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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.'"
"We know what's best for you"
So, Submitter says that the right-wing Chicagoboyz blog says that Congressman Culberson says that Congrassman Brady says that Congressman Capuano says that Majority Leader Pelosi says she wants to stifle free spech?
EVERYBODY PANIC!
The fairness doctrine doesn't censor anything.
It allows for equal time and space of people with opposing or different views.
No. It REQUIRES equal time and space for people with opposing or different views. Big difference.
Conservative talk radio is a business, collecting revenue by attracting ears for advertisers. It spends long blocks of time - like three hour chunks - on particular points of view. The fairness doctrine would require stations playing it to give equal blocks of time - in equivalent timeslots - to anti-conservative viewpoints, which would NOT attract the target demographic. This would be a massive financial hit (in a number of ways) on any station that played a talk show with enough of a point-of-view to invoke the doctrine.
The result would be that such stations would drop political talk shows entirely. This would leave the entire political content of stations coming from their news coverage (which has been shown, by an objective scale developed by Stanford and UCLA researchers, to be massively left-biased). The entertainment content is similarly left-biased (though not subject to the methodology used on news coverage.) As one big talk show host says: "I AM equal time!"
The left has just as much opportunity to field its own talk shows with its own biases. And it has tried, several times. But (with a few notable exceptions in extremely liberal areas, such as KGO radio in San Francisco) their content has failed to attract enough of an audience to be profitable. So shutting down political talk radio by reinstitution of the so-called "fairness doctrine" would have the effect of massively suppressing conservative political viewpoints on broadcast media.
A flip side is that the conservatives could potentially start a news organization of their own, covering conservative viewpoints. Indeed, this HAS been done to some extent, in the form of Fox News. But FNN has shown its true colors in the primary season: It covers only ONE of the four or so major conservative factions' positions and is perfectly happy to blatantly suppress the others.
Starting a new wholly-owned NETWORK by buying a little station in each major market is forbidden by FCC rules, which limit the amount of the population stations owned by a single entity can reach to well under 50%. So they'd have to recruit a lot of independents. (And you can bet, if they were succeeding, there would be attempts to invoke the fairness doctrine against them, adding massive legal costs to the equation.)
So with talk radio as the only broadcast outlet for conservative political thought (but not effective for liberal positions), and liberal political thought dominating entertainment content and most news coverage, shutting down political talk radio by reimposing the fairness doctrine would be a massive blow to the right and a victory for the left.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It wasn't created to target Conservatives, however what the purpose of reviving it appears to be geared towards targeting Conservative talk radio.
Walk with me, if you will. You can get both Conservative and Liberal leaning news from websites, television and newspapers. However, the same cannot be said about radio. It is dominated by Conservative talk radio, and the only Liberal talk radio has survived essentially subsidized by the government.
Any medium of news is subsidized through ad revenue, and ad revenue is based upon the ratings of the shows during which they air. Rush Limbaugh along generates a constant 13.6 million listeners during the course of his 3 hours show. On the other hand, the best ratings I've found for Air America is 1.5 million unique listens over a week. Air America just doesn't generate enough ad revenue to keep it in enough markets, proof being that they had to file for bankruptcy.
Now how does all of this and the fairness doctrine show an attempt to censor conservative talk radio?
Ratings show that liberal talk radio just cannot compete against conservative talk radio. It doesn't get carried, or it gets dismally low ratings. Radio stations that carried shows like Rush's would be required to carry liberal shows (or at least the liberals mentioned) for the same amount of time. Mind you, the Fairness Doctrine applies to stations, not the individuals that produce the shows the stations carry.
Now with the fairness doctrine, a station would almost certainly be forced to carry 3 hours of Air America for every 3 hours of Rush's show in order to make close to the balance required by the act. You won't get Rush letting liberals on his show to defend themselves against his points, so the stations need to adapt as best they can. Here's where the problem comes, since the liberal shows will not draw as much revenue as the conservative ones, it may cost the station enough revenue that they wouldn't be able to operate in the black. Since they're hijacked by the law to reduce their revenue, they either go out of business, or get non-controversial programing that allows them to operate in the black.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork