Of all of President Bush’s “sins” in the eyes of those on the Left, his supposed barrage on our personal freedoms was certainly one of their most despised.
According to these people, free speech, the very foundation of our republic, was under constant attack by President Bush and his evil henchmen, with laws and programs like the Patriot Act and the NAS wiretaps.
Judging by the recent deeds and words of those on the Left, however, you’d think that they were quite fond of restricting personal freedoms, particularly free speech.
You can see this is numerous arenas, but especially over the country’s radio waves.
There is now a debate whether the “Fairness Doctrine” should be reinstated due to the utter dominance of conservative talk radio. Liberals claim that the country needs the Fairness Doctrine to level the playing field regarding the talk radio industry.
If you are not familiar with it, the Fairness Doctrine is not really a document. It is an abandoned policy by the FCC to regulate the content of the nation’s broadcasters to ensure both sides of an issue are heard.
While on paper, this policy seems to make sense, in the real world, it doesn’t hold water. To support this policy, one must believe that, in this case, radio stations are colluding to stop liberal viewpoints from being discussed.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
There’s one simple reason radio stations air so much conservative programming…it’s profitable.
What the liberals that support the Fairness Doctrine fail to understand is that conservative talk radio is wildly popular and liberal talk radio simply isn’t. This is not an opinion formed by my conservative ideologies; this is a fact…just look at the ill-conceived Air
If conservative talk radio was not a cash cow for radio stations, they would pull it in a second and broadcast more listener-friendly programming to drive ratings.
Believe me, if there were any liberal talk radio hosts that were as popular and generated the same ratings as their conservative counterparts, there would be more airtime given to them.
That’s not what Dick Durbin, John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi would lead you to believe however. They seem to believe that conservative radio is yet another right-wing conspiracy to stop the free flow of ideas.
What rubbish.
An interesting closing note on this section; you don’t hear liberals trying to extend the Fairness Doctrine to apply to television, magazines or newspapers.
Hmmm... I wonder why.
That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.
-John
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