Fair's Fair...But The Fairness Doctrine Ain't

Over at Brutally Honest (a very interesting site but one which takes an awful long time to load -- the single page format has posts going back to April), there are these two poignant comments about the Congressional vote over the Federal Communications Commission's use of taxpayer dollars to impose the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters who feature conservatives.

By a vote of 309-115, lawmakers amended the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill to bar the FCC from requiring broadcasters to balance conservative content with liberal programming.

The first of the comments collected by Brutally Honest comes from Fred Thompson (speaking specifically about the defeat of the immigration bill) and the second from Cold Fury.

1) This has been a good day for America.

For a while, it didn’t look like Washington was going to listen to us regarding real immigration reform. Thankfully, we’ve been spared a serious mistake, but I wonder if things would have turned out the way they did without the work done by the bloggers, talk radio and the American people. Rush, Hannity, Laura Ingraham, RedState, Powerline, Pajamas Media and a lot of others have done a great job. Take that, Fairness Doctrine...

2) *Liberals have control not just of the Journalism schools, but of most universities, their presses, stages, newspapers and radio stations.

*Liberals have most of the magazines.

*Liberals have most of the newspapers.

*Liberals have most of the wire services.

*Liberals have most of the network news operations.

*Liberals have most of Hollywood films and TV shows.

* Liberals have most of the music industry.

*Liberals have most of the book publishing industry.

*Liberals have most of the “public broadcasters”; PBS, etc.

*Conservatives have most of the talk radio.

Only a liberal could look at that list and conclude “The problem is obviously…talk radio!”

In other words, if you consider talk radio discretely, then yes, conservatives have the lead (albeit freely given to them by radio consumers).

But one has to ignore a dozen other categories of communications in which the cold, dead Gramscian hand of Liberalism still predominates. It’s like the old Commie negotiating posture: “What’s ours is ours; what’s yours is negotiable.”

There’s your “Fairness Doctrine” in a nutshell.

It is crucial to point out, however, that this vote on the Fairness Doctrine (more specifically, the vote on the Pence Amendment) signifies just a one year moratorium. Therefore, the answer to the threat of the elites strangling the rights of free speech, and a very real threat it is, is a permanent Broadcaster Freedom Act.

Here's the text of the bill; here is some really good information from Rep. Mike Pence's web site; and here is the page for the contact information needed to share your opinions with your own political representatives about this much-needed legislation.