Fairness For Me But Not For Thee
by digby
A new Fairness Doctrine, which could be imposed either by legislation or through FCC rule changes, wouldn’t achieve more balance. Rather, it would obliterate political talk radio. If a station ran a popular conservative show — say, Hugh Hewitt’s — it would face pressure to run a liberal alternative, even though almost all left-leaning efforts to date have failed to capture either listeners or advertising revenue.
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[The contention that there should be “balance” in the broadcast spectrum] is absurd in our era of satellite radio, cable television and myriad websites.
Ueah, that’s so true. Anyone can just go to a web site or watch their favorite cable network or pick up a newspaper to get the other side of any argument. the fact that a few huge conservative corporations control media doesn’t mean there’s any imbalance in political dialog on radio or TV. That’s just crazy talk. There’s siompluy no need for anyone to worry that people don’t have access to all points of view and there’s no need for any concerted effort to provide “balance.”
Well, unless a Democratic president is trying to pass progressive legislation:
House Republican Leader John Boehner is asking the broadcast networks to make time for a GOP response to President Obama’s Joint Session speech Wednesday night.
I don’t see anything wrong with providing the Republicans a platform to make their own case on health care after Obama’s speech. But I do find it rather inconsistent that they expect “balance” on these sorts of speeches while holding that any attempt to break up the monopoly of conservative speech on radio and TV to be unnecessary because there are so many diverse outlets for political discussion. Why should the broadcast networks feel any responsibility to provide “balance” in this case when the conservative message on health care is beamed out to millions and millions of people 24/7 without any balance on the other side? Just asking.
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