Fairness Doctrine for the 'Net'?

I recall having a discussion with an in law that is a dyed in the wool Hollywood Liberal. This twerp moved to LA to make it big in the industry. He mangaged to get a b list movie made on the cheap whic was basically a clone of the 'Scream' franchise.

This was even before the 2000 election, but I told him a couple things I would see happening. I said 'Hillary is not running for Congress to serve the people of NY, but as a stepping stone to a POTUS run in 2004.' Little did I know 9-11 would occur in NYC, and elsewhere, and that effectively ended her 04 aspirations, so I guess you could say 'I got that wrong', even though she ran this term.

I also told him Air America was doomed to fail for many reasons, and after it happened, we would see a revisiting of the old 'Fairness Doctrine'. I believe I said something to the effect of " It will be off the air in my market in 3 years'. Well, AA got pulled within 3 years. However, it still is on the air in some markets, but could we really call that a 'success', or a 'failure'? The best talent they had, which was pretty bad to begin with, has left the building. Franken was the flagship, and he sunk. The investors had shady dealings, and within thier first year, they were involved in a Federal Fraud Investigation for stealing from a boys and girls club charity. The best liberal talkers are Stephanie Miller and sometimes, Ed Schultz. These were the guys to open with against Rush, But, they put on Franken and Rhodes instead, and the rest is history. I consider any network that asks for 'donations' as a 'failure'. If you cannot generate ad $$, and have to rely on selling 'tote bags' to rent your airtime, that's 'failure' in my book.

However, as my readers are sure to note, I guess you can say I was wrong about that too.


"FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell recently stated that the Fairness Doctrine could also apply to the Internet. What's even sadder is the opinion of the American people. A recent Rasmussen poll shows that 47% of Americans believe that the government should require all radio and TV stations to offer equal time to both sides. "




"The speaker of the House made it clear to me and more than forty of my colleagues yesterday that a bill by Rep. Mike Pence (R.-Ind.) to outlaw the “Fairness Doctrine” (which a liberal administration could use to silence Rush Limbaugh, other radio talk show hosts and much of the new alternative media) would not see the light of day in Congress during ’08. In ruling out a vote on Pence’s proposed Broadcaster's Freedom Act, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-CA.) also signaled her strong support for revival of the “Fairness Doctrine” -- which would require radio station owners to provide equal time to radio commentary when it is requested.

Experts say that the “Fairness Doctrine,” which was ended under the Reagan Administration, would put a major burden on small radio stations in providing equal time to Rush Limbaugh and other conservative broadcasters, who are a potent political force. Rather than engage in the costly practice of providing that time, the experts conclude, many stations would simply not carry Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and other talk show hosts who are likely to generate demands for equal time.

At a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor yesterday, I asked Pelosi if Pence failed to get the required signatures on a discharge petition to get his anti-Fairness Doctrine bill out of committee, would she permit the Pence measure to get a floor vote this year.

“No,” the Speaker replied, without hesitation. She added that “the interest in my caucus is the reverse” and that New York Democratic Rep. “Louise Slaughter has been active behind this [revival of the Fairness Doctrine] for a while now.”

Pelosi pointed out that, after it returns from its Fourth of July recess, the House will only meet for another three weeks in July and three weeks in the fall. There are a lot of bills it has to deal with before adjournment, she said, such as FISA and an energy bill.

“So I don’t see it [the Pence bill] coming to the floor,” Pelosi said.

“Do you personally support revival of the ‘Fairness Doctrine?’” I asked.

“Yes,” the speaker replied, without hesitation"



This guy is GOP and he sees the handwriting on the wall. But, I never could have guessed that I would ever hear about 'net neutrality'....Really? That's odd.


The perversely named Fairness Doctrine, which threatened licensed broadcasters with fines if they didn’t “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views,” as the government defined it, has shown up in the news again recently, as federal lawmakers and liberal media activists have called for increased regulation of a media marketplace that they feel is spinning out of their control.

But the push to reimpose the doctrine—which the Reagan administration abandoned in the late 1980s as obsolete and harmful to free speech—may be mostly a diversionary tactic. The Left has a much bigger target in its regulatory crosshairs: the Internet. Over the past few years, many of the same policymakers and activists who have long trumpeted the Fairness Doctrine have advocated that its rough equivalent apply to Internet service providers. And they’ve come up with another Orwellian term for the proposal: “net neutrality.”


In theory, net-neutrality regulation would ban Internet operators from treating some bits of online traffic or communications more favorably than others, whether for economic or political purposes. Proponents of net neutrality use the same kind of fantastic rhetoric to describe it that they once used for the Fairness Doctrine: it’s a way to “save the Internet” from “media barons,” they say, who’re apparently hell-bent on controlling all our thoughts and activities. As City Journal’s Brian Anderson notes, “It’s thus not hard to imagine a network neutrality law as the first step toward a Web fairness doctrine, with government trying to micromanage traffic flows to secure ‘equal treatment’ of opposing viewpoints (read: making sure all those noisy right-wingers get put back in their place).”


It’s a brilliant tactic by the Left. Why exert all your energy attempting to reimpose “fairness” mandates on broadcasters alone when you can capture them, and much more, by regulating the entire Internet? After all, in a world of media convergence and abundance, bright lines dividing distinct media sectors or their products have vanished. Everything from TV shows to text messages run on multiple networks, making the old, broadcast-oriented Fairness Doctrine a less effective means of reestablishing a liberal media monopoly. So the liberals got smart and came up with the perfect solution: use net neutrality as a backdoor way to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine on the entire media marketplace.

That liberals would support such a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet is no surprise—they have long favored government regulation of media and communications markets. What’s shocking, however, is that some conservative and family groups have joined the net-neutrality regulatory crusade. For example, in an editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post, Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America, joins Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in calling for congressional investigation of purported censorship by wireless operators. Combs, who has vociferously argued for net-neutrality regulation for communications and Internet companies, is now stepping up those calls, claiming that private companies want to squelch speech over wired or wireless networks.

“We’re asking Congress to convene hearings on whether existing law is sufficient to guarantee the free flow of information and to protect against corporate censorship,” Combs and Keenan write.
Prompting this latest call for regulation was an incident two weeks ago in which Verizon Wireless blocked text messages from NARAL. Verizon admitted that it had made a mistake and immediately changed its policy. But net-neutrality fans like NARAL and Christian Coalition say that the incident shows why a Fairness Doctrine for the communications and online sector is essential. In reality, the incident proved the opposite: the message got out. In fact, NARAL has probably never had such great press; the blogosphere in particular was all over the story. I only wish some carrier would try to block one of my essays so that it would get similar attention.
So sunlight here proved the best disinfectant; press attention and public pressure changed corporate behavior. Even if it hadn’t, though, plenty of other carriers and media providers would have been all too happy to deliver NARAL’s message. In a world of abundant media options and outlets, Verizon has no practical ability to “censor” speech, even it wanted to.


Unsurprisingly, the New York Times’s editorial page, the old guardian of sacred liberal causes, disagrees. Like NARAL and Christian Coalition, the Times senses a corporate conspiracy to stifle dissent, and in an over-the-top editorial two weeks ago suggested that Verizon’s mistake constituted “textbook censorship.” “Any government that tried it would be rightly labeled authoritarian,” the Times argued, and “the First Amendment prohibits the United States government from anything approaching that sort of restriction.”

The Times apparently needs to brush up on the First Amendment. It’s certainly true that any government action restricting online speech in this fashion would be unconstitutional. When government censors, it does so in a sweeping and coercive
fashion, prohibiting the public, at least in theory, from seeing or hearing what it disapproves of and punishing those who evade the restrictions with fines, penalties, or even jail time. Not so for Verizon or any other private carrier, which have no power to censor sweepingly or coercively.

A world of difference exists between a private company’s exercising editorial discretion to transmit—or not transmit—certain messages or types of content and government efforts to censor.

Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe made this point eloquently at a recent Progress & Freedom Foundation event. In his view, those who would impose net-neutrality regulations on First Amendment grounds fail to appreciate “the fundamental right of editorial discretion. For the government to tell that entity that it cannot exercise that right in a certain way, that it must allow the projection of what it doesn’t want to include, is a violation of its First Amendment rights.” The principle that Tribe articulated would apply equally to the New York Times’s editors if they decided, say, not to run an advertisement from the Ku Klux Klan. That’s why it’s particularly puzzling that the Times ended its editorial about the Verizon incident by arguing that “freedom of speech must be guaranteed, right now, in a digital world just as it has been protected in a world of paper and ink.” Does the editorialist believe, then, that government should regulate what ads the Times may run in its own pages?

This twisted theory of the First Amendment cannot support net-neutrality regulation. The First Amendment was intended to protect us from tyrannical, coercive government power, not the silly mistakes of private companies. And a new Fairness Doctrine for the Internet would have the same chilling effect on the vibrant exchange of ideas—especially conservative ones—that the old Fairness Doctrine for broadcast TV and radio did.


http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/47_favor_government_mandated_political_balance_on_radio_tv

here's the piblic's take on this issue:

Nearly half of Americans (47%) believe the government should require all radio and television stations to offer equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary, but they draw the line at imposing that same requirement on the Internet. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say leave radio and TV alone, too.

At the same time, 71% say it is already possible for just about any political view to be heard in today’s media, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty percent (20%) do not agree.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) say the government should not require websites and blog sites that offer political commentary to present opposing viewpoints. But 31% believe the Internet sites should be forced to balance their commentary (full demographic crosstabs available for Premium Members.)

Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it’s free)… let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.

In a July 2007 Rasmussen Reports survey, Americans were evenly divided on whether or not the government should require political balance on TV and radio stations. A survey this week has shown that voters consider media bias a bigger problem than large campaign contributions.

Conservatives have expressed alarm in recent months over congressional Democratic efforts to restore the so-called Fairness Doctrine which would mandate politically balanced commentary on the airwaves.

Just this week Robert McDowell, a Bush appointee to the Federal Communications Commission, suggested that the restoration of the Fairness Doctrine, abolished in 1987 by the Reagan administration, could lead to government regulation of content on the Internet.

Democrats are more supportive of government involvement in the airwaves than Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Fifty-four percent (54%) of Democrats favor it, and only 26% are opposed. Republicans and unaffiliated voters are fairly evenly divided.

Even Democrats say hands-off the Internet though but by a far smaller margin than Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Democrats oppose government-mandated balance on the Internet by a 48% to 37% margin. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans reject government involvement in Internet content along with 67% of unaffiliated voters.

Only 45% of Americans say they are following recent news stories about the Fairness Doctrine even somewhat closely, while 15% say they are not following the story at all.

Democrats have been pushing the Fairness Doctrine in part because of the long-standing complaint by liberals that conservatives dominate talk radio. Conservatives counter that their political foes are just trying to use the government to push liberal talk radio even though it has been rejected by the marketplace.

In the new survey, 42% say there are more conservative radio talk shows because they get better ratings, but 28% believe it is because stations owners are biased. Seventeen percent (17%) attribute it to an unspecified other reason, and 13% are unsure.

Most Republicans (61%) believe conservative talk radio has flourished because of the ratings, with only 11% saying it is due to bias. Democrats, on the other hand, see bias as the reason over ratings by a 42% to 28% margin. Among unaffiliateds, 42% say ratings and 27% say bias.

Voters in all categories agree by sizable margins that it is possible for just about any political view to be heard in today’s media.

With the Congress expected to stay firmly under Democratic control, the responses of those who plan to vote for the party’s presidential candidate Barack Obama versus his Republican opponent John McCain suggest what direction the Fairness Doctrine debate is likely to take in the coming year. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of likely Obama voters believe the government should make all radio and TV stations offer equal amounts of conservative and liberal commentary, as opposed to 40% of potential McCain voters who feel that way. But 63% of McCain voters and 53% of Obama voters reject similar regulation of web sites and bloggers.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that the race between Obama and McCain remains close and stable.