Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a gun and free speech... you can't have one, you can't have one, you can't have one without the other.
Posted on 02/05/2012 4:47:42 AM PST by Halfmanhalfamazing
The stated rationale for the Fairness Doctrine was to encourage more information to be aired by radio and TV stations, on the theory that private broadcasters would tend to underprovide a public good-news about important social issues. Yet, the danger has been seen, at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Federal Communications Commission, and elsewhere, that there exists a potentially unconstitutional "chilling effect": the prospect of having to award equal (unpaid) time to dissenting points of view institutes a tax on controversial speech. In that the Doctrine was abolished in 1987, the radio market now allows us to observe licensees' unregulated choices in selecting the profit-maximizing quantity of informational programming. Industry data show a clear break in the trend around 1987, when informational formats began rising relative to others-evidence suggesting just the "chilling effect" feared by the Supreme Court.
(Excerpt) Read more at mason.gmu.edu ...
With the Fairness Doctrine once again being pushed for by some Obamunists out there, it would be good (I think) if we took the time to re-familiarize ourselves with the real world facts regarding how the Fairness Doctrine necessarily ends up silencing speech.
I'm hoping the mods will approve of my use of the side bar for this. It's important.
Here is a brief summary of what's contained in the report, for those of you who do not wish to download and scour the report:
http://www.blogher.com/fairness-doctrine-coming-back
=====As a 1997 study by Hazlett and David Sosa charted, AM radio, freed from its shackles, suddenly exploded with news programming and political talk shows. Such "informational" broadcasts expanded from 7 percent of all AM programming to 28 percent just eight years after the Fairness Doctrine’s end; on FM, the increase was from 3 percent to 7 percent. The tube soon featured lots more news coverage and opinion, too. Today, around 1,500 radio stations feature a talk or news format—and the vast majority broadcast conservative, libertarian, or populist voices, as listeners look for an alternative to a liberal mainstream press.=====
The general trendline of those discussions is that the Fairness Doctrine is the purest sort of Fascism and those who advocate its reimposition are totalitarian enemies of the people.
It's worth fighting a bloody revolution to prevent the return of the Fairness Doctrine.
——————Of course the chilling effect of the Fairness Doctrine has been discussed on FR many times over the years.-—————
I meant the study. I thought I was clear about that. My fault.
-——————It’s worth fighting a bloody revolution to prevent the return of the Fairness Doctrine.——————
I agree. The pen is mightier than the sword, which makes our freedom to speak more valuable than our freedom to bear arms.(not that I want to lose that either, I’m just saying)
This is another way to distabilize. Other points of view supported and paid for by the government with your tax dollars on a national level can be viewed or portrayed as mainstream. There lies the danger.
I disagree.
The sword is mightier than the pen. The USSR, North Korea, Iran, etc are all examples where the sword is mightier than the pen.
In a society dedicated to individual rights, the pen minimizes the need for the sword.
akready = already
Spell check missed it...
Mel Gibson’s character in THE PATRIOT: “An elected legislature can trample on a man’s rights just as much as a king can.”
Watch out for the Trojan horse of “local content” being raised - this is just another way to get rid of the nationally syndicated radio talk show hosts like Rush, Beck, Boortz, etc.
Rush makes the case fairly often that with the doctrine in place he would never have able to do what he does.
See here what the plans are for the Philly Inquirer.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2842390/posts
Rendell Seeks To Save Inquirer
BillLawrenceOnline.Com ^ | 2-4-12
Posted on Saturday, February 04, 2012 9:02:18 AM by Tribune7
Rendell assembles group to buy Inquirer company
This time the Left is targeting the Internet also..
Also, from an Internet source:
The potential for such intimidation is well illustrated by activities of both Democratic and Republican administrations. During the Kennedy and Johnson years, radio stations that broadcast anti-administration viewpoints were inundated with fairness doctrine complaints. As reported by Fred Friendly in his book appropriately entitled The Good Guys, the Bad Guys, and the First Amendment, this was part of a "massive strategy . . . to challenge and harass the 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."
True. And I don’t understand why the left keeps whining about this, after all they had Air America, and all the other terrifically successful left-leaning talk shows....
What? They aren’t successful? Not enough people listen to make them viable? Well, that’s how the free enterprise system works.
Ahh...NOW I understand why the left doesn’t get it...
He should be imprisoned.
The “Fairness Doctrine” was only half the problem. The other half, which still exists, unimpeded, was created by the deregulation of media ownership, resulting in just a dozen corporations effectively controlling the vast majority of all media.
Before, there were limits on how many TV and radio stations and newspapers a single company could own in a major market. The end of this regulation meant the end of independent local media, but also the end of independent media *forms*.
That is, the same company would buy up TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, book publishers and retailers, Internet provision, etc., and while at a national level it was an oligopoly (a small number of corporations controlling industries), in effect it created a dozen monopolies.
Thus, it would not be unreasonable for regulation to be imposed again to bust up this information cartel, replacing a dozen powerful corporations with hundreds or thousands of independent media companies, multiplying the diversity of viewpoints by many times.
It would certainly be a huge help to both the Republican party and conservatives to be able to get their message out without giant corporation filtration, spin and corruption.
But it would be even more valuable to the public, “denationalizing” the media, and restoring the marketplace of ideas.
Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a gun and free speech... you can't have one, you can't have one, you can't have one without the other.
I read that book several months ago. Excellent stuff, and from a CBS veteran, no less.
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