The fairness doctrine: a threat to free speech?

Save Rush Limbaugh! said Paul Weyrich in _The Washington Times._ Still flushed with their election night victory, the Democrats are salivating at the prospect of resurrecting the so-called

Fairness Doctrine, the old rule requiring media to give equal time to opposing political views. President Reagan killed that rule in 1987, but now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority

Whip Dick Durbin, and Sen. Chuck Schumer have all publicly called for bringing it back. “When Americans hear both sides of the story,” Durbin says, “they’re in a better position to make a

decision.” That may sound reasonable, said A.W.R. Hawkins in _Human Events Online,_ but the immediate effect—and the intention—of a new Fairness Doctrine would be to silence conservative

talk-radio hosts. Most stations would give up political broadcasting entirely rather than try to find hours of liberal programming to balance the hugely popular Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.

Killing off the one medium that favors conservative thought is the opposite of fairness, but Democrats aren’t about to pass up a chance to neutralize the Right’s most “potent political

weapon.” Talk radio is potent all right, said Joel McNally in the Madison, Wis., _Capital Times._ But that’s because it’s so one-sided that “it most resembles a government-run media in some

totalitarian country.” A study by the Center for American Progress found that no less than 91 percent of weekday talk radio is taken up by conservatives, including far-right wingnuts like

Michael Savage who routinely slur blacks and gays and advocate bombing foreign nations. The radio dial can only accommodate a finite number of channels. So in what “bizarre version of

democracy” is providing a wide variety of political viewpoints an attempt to “deny free speech”? Sorry to disappoint both liberals and conservatives, said James Rainey in the _Los Angeles

Times,_ but the imminent return of the Fairness Doctrine is a “false alarm.” President-elect Obama has explicitly said he’s against reinstating the doctrine, and despite the occasional

wistful remark by Democratic leaders, they know they don’t have the votes to bring it back. “There’s no clamor about reining in talk radio anywhere but on talk radio,” said Brian O’Neill in

the _Pittsburgh Post-Gazette._ And I’ve a feeling Rush, Sean, and company will drop the subject once Obama takes office. After eight awkward years in power, the high priests of resentment

and outrage are returning to their natural habitat: the opposition. They “must be drooling at the possibilities.” SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the

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