Fairness Doctrine

There's a huge debate underway right now concerning a proposal to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine for broadcasters.  Liberals are driving it, concerned about huge corporate ownership of hundreds of radio and TV stations which they see as limiting the "voices" in any community.  There is some validity to their concerns.  Conservative talk radio occupies more than 80% of the industry.  Some will say, absent any governmental demand for equal voices, it's simply the open-market system in operation.  From the other side comes the argument that programming skews that dramatically Conservative because the Big Corporate Owners push it in that direction.  They feel bringing back the Fairness Doctrine would help guarantee the liberal ideas are given a fair shake for discussion. Reports like this one help bolster that position, it seems to me.

Pentagon reaches out to conservative bloggers.

Stocked full of “administration cronies,” the Pentagon’s public affairs division under assistant secretary of defense for public affairs Dorrance Smith, has set up a rapid-response project that “seeks to bypass the traditional media and work directly with talk radio and bloggers, mostly those with a heavily conservative tilt.” Once known as the “Surrogates Operation,” the [...]

Tags: Fairness Doctrine, Pentagon, Talk Radio, Bloggers

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