So much to which to respond; so little time.
Flash:
> If the Fairness doctrine is re-instituted it
> will be a terrible attack on the 1st amendment.
> But ya know what, your guys
> lost, and people were sick and tired of being deceived.
Leave aside that you can't show any form of "deceit" that isn't actually
"difference in opinion", I hope everyone takes note: according to Flash, the
Bill of Rights is subordinate to elections.
If you people believe that - especially those of you who just spent the last
eight years whinging about George W. Bush - then that is scary as hell.
Dave Garland:
> Actually, the Fairness Doctrine is a counterbalance to
> the fact that the government sells monopolies to
> spots on the public airwaves.
This is the kind of answer one might expect, and forgive, from someone with
absolutely no knowledge of the history of Broadcasting and FCC regulations in
this country. I'll assume Dave has no background in the field.
I, as it happens, do. I'll try to set Dave (and those who believe as he seems
to) straight.
Government has *never* sold monopolies on *the opinions expressed* on the
broadcast spectrum. If there is a "monopoly" in American broadcasting (a claim
that is absurd on its face, given the declines afflicting most of the industry,
like all commercial media, these days), it exists because the market has
established it.
> It is recognition
> of the fact that otherwise, "free" speech (at least,
> on the airwaves) is sold to the highest bidder.
Which might, *very arguably*, have been true fifty or sixty years ago, during
the heyday of the Doctrine, when there were three TV networks, and a fraction
of the number of radio outlets we have today.
Given that broadcast is one, increasingly tiny, part of the audiovisual media
these days, that's an obviously obsolete assumption.
> Now, those who equate money with rights obviously
> will take exception, and call it "socialized media".
"...equate money with rights" is either a very condescending or ignorant
statement; I'm not sure which, just yet.
Conservative talk radio, for example, is incredibly profitable - indeed, along
with sports radio, the ONLY profitable segment in commercial radio today.
However, it is profitable because it fills a void in the market left by a
longterm absence of one strain of speech in the broadcast market. (Many of you
will inevitably follow that statement up with a condescending snark about
conservative media; keep it to yourself. I'm being clinical, here; I'd
appreciate some of you trying to do the same).
> If media with the Fairness Doctrine is "socialized
> media", media without it is "ripoff corporate media".
"Socialized media" is not an apt description (Public Broadcasting fits the bill
better). What the Fairness Doctrine will do is give (well-organized masses of)
the public *veto power* over free speech.
And now more than ever (and in the near future more than now), you can avoid
the so-called "Corporate ripoff" easily; there is NO SHORTAGE of avenues for
opinion. As I've noted here in the past, it takes two minutes to set up a blog,
about the same to upload a Youtube video.
> We won't need a "Fairness Doctrine" when you don't
> need corporate sponsorship and government licenses
> to have your own broadcast TV or radio station,
> and when cable carries all those new stations in
> addition to the corporate channels.
With all due respect, Dave, that's mypopic buncombe. There is NO shortage of
avenues to say anything you, or your group, wants to say.
Your entire point, boiled down to its essence, is that you don't like the fact
that "Corporate media", in trying to recoup their investment, have discovered
that the only means to doing that in today's market is by broadcasting a form
of political opinion you hate, but which serves a First-Amendment-protected
function for vast swathes of our population. Rather than try to meet that
speech with better speech of your own, you want to use the coercion of the mob
via government to stifle it.
That is really all there is to it.
>Let anyone who wants to broadcast have at it, rather than require
> they secure the support of a corporation
Another strawman; you don't need a "corporation" to get a broadcast license.
And, more importantly, you need a broadcast license to disseminate art,
information and opinion less today than every before. A broadcast license is
becoming a fiscal boat anchor, indeed (except for broadcasters of conservative
talk, sports, and a few niche markets like Spanish and other ethnic formats in
various parts of the country).
And when digital broadcasting becomes the norm, the bandwidth available for
broadcast will multiply geometrically.
No, the ONLY rationale for the "Fairness Doctrine" is to shut up conservative
talk radio. Since all you lefties were so enamored with quoting (and
misapplying) Reinhold Niebuhr's warning ("...when they came for for the Jews, I
said nothing; when they came for me, there was nobody left to help me") as part
of your collective eight-year crying jag, I'd like to think at least *some* of
you could wake up and see that an attack on *my* civil liberties is,
eventually, an attack on yours as well.
Of course, after 14 years on this forum, I have yet to see most of you twig to
that fairly basic concept.
I'll await the onrushing flood of ad-homina that is the only way most of you
know how to "debate".
Mitch Berg
The Midway
Rest of post
> (a creature,
> incidentally, that has no Constitutional standing at all).