Nancy Pelosi vs. the Internet

selil writes "A story popped up on the ChicagoBoyz Blog. It says 'Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would like very much to reimpose the old, so-called, "Fairness Doctrine" that once censored conservative opinion on television and radio broadcasting, is scheming to impose rules barring any member of Congress from posting opinions on any internet site without first obtaining prior approval from the Democratic leadership of Congress. No blogs, twitter, online forums — nothing.'"

Comments

Direct link to the letter in question

[FrameRotBlues]

Here's a direct link to the letter in question.

Not anything like what the abstract says

[grolaw]

This is a regulation of HOUSE MEMBERS usage of the Internet - not the general public. Look at the linked letter: http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF

The AS ASS above thinks that the Dems are manipulating the general public's right to free political speech, he is dead wrong.

The limits are to be placed upon Members of Congress and their staff and merely require that the material is vetted (I approved this ....) and that limitation of the staff's right to engage in political speech is included, too (it already is restricted - See, the Hatch Act, http://www.osc.gov/hatchact.htm ). RTFA.

Total Crap

[loteck]

From the PDF of the letter in question:

"Please note that nothing in these recommendations should b e construed as a recommendation to change the current House rules and regulations governing the content of official communications."

This is an attempt to deal with technical issues and update existing House rules to keep up with technology. There's a lot of FUD in the article summary and in TFA.

Anyone read the actual sources?

[spun]

Here is the actual letter they reference: http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF

I'm sorry, but I don't understand how they can draw those conclusions from the source they reference. And I don't see anything about Pelosi. The letter seems to say that people can post stuff on outside servers, provided there is a way of verifying it really came from who it says its from. Whoah! Scandal!

Why is Slashdot posting links to crazy right wing/libertartian conspiracy theories? This is stupid.

Summary Over the Top and Dead Wrong

[Sponge Bath]

I've read the PDF about the *suggested* changes.

Currently there are rules governing the posting of *official* House of Reps material which includes the requirement that such posts are done in the house.gov domain.
The suggested change allows that material to be hosted on external servers subject to the *existing rules*.

It says *nothing* about prohibiting posting of opinions by house members on any web site. Nothing.

Re:Conservatives Censored by Fairness Doctrine

[cptnapalm]

Quote One:
Bill Ruder, an assistant secretary of commerce under President Kennedy, noted, "Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters in the hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue."

Quote Two:
In a confidential report to the DNC, Martin Firestone, a Washington attorney and former FCC staffer, explained,

"The right-wingers operate on a strictly cash basis and it is for this reason that they are carried by so many small stations. Were our efforts to be continued on a year-round basis, we would find that many of these stations would consider the broadcasts of these programs bothersome and burdensome (especially if they are ultimately required to give us free time) and would start dropping the programs from their broadcast schedule."

https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-270.html

Cited.

Re:The democratic party in a nutshell:

[DriedClexler]

While I agree with your general point about the marginalization of third parties, I think this statement of yours is based on an insufficient understanding of the history of the Fairness Doctrine:

What a load of horse shit. If the "liberals" said domething they had to counter it with a "conservative" stance. Apparently the submitter thinks it's OK to censor Dems but not Repubs

What led to the submitter summary was this: Basically, virtually all talk show hosts capable of garnering an audience were conservative. So if a radio station wanted to have one of these guys, they'd have to have a liberal respond. At risk of sounding trollish (but this is just the history) the liberal response would be boring and lose listeners.

Again, I'm not trying to troll: the fact that conservatives had more mass appeal on radio could just as well be due to their oversimplification of the issues.

The upshot is, because radio shows couldn't justify the loss of listeners through the liberal response, via the gain through the conservative talk show hosts, the result of the Fairness Doctrine was much more detrimental to conservatives.

So yes, in theory it applies equally, but as the saying goes, "The law forbids the rich from sleeping under bridges, just the same as it does the poor."

See: any history of the Fairness Doctrine.