What's the reflexive response by the left to market forces? Curb or stop them. To allow winners and losers is bad. The losers will feel badly if we don't force equal outcomes, right?
This thinking is apparent in the latest attempt by the left to stop political speech on radio. Dennis Kucinich a darling of the left---especially in Portland---has proposed bringing back the antique document with the Orwellian title, "The FAIRNESS Doctrine."
Sounds, er, fair, doesn't it?
It would require all news and radio broadcasts to feature the two sides of every issue. That sounds reasonable, right? Sound innocuous enough until you get to their obvious aims.The reason for this is to get at opinion talk radio for its emphatic and successful agitation for political causes and candidates. It was after the Fairness Doctrine was abolished that the marketplace began to fulfill the desire for information on right side of the political spectrum. The left doesn't like that and they want to stop it. This has been their aim for quite some time.
Even after Air America was created as a device to get around their own creation, Mc Cain Feingold, their aim is to get rid of conservative talk radio. Obviously AAR has not been successful nationally--but then success for AAR wasn't never meant to be measured on a profit and loss statement or in arbitron, but rather an election box score.
In Oregon a live sex act on stage passes for political speech, but actual political speech leading up to an election, or through a political action committee, or on a blog, or on talk radio should be curbed according to the left. That's what measure 47--passed by the voters in the last election--was all about.
I received an email today from an Oregon man who is asking the Secretary of State's office to investigate Our Oregon, a political action committee created by the left to effect political change while apparently skirting current election laws. Says the man in his letter making this request,
In essence, "Our Oregon, Inc." is a scheme to evade Oregon laws on the reporting of political campaign contributions. If a non-profit corporation can be created and operated to accept contributions from undisclosed sources and then use that money to support or oppose Oregon ballot measures and/or candidates for public office in Oregon, without ever disclosing the sources or amounts of the money, then Oregon's campaign reporting requirements are a dead letter. All one needs to do is form a non-profit corporation and ignore all of the political contribution reporting requirements--which is what "Our Oregon, Inc." has done.
I trust you will enforce the law against "Our Oregon, Inc." even though it was created and directed by the chiefs of the two largest labor unions in the state (OEA and AFL-CIO), which are the major benefactors of your political party (Democratic Party of Oregon).
Good luck with that. Two of the state's biggest union lobbyists are now on Governor Kulongoski's staff and the daughter of another union apparachik is one of his 'communications' staff. They've consolidated their power and are busy backfilling their influence.
Remember the lesson: the left's first reaction is never to expand actual political speech: It's to curb or stop it.
They can't compete in the free marketplace of ideas so they want to curb the other side's ability to convey their ideas. Equal outcome is their reflexive response--except in an election they win then they make their own rules to fully consolidate themselves in power.
I'm sure there are many more examples. Bring 'em on.
8 comments:
Seems to me, the "fairness doctrine" wasn't all that "fair" back when it was in use. All I recall was mostly leftwing propaganda and, even Reagan's old movies couldn't be shown unless Democrats received equal time to spew their Political tripe.
The lefts "fairness" seems pretty lopsided, to me.
They are all about forcing the public to listen to their views while preventing dissenting views.
Notice that it wouldn't effect the mainstream news media except to force them to put in an extra soundbite or two. They'd still have the ability to frame an issue, do a headline, chiron, smirk, put it on their webpage linked to their story...all with their own spin. How is that fair exactly?
I agree, there is no absolute fairness possible in the media.
On presenting multiple sides, the method (and nature) used to present the sides can itself be biased.
So bias is not going away so why pretend it is.
No one is going to convince me, that the right to free speech, also includes the right to use money to purchase such speech.
However, I could be convinced that determining where the boundary is, between the purchase of free speech and the execution of ones own free speech, is so difficult to determine, that any attempt to do so will in effect inhibit the actual free speech.
Based on this, I could be willing to change my current stance on the issue.
(I did vote No on 47, it was a mess, and I felt the level of effort to sort it out and determine how to implement it was way beyond what was reasonable for such a measure. However I did vote YES on 46.)
Google owns this site, so by providing me this resource, are they purchasing my speech? I don’t feel as if they are.
KPAM is owned by some rich guy and I have no idea if it would otherwise survive financially. But does that mean the owner is purchasing speech by hiring a talk show host?
CNN, Fox, MSNBC etc ... all make a profit, but when they hire a news anchor, are they purchasing speech?
What about the conversations I hold with my friends and co-workers? If I am in a private building (such as a restaurant or night club) has the owner now provided me with a forum, therefore somehow purchased my speech?
(I might be headed to slippery slope fallacy territory here, I am not sure.)
All of this is grey.
Does purchasing advertising clearly amount to purchased speech?
While I think it clearly does; because I can not clearly categorize other forms of speech, I am no longer for shutting this one down either. Besides, doing this will only lead to more creative ways of purchasing the same speech, leading to a complete waste of time in court cases, with no real resolution anyway.
Lew,
No one is being forced to listen to anyone's views.
People need to evaluate the information they are being flooded with (and they are being flooded).
I do think knowing where the money comes from is key to my evaluation of information.
I have to separate the marketplace of ideas from the marketplace of products. There are similarities and differences, but free speech is a separate issue.
No one is being forced to listen to anyone's views.
Currently, no. But, if they succeed in stifling avenues used by the right and people ionly have the left biased sources, what other choice are they left?
People need to evaluate the information they are being flooded with (and they are being flooded).
Agreed. However, if you recall during the Reagan years, anytime he made a speech on TV it was immediately followed usually by Sam Donaldson informing us of "what he really said or meant."
I don't have a problem with the left expressing their views, it's my choice to listen or not. Apparently, not enough desire to hear their views as their efforts at competeing with right wing talk radio have failed.
Forcing shows like Rush Limbaugh to include left winged pundits while exempting obvious left wing biased sources, as the lamestream media, is stifling free speech and returning the market to a system of obvious unfairness.
Leave it alone as it is. We can all choose who to listen to without having more views contrary to our own forced upon us, as they would do, if allowed.
I am against the forcing of the "opposite" view. I think attempts to eliminate bias in the media are a complete waste of resources.
Isn't that what I said in my post?
I really need to work on my writing skills.
I think it's more interesting that the left's first reaction is to limit political speech to attempt to get equal outcomes.
It can't happen.
I have been re-evaluating my view on this, over the last few days.
When I find that I have taken a stance on something, based not just on biased information, but information that has so misrepresented the facts that it has unnecessarily angered me; I have to really question if the so called “information” source should have been required to present the “other” side, or at least the facts.
But I still have to conclude that since the facts were available, and had I taken the effort to find them, that it is My own fault, and not the fault of the media, that I was mislead.
THE HUSH RUSH LAW: If ya can't beat your oponents then you Regulate them and Destroy them.
This is stuff that happens in Communist Countrys. Course the
Democrats are Communists. Go figure. This new Law vs. the old Fairness doctrine (which was just a FCC rule) won't happen in the next couple of years and will just increase I-POD SALES and ignite the REPUBLICAN BASE. Thank you
Castro Loving Democrats, you stupid _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.
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