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

Re:"so-called"?

[ageoffri]

While the extremists love to scream how biased the media is towards the Left it just isn't totally true. Most of the TV news networks are central with a slight lean to the Left with Fox and CNN seeing how far to the Right and Left they can lean respectively.

Now on the other hand radio is heavily biased towards the Right and you don't see much argument there. With the Internet it seems like the extremists on both sides are very much out there and screaming nonsense about how bad the opposite side is.

Choose Free Market or Communism

[kenp2002]

Simple:

They launched a liberal talk radio station.
No one listened.
They shut it down.

They launch conservative talk radio stations.
They thrive.

This is not censorship, but simply free market.

The original fairness doctrine was used when outlets were limited and tightly controlled by a very few and select number of individuals.

Anti-trust laws and ownership regulation of media outlets drastically reduced the need for the Fairness Doctrine.

The basic choice though is whether the free market of ideas, the right of free associate, the right to reject that which you find is wrong is to be regulated by the market dynamics OR the government imposes and regulates that choice. When the government chooses what you can think, hear, say, and associate with you are neck deep in the communist ideaology, where you belong to the state and must comply with the state.

Imagine now that at an NAACP meeting that the KKK now gets it's fair share of time, the Nazi get their fair share of time, etc... You must question the right of the government to mandate the NAACP must give them equal time.

The choice is who decides, the free market or the government.

The same government most people complain about 7 days a week. If you don't trust them with your money why trust them with your mind.

If the free market doesn't decide are you really interested in the government, who's popularity right now is in the SINGLE DIGITS, deciding? Would you want a 70% democrat congress deciding what is fair? How about a 70% republican congress? 70% any party deciding... What happened to personal freedom and personal decision making? Mark my words, watch a Church broadcast on TV and your little tivo box won't let you watch again until you've watched an equal amount of time of some other religion to make sure we are being fair. Hmm 1 hour of Christian, better get in your 1 hour of non-christian broadcast before you can watch any more. 1 Hour of Pro-US broadcast? Better get you 1 hour of Pro-North Korea.

"Thank you for watching Mysteries of the Bible here on Christian TV. Please note that the next 78 hours of Christian TV broadcast, due to the Mysteries of the Bible must now broadcast 1 hour of:
Hindu
Muslim
Confucian
Satantics
Buddist
Hari Krishna
Taoism
Scientology
Heaven's Gate
Branch Dividians ... the list goes on ...

Thank you again for watching Christian TV. We understand that is is near idiotic to pay for Christian TV since we can only show Christian topics once every 78 hours but please remember without your support we couldn't broadcast high quality religious topics once every few days. See you in 78 hours once we have met the Fairness doctrine requirements because not all topics are two sided..."

The fact is that they couldn't cut it in the free market of ideas and now wants a government subsidy to force people like the NAACP to provide fairness in their publications. Imagine BET being told they don't have enough KKK broadcasts in order to be fair and balanced. I give people like David Duke 6 hours before trying that. Any bets on Larry Flint tossing out Hustler on a Nickelodian? CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, guess what, some reps from those terrorist you keep showing want their side of the story told. Yeah the ones that cut the head off one of your reporters. They tallied up that 420 hours of anti-THEM broadcasts and are demanding 420 hours of rebuttle time... Yeah yeah most of them will just rant about their enemies while most people just turn the tv off, I am sure the advetisers won't mind... I'm sure the government will subsidize any lost revenue in order to comply with that doctrine.

Here comes the tax hike...

It is a slippery slope doomed to failure in a nation where most giant corporations are publically owned rather then age old trusts and CEOs must careful court the shareholds to keep them happy.

Be careful what you say /. and think hard before you type. This is a sword who's handle is covered in razors...