“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.
The Fairness Doctrine again would, among other things, force radio stations to give equal time to liberal topics if they have any radio personality that is Conservative. Thus, all stations that carry the likes of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham herself, would be forced to find equal time for liberal commentators. Of course, this bill is nothing more than a sneaky end run around the first amendment. More than that, most of the public understands this. Polling is always overwhelmingly against the Fairness Doctrine.
Now, last Friday, Laura Ingraham gave a nightmare scenario about the Fairness Doctrine.
Now, Pelosi is only feeding into the perception that the Democrats are trying to wait this term out and then institute the Fairness Doctrine. There are few political moves more stunningly counter productive and self destructive than the Democrats indicating they are serious about reinstituting this law.
Right now, Mike Pence is sponsoring a bill called the Broadcast Freedom Act. It is being bottled up in committee on a mostly party line vote. Pence is attempting to gather enough signatures to get what is called a discharge petition. In fact, this is what Heath Shuler is doing in order to get the SAVE Act to the floor. Pence is just 21 votes short of getting the discharge petition.
It goes without saying that the Speaker would be quite embarrassed if either of these bills got the necessary backers of the discharge petition to bring them to a vote despite her vociferous objection. There is actually an opportunity for both to get the votes necessary. It also goes without saying that successful discharge petitions are rare.
Thus, there is an opportunity not only to see two very good bills become law but at the same time, greate embarrassment and weakening to the Speaker. Here is more information if you want to help with the discharge petition for the SAVE Act. Here is more information if you want to help with the discharge petition of the Freedom Broadcast Act.
2 comments:
The first talk radio station (KABC in Los Angeles) went on the air in 1960 — 25-plus years before the Fairness Doctrine was repealed. Larry King went into national syndication in 1978, and the first nationally syndicated conservative host, Ray Briem, went national in
1 9 8 2!!!
And Obama has already come out against FD, so it’s all a red herring. A red herring resigned to rile the conservative base, and to help corporate radio, which is leading a lobbying campaign to keep from having any local programming requirements or staff requirements.
Most AM talk stations are computers in closets running off satellite feeds, and the big owners want to keep it that way. Little or no local news, little or no local talk. A lot of radio people have been fired due to consolidation -- including a fair number of conservative local hosts. It helps their bottom line to have conservative bloggers dressing up the FCC’ s localism proposals as a plot to silence conservatives.
That is nothing more than nonsense and misdirection. No one said that there was no talk radio prior to the Fairness Doctrine I said it was much more difficult and it was barely developed until the Fairness Doctrine was removed and Rush lead a revolution of talk radio lumineries like Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Mike Gallagher, Neal Boortz, etc.
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