Why the Fairness Doctrine will fail

by Thomas Lindaman
July 15, 2007

There are a lot of things out there that have the potential to bring down this great nation of ours. International terrorism. A weak dollar on the international market. The Spice Girls getting back together. At times like these, we look to our leaders in Washington to do something, and Democrats in Congress are doing something.

They’re going after conservative talk radio.

Yep, they consider Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and other conservative radio hosts to be a bigger threat than terrorists. Actually, I see their point with Savage, but the rest of them don’t pose that big a threat. Instead, Democrats are approaching their attempts to bring back the Fairness Doctrine as a means to bring back fairness to the radio airwaves. Yeah, and I’m supporting Dennis Kucinich for President in 2008.

Since the Democrats got control of one house of Congress and a majority in name only in the Senate, they’ve been doing their best impression of Pavlov’s dogs at the possibility of using their power to stick it to conservatives at every turn. But just like Wile E. Coyote, their great plans will fail spectacularly and conservative talk radio will zip by like the Road Runner, completely unharmed.

One of the main reasons is that the Fairness Doctrine is obsolete. At the time it was devised and passed, the Fairness Doctrine was necessary because there weren’t that many alternatives, and certainly none with the reach of radio. When one side of a debate controls the medium, it limits the number of voices in the marketplace of ideas. That’s why “Marconi in the Morningâ€