Bring on the Fairness Doctorine.
We should have 'equal time' to rebut such comments.
Am I alone in thinking that one should be very careful what one wishes for, for their wish may come true?
They’re scared black folks will vote for stupid Democrats, which seems to be the pattern.
If applied fairly (and that's the whole point), it would be to our advantage. Since the whole media tilts left, the Fairness Doctrine would at least help it tilt back towards the middle. For every stupid liberal comment they make, they would have to legally counter it with a conservative opinion. That might not be such a bad thing.
The Fairness Doctrine won’t apply to CNN since it isn’t sent out over the public airwaves.
Even if the Fairness Doctrine is enforced fairly, and it won’t be, its impact will fall almost entirely on conservatives. AM radio stations are tough properties to operate in this day and age. Music has better sound quality on FM, so those stations will continue to mostly air music no matter what. AM survives largely on two formats, talk and sports. And the talk is mostly conservative because conservatives feel frustrated by the overwhelming leftist bias on TV, in the newspapers, on the wire services, etc. There isn’t nearly as much liberal talk radio because lefties are satisfied with the other media, so they have no need to find a niche in AM radio.
If the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated, every station airing Rush Limbaugh for three hours daily would have to air three hours of liberal talk to balance it. But no one listens to liberal talk, so the station would have to lose money for three hours every day to carry three profitable hours. Most stations would find this financially intolerable, and would switch to sports, or do-it-yourself shows, or auto repair shows, or anything non-controversial. Those shows wouldn’t sell ad time like Rush, but Rush’s benefits to the station would be wiped out by the requirement to air three hours of zero rated, and thus unsellable, air time every day for liberal talk shows.
Now, there are those who say that regular broadcast TV, such as CBS & NBC, would be covered by the Fairness Doctrine and thus conservatives could demand equal time there. No, we couldn’t, and here’s why:
1) The Fairness Doctrine only kicks in when something overtly political occurs. For example, when Rush tells his millions of listeners to call their Senators to oppose the amnesty bill, or outright ridicules Nancy Pelosi. Liberal bias on CBS and other networks doesn’t work that way. Katie Couric doesn’t openly denounce Fred Thompson or encourage her viewers to phone senators in support of a particular bill. She just uses omission and slanting to bias the story. She just doesn’t tell us what provisions are in the amnesty bill, or doesn’t report that the economy is going well under a GOP administration. She covers every setback in Iraq, but not the victories. She covers a pro-abortion rally but not a pro-life rally. She does puff pieces on Hillary and Obama but not the Republicans.
She does nothing overt, like telling us to get on the phone and call our senator, or telling us that a certain bill is great and should be passed, or horrible and will destroy the country. She just covers those things she wants us to know about in a manner that subtly leads us to the conclusion she wants us to have, while not covering things she doesn’t want us to know about.
Thus, the brutal black-on-white rape and murder case in Knoxville doesn’t get covered, while the phony white-on-black rape case at Duke got covered as a major story, with the accused being presented as guilty by means of slanting, rather than an overt declaration. That wouldn’t be actionable under the Fairness Doctrine.
2) We all know that the Fairness Doctrine will not be enforced fairly. The best example of that is NPR, which for years operated under the Fairness Doctrine, yet was overwhelmingly biased against conservatives, and nothing was done about it even though it was a government-run channel and used not only the public airwaves but taxpayers’ money. We have hate crime laws, which theoretically apply to all so-called bias crimes, but we know that a white-on-black or hetero-on-homo crime will be far more likely to be prosecuted than the opposite. We have a stupid IRS rule banning political activities by churches, but we all know that the IRS looks the other way when black and liberal churches engage in politics. We have federal laws prohibiting tax money from going to any group that engages in political lobbying, so right-to-life groups get no government aid, but Planned Parenthood not only gets taxpayers’ money, but brazenly lobbies for more of it.
So don’t expect the Fairness Doctrine to come back to haunt liberals. It won’t.
You don't think they would simply put on a wimpy RINO followed by a moonbat liberal to evicerate him and then call it fairly balanced?
Uh huh. Nice racist remark, broh.