What we have to look forward to under an Obama/Pelosi/Reid administration:
A Democrat-controlled Washington will use sweeping new rules to shush conservative political speech. For starters, expect a real push to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.
True, Obama says he isn’t in favor of re-imposing this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan’s FCC junked it in the ’80s, required broadcasters to give airtime to opposing viewpoints or face fines or even loss of license. But most top Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, are revved up about the idea, and it’s hard to imagine Obama vetoing a new doctrine if Congress delivers him one.
Make no mistake: a new Fairness Doctrine would vaporize political talk radio, the one major medium dominated by the right. If a station ran a successful conservative program like, say, Mark Levin’s, it would also have to run a left-leaning alternative, even if — as with Air America and all other liberal efforts in the medium to date — it can’t find any listeners or sponsors.
There’s certainly nothing in Obama’s current behavior to indicate otherwise, as the editorial points out.
Even ignoring the First Amendment issues (which are sufficient reason in themselves to fight it), it would be a nightmare for broadcasters to enforce. What is “balance,” and who would decide? The model here is for the issue ad. If there’s a proposition on the ballot, and you run an editorial on it (say) in favor, then it’s fairly straightforward to say that it could be balanced by an editorial against it. But even there, who gets the opportunity? There might be multiple people or groups against it for different reasons, some more articulate than others. How would it be decided which of them got to “balance” it?
And once we get outside that narrow focus, into talk radio itself, it becomes a real nightmare, and a litigator’s delight. Consider Larry Elder, who is mostly a libertarian. Who “balances” him? A socialist who disagrees with his economics? A “conservative” who disagrees with his views on pornography and drugs?
What single blog is the antithesis of this one, or Instapundit? I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the television or radio program director who had to decide. All of this, of course, is predicated on the simpleton’s assumption that political views and issues can be expressed on a unidimensional “left-right” scale. And even if that were the case, and political issues didn’t fall into a hypercube of multiple dimensions coming from all points on the hyperspherical compass, it wouldn’t be that simple, because the magnitude has to be calibrated as well. Is Rush Limbaugh as far “right” as Randi Rhodes is far “left”? Where is the pivot on the scale? Who determines what is “mainstream”? Ted Kennedy?
The First Amendment should have put a stake through the heart of this pernicious and anti-freedom nonsense years ago, but the fascist proponents of things like it have long abandoned principles like that.
[Afternoon update]
Treacher has some thoughts on the “Deathbed Media.”