Posted by
The CL Project on Thursday, May 07, 2009 2:16:46 PM
Shutting Down Conservative Talk Radio: No Fairness Doctrine Necessary.
As we know under the Obama administration, the "fairness doctrine" will be one of the largest looming ideological battles for conservatives in years ahead.
Obama is on record as saying he does not plan an exhumation of the now-dead "Fairness Doctrine". And indeed, legal and policy experts from across the ideological spectrum agree that the constitutionally suspect, ineffectual Fairness Doctrine is likely gone for good.
Instead, the Democrats attack on free speech will be far less understood by the general public and accordingly, far more dangerous.
The late community organizer Saul Alinsky taught his followers to strike hard from an unexpected direction, an approach known as Alinsky jujitsu. "Alinsky jujitsu" as applied to conservative talk radio means using vague rules already on the books to threaten any station which dares to air conservative programs with the loss of its valuable broadcast license.
As such today's WSJ notes, the real threat to talk radio comes from regulators and activists who favor government control of broadcast content by other means. Most notable of these is the proposed "localism" policy now wending its way through the FCC rule-making process.
Under the guise of "localism" radio and television stations are required to serve the interests of their local community as a condition of keeping their broadcast licenses.
In other words the "localism" tool is a backdoor Fairness Doctrine.
Randall Bloomquist from the WSJ writes:
The most troubling localism proposal would require stations to create "permanent advisory boards," including members of "underserved community segments" to inform management about local concerns. While this sounds innocuous enough, Mr. Jennings [author of "Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio"] sees a Trojan horse.
Once the panels were established, the FCC could dramatically boost their influence by giving them a role in the license-renewal process. According to Mr. Jennings, even if the advisory boards didn't have that kind of power, they would still be problematic. Radio stations succeed by identifying a segment of the audience and super-serving it around the clock. Are they supposed to alter programming to serve other segments of the community? How would that affect their business? What if a Christian station's advisory board decides that its programming should be more "inclusive"?
Obama needs only three votes from the five-member FCC to define localism in such a way that no radio station would dare air any syndicated conservative programming.
There is only one reason conservative talk radio dominates the airwaves: the marketplace – the listeners – have supported it. Conservative talk radio is a product. What has occurred here is a classic example of supply and demand.
AM and FM radio stations are unique businesses. They are owned by the American people collectively yet licensed by the government to private individuals who operate them, usually for a profit. This puts stations into the marketplace with a few caveats, none of which stand in the way of a station operator running a station like a standard business.
That’s why any attempt to bring back The Fairness Doctrine, or anything which mirrors its regulatory ghost, is nothing more than an attack on free market capitalism.