overwhelming vote of 398-21. His next battle will be a lot harder–to permanently ban the Fairness Doctrine, the regulation many liberals are now actively trying to revive in an effort to silence their critics.
Until the FCC scrapped the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, it required broadcasters to provide equal time to all sides of "controversial" issues. In practice, this led to what Bill Monroe, a former host of NBC's "Meet the Press," called "timid, don't-rock-the-boat coverage." On radio, Newsweek's Howard Fineman notes, it "effectively kept partisan shows off the airwaves," so that in 1980 there were a mere 75 talk radio stations. Today there are 1,800.
But the Fairness Doctrine has always had fans in the corridors of power because it gave incumbents a way of muzzling their opponents. The Kennedy administration used it as a political weapon. Bill Ruder, Kennedy's assistant secretary of commerce, explained: "Our strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue." The Nixon administration similarly used the doctrine to torment left-wing broadcasters.
Democrats who have become "Fairness" mongers insist they simply want to restore civility and balance to the airwaves. Al Gore, in a typically overheated speech last year bemoaned "the destruction of [the] marketplace of ideas" which he blamed in part on the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, after which "Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves."
Pence easily got a one year ban through the House in June but the Democrat's leadership is telling its members that they must not sign on to Pence's permanent ban bill. The left's answer to talk radio is the perennially failing Air America. It has never managed to attract enough listeners to be successful. In straight competition in the marketplace of ideas the left cannot compete - hence their need for a tool to silence the opposition. Pence needs 18 Democrats to back his bill in order to bring it to the floor for a vote. If he cannot get those votes, it should be obvious what will be coming in 2009 if the Democrats win in 2008.
By Strickland, Monday, 29 October , 2007 @ 9:20 am
Kudos to Rep. Pence for pushing for this legislation. I’ve done some work with NAB, so I’ve seen first hand what the “Fairness Doctrine” actually does — it muzzles political debate because many local stations would rather not air an issue rather than rounding up proponents from both sides.
I think in America we should encourage a vibrant debate. Sometimes liberals win; sometimes conservatives win, but that battle should always be settled in a free and lively marketplace of ideas.