Make It Fair and Complete, or We Will

As we, and many others, have documented over the past month and a half, the political class strongly desires to reign in New Media to prevent them from riding the information revolution to positions of greater, and potentially permanent, influence. The FEC, split between the two parties, may attempt to regulate political speech on the Internet. One FEC Commissioner, Bradley Smith, spoke out against this, and was pummeled by the reform lobby, some of whose dollars came from the likes of Pew, Open Society, and other liberal foundations and trusts. Former Pew program officer Sean Treglia blew the whistle on his old bosses' plan to create fake grassroots movements agitating for restrictions on political speech, and was promptly attacked by that same lobby. And on Friday, I posted a long commentary on an article by Thomas Mann that corroborates Treglia's charges and, in fact, brags about the key role that Pew played in getting BCRA passed.

Those efforts are geared toward preventing bloggers, in particular, from exercising their First Amendment rights. But bloggers aren't the only group of pests who are undermining the old MSM's ability to manipulate the news to their liking. Before blogging, there was talk radio, and it's now stronger than ever. That's why a new initiative is under way to bring back one of the most odious forms of censorship of political speech this country has ever employed: the Fairness Doctrine.

Mark Tapscott, who follows such things for a living, reports on and links to a post by Jeff Jarvis on an upcoming conference in St. Louis. It's sponsored by an outfit called Free Press, a small nonprofit that has seized on the stories involving Armstrong Williams, Jeff Gannon, and a handful of others in a feeble attempt to portray the media as a tool of the right wing conspiracy.

But they're able to pull together a pretty good list of left-wing activists, including David Brock, Al Franken, Naomi Klein, and George Lakoff. Mark Tapscott sums up their agenda best:

Liberals frustrated with America's preference for non-liberal media are stepping up their campaign to restore the FCC's Fairness Doctrine with a gathering in May in St. Louis . . . .

Any time somebody prefaces a statement about public participation in the media with the qualifier like "informed" or "credible" or "diverse," you can be certain you are hearing a liberal who wants to use the FCC to silence non-liberal media.

Jeff Jarvis also nails them:

Here's the dangerous part about this one: They want to "increase informed public participation in crucial media policy debates, and to generate policies that will produce a more competitive and public interest-oriented media system with a strong nonprofit and noncommercial sector."

The keyword there: "policies." Policies come from government. Government media policies equal government media control. I hate that.

Jump to Pew's pages on their journalism studies, and you'll find the same language -- employed, of course, only because they're deeply "concerned" about national trends (to the right):

One way for journalism to regain its center is to reflect on what makes it unique--its basic purpose and core standards. Even in a new era, journalism has one responsibility other forms of communication and entertainment do not: to provide citizens with the information they need to navigate the society. That does not mean abandoning the entertaining or the profitable.

But it does imply a commitment to fairness and completeness in offering information about democratic institutions and in organizing that information so that people can make smart decisions about their lives.

Of course, being fair and complete doesn't mean the same thing for the political class as it might for the rest of us. That shouldn't matter, but because they have the power, if not the right, to force their will on the rest of us, we have no choice but to take notice when they make such noises. One place you'll find a crescendo of noise for "reform" is NOW, the PBS show (of course) hosted by David Brancaccio, and formerly hosted by Bill Moyers. I don't know who supports this program, other than the usual PBS backers (which, of course, would include you and me). This past December, they asked "What Happened to Fairness?"

You may remember hearing about Sinclair Broadcast Group in October 2004. They attracted attention from other media outlets when they announced plans to air STOLEN HONOR, described by some as an "anti-Kerry documentary." Ultimately, the documentary was not aired, as critics called for balance from Sinclair by way of programming that showed the other side of the story, calling on a principle called the "fairness doctrine." While this doctrine is no longer enforced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), it hasn't faded from public discourse. What is the history behind this doctrine?

Although purporting to be unbiased, this page ends with links to a Bill Moyers interview with Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, D-NY, who had this to say about the deregulation of the airwaves:

BILL MOYERS: You were elected in Congress in 1986.

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: Exactly.

BILL MOYERS: That was the year the fairness doctrine went down and you've been fighting ever since to resurrect it. Why?

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: I have. And, you know, I was so committed to it and I kept doing bills. Because the airwaves belong to the people. I think we've good and sufficient examples now of what has happened to us with media consolidation — the fact that the information coming to us is controlled, the fact that at least half the people in the United States have no voice because they're not allowed in on talk radio [emphasis added].

From this, we're to assume that the failure of liberal talk radio is a direct result of the choice made by the majority of talk radio listeners to tune in to conservative shows. That's the real issue here, after all: Americans are choosing conservative talk radio, just as many of its consumers of political news and commentary are choosing the Net. So they're both a target of liberals in Congress, who can't defeat our arguments, and would just as soon take us down by any means necessary.

The following excerpt shows just how serious the reform lobby is about curtailing our First Amendment Rights, and how eager they are to kill off AM radio as it currently exists. And to think that the left regularly assails the right as paternalistic! Read on:

BILL MOYERS: So when the fairness doctrine went down in 1986, that was the first year you came to Congress, what was the consequence of it? What happened as a result?

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: AM radio rose. It wasn't even gradual, Bill. I mean, almost immediately. And I should point out to you that when we tried to reinstate [the fairness doctrine] again in '93, one of the reasons we couldn't was that Rush Limbaugh had organized this massive uprising against it, calling it "The Hush Rush Law." Which again said that while Rush can speak and anybody that he wants to can speak on those stations, the rest of us can't. But he aroused his listeners so that they contacted their members of Congress and killed the bill, and that's not the first time we've seen that.

I don't know if you remember, but I believe it was Massachusetts I think where they were doing seat belt law? And talk radio was against it and killed that bill. I mean we've seen this before.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you know some serious people, including some liberals have said that one reason Rush Limbaugh has succeeded is because he is good entertainment.

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: Exactly. He doesn't make any pretense of being a news person or even telling you the truth. He says he's an entertainer.

BILL MOYERS: And you're saying that kind of discourse is dominating America right now.

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: Dominating America and a waste of good broadcast time and a waste of our airwaves.

BILL MOYERS: Not to the people who agree with him.

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: Well, they don't hear anything else. Why would they disagree with him?

The links from NOW's home page, which, again, purports to be neutral, lead to pro-regulation/reform organizations and individuals, including Bernie Sanders, Media Matters for America (which exists to "comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media"), and their ilk.

Finally, lest you assume that Pew's journalism pages may take a more neutral tone when discussing the blogosphere, here's a bit from the core of their project:

Washington, D.C. -- March 14, 2005 -- Traditional journalism, with its focus on substantiating facts, now competes with other models of news, such as Blogs. These faster, cheaper and less accurate alternatives have distinct advantages in the marketplace, according to a new report on the state of journalism in America.

What’s more, Blogs, or personal web logs, have added to this challenge with a new philosophy: publish first and assume the verification process will occur in the response and argument that follow.

How about a new operating philosophy for mega-trusts like Pew: fund first, and assume the verification and outing of your various schemes to restrict the freedom of speech of people you don't like will follow -- by those same people.

Update: Mark Tapscott has posted an excellent, and disturbing, article that he wrote earlier this year for the National Religious Broadcasters.

Update II: The argument of the pro-regulation lobby, always, is as intellectually absurd as it is self-serving: When given a choice, too many voters prefer conservative sources to those that proclaim the truth. The result? Voters who vote the wrong way. Why are they ignorant? Because they turn to conservative opinions for their news. What to do about it? Take away their choice, of course. This view holds for the Net (FEC) as well as the airwaves (FCC).

I wrote about the faulty argument employed by the liberal, pro-regulation lobby last year in "Talk Radio: Fascism or Democracy at Work?" (the mailing address at this site is incorrect).