TNR debunks the Fairness Doctrine myth

TNR's Marin Cogan has definitively debunked the conservative fear-mongering about Democrats reinstating the Fairness Doctrine that I questioned last week:

Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and other friends have spent the past year screaming about the horrors of Barack Obama. And, while it's true that they talked ad nauseam about socialism and the Weathermen and Jeremiah Wright, careful listeners would have noticed a recurring theme of anxiety: that Obama was going to use the newly acquired levers of government to destroy them. Specifically, conservative paranoia over the possible reinstatement of the "fairness doctrine," a defunct policy requiring that broadcasters allow opposing points of view to be heard over the airwaves, has reached a fevered pitch. In September, George Will was warning his readers that, "[u]nless McCain is president, the government will reinstate the ... 'fairness doctrine.'" In October, The Wall Street Journal's editorial page chimed in, predicting that under the spooky-sounding "liberal supermajority," the fairness doctrine was "likely to be reimposed," with the goal being "to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition." And, two weeks before the election, the New York Post blasted: "Dems Get Set to Muzzle the Right."

On Election Day, conservatives found a new bogeyman in Senator Chuck Schumer, after Fox News host Bill Hemmer cornered him about the issue on the air. Schumer just smirked: "I think we should all try to be fair and balanced, don't you?" Rush Limbaugh seized on Schumer's comments as evidence that the Democrats would "do everything they can" to bring the doctrine back. Two days after the election, National Review's Peter Kirsanow tried to rally the troops to preempt the return of the policy. "Waiting until Inauguration Day to get geared up is too late. By that time the Fairness Doctrine Express will be at full steam--wavering Democrats will be pressed to support the new Democratic president, weak-kneed Republicans will want to display comity, the mainstream media will not be saddened to see talk radio annihilated and much of the public will be too enraptured by Obama's Camelot inauguration to notice or care."

To figure out who was causing such agitation, I went searching for the proponents of the fairness doctrine. I looked at Obama's position--and it turns out that he doesn't want the policy reinstated. Then I called the array of Democratic congressmen who had been tagged by conservatives as doctrine proponents. But they all denied any intention to push for its reinstatement. As some of the world's great egotists, it's not surprising that Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly believe they would be the first political prisoners interned in an Obama administration. But, the more I searched for actual evidence of the doctrine's return, the more I had to conclude that Schumer was just messing with their heads...

It's no wonder, then, that conservatives fear the fairness doctrine's return and busily document any favorable mention of the policy by Democrats. One of the most recent remarks that fueled the paranoia occurred in June, when John Gizzi, a reporter from the conservative magazine Human Events, asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if she would allow a vote on a bill called the Broadcaster Freedom Act, which was introduced last year by former talk-show host turned House member Mike Pence in an attempt to permanently outlaw the reinstatement of the policy. Pelosi said she wouldn't, mentioning New York Representative Louise Slaughter as an active proponent of reinstating the fairness doctrine. But Slaughter, like many other media-reform advocates, has shifted focus away from the doctrine in recent years...

Conservatives also focus on the 2005 effort by Democratic Representative Maurice Hinchey of New York to introduce a bill that would have reinstated the doctrine. But that effort went nowhere....

Today, the doctrine has almost no support from media-reform advocates...

Responses from the offices of most of the Democrats who have been pegged as fairness-doctrine proponents--Schumer, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, and others--have ranged from a firm denial that the issue is a priority at all to disbelief at finding themselves at the center of a manufactured controversy....

Meanwhile, the president-elect himself has said in no uncertain terms that he does "not support reimposing the fairness doctrine on broadcasters." Republican paranoia is nothing more than that.

Comments

[Raleighite]

Kind of fun to see them all atwitter about it though. And it keeps 'em off the streets, so go get 'em guys!

[X.L.]

Brendan,

You wrote: "TNR's Marin Cogan has definitively debunked the conservative fear-mongering about Democrats reinstating the Fairness Doctrine that I questioned last week"

Really? Let's hear it from the horse's mouth:

"Pelosi pointed out that, after it returns from its Fourth of July recess, the House will only meet for another three weeks in July and three weeks in the fall. There are a lot of bills it has to deal with before adjournment, she said, such as FISA and an energy bill.

“So I don’t see it [the Pence bill] coming to the floor,” Pelosi said.

“Do you personally support revival of the ‘Fairness Doctrine?’” I asked.

“Yes,” the speaker replied, without hesitation."

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27185

[David]

Thank you, X. L. for pointing out the spin in Cogan's article. It's noteworthy that he failed to mention that the Majority Leader has taken a position in favor of reinstating inaptly titled "Fairness Doctrine." I don't think he'd care so little if Majority Leader Newt Gingrich had called for government censorship of the New York Times.

Brendan's post goes too far. Nothing can "definitively" debunk a prediction of the future. We won't know for sure whether there's an effort to censor conservatives until either it happens or it doesn't.

Just the fact that some Dems are calling for such censorship ought to be worthy of concern. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," is a maxim to which liberals used to subscribe. I'm afraid that Cogan's article and Brendan's post illustrate that freedom of speech is now less important to liberals than it used to be.

[David T]

OK, to all of you who say "it's a real danger": I am willing to bet you real money. How much do you want to bet that the Democrats (I mean Obama and the Congressional party as a whole, not a few members of Congress who might introduce a bill that goes nowhere) will *not* seek to revive the Fairness Doctrine? (And don't cop out by saying "They were planning to, but then our protests dissuaded them.")

Likewise I'll bet all the NRA members who are now hysterically rushing to buy guns that Obama will *not* try to take them away.

There may be some deliberate cynical fearmongering by talk radio hosts and the NRA to get money or members or listeners, but I don't think that's the main reason for this paranoia. I am more and more convinced that Obama simply drives conservatives crazy the way Reagan used to do with liberals.

Incidentally, leaving aside Obama's specific statement that he does not favor the Doctrine, it is simply crazy to think he would expend political capital on a drive to bring it back when (a) the economy, health care, etc. are obviously far more pressing concerns, and (b) if right-wing talk radio is a menace to the Democrats the 2006 and 2008 elections sure don't indicate it. (For that matter, if it is so powerful, why have the Democrats won the popular vote in four of the last five presidential elections and the elctoral vote in three? The Demcorats actually did much worse in presidential elections in the 1968-1988 period when the Evil Mainstream Media had uch more of a media monopoly than they do now.)

Whether Nancy Pelosi once said she "personally" favored it (in the context of explaining why she was *not* going to press for it!) makes no differnece whatever to its chances of actually becoming law. And to those who disagree with me--again, put your money where your mouth is!

[David]

David T., what odds will you offer? Even money? Ten to one? Fifty to one?

Even fifty to one would concern me. If there's one chance in 50 that the media's freedom of speech will be ended, that would worry me.

[David T]

A hundred to one. Really the odds could be even higher. The idea makes no political sense whatever, it's the perfect way to unite every Republican in Congress and a good many Democrats as well against Obama, it would only damage the prospects of legislation Obama and the Demcorats obviously consider infinitely more vital...I could go on and on, but I'll simply repeat what Mickey Kaus said elsewhere: Wouldn't it make more sense for conservatives in warning of the dangers of "one party government" to warn about things Obama has said he would sign (like card check) rather than things he has explicitly said he opposes and that Democrats in Congress seem to have no particular plan to enact?

[David]

David T., I think you're probably right. So far, Obama has not been the far-left radical that I feared he might. He seems to be trying to be the best leader he can be, rather than pursue partisan goals.

Happy Thanksgiving.