If you follow any of the most current political talk, the topic of the "Fairness Doctrine" has come up by the liberals. Without all the hog-wash, it is basically government control over the airwaves, so that all sides have a chance to be heard. Sounds fair to me! Why not?
I just read on a site promoting this action to renew the doctrine, and they are claiming the following (in part) - That there has been an extreme change in the immense volume of unanswered conservative opinion heard on the airwaves, especially on talk radio. Virtually all of the leading political talkshow hosts are said to be right-wingers, i.e. Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Oliver North, to name a few.
Well folks... I ask, How is that? Permit me to provide some thoughts about this.
1. All the stations are privately owned and operated.
2. Unless supported by public funding, they all have to pay for themselves.
3. Paying for themselves is usually by way of "advertisers", promoting themselves and their products during that program.
4. For the most part, the advertisers pay for the air-time, based upon ratings.
5. Ratings, are based on how many people are believed to be watching, listening, or with newspapers and printed media, readership. The more people...eyes and ears...who actually read, watch, or listen, the more that air-time is worth. In that same light, if that time doesn't have the audience, it won't garner the ad dollars. No ad dollars, then the media source has to decide if it wants to support it anyway, or not. RATING POINTS are the key!
So, HOW can the government make the "Fairness Doctrine" work? The way I see it, is that they would force those media outlets to either provide programming that doesn't pay, or force off that which THEY think is too much to be balanced. Either way, it would be THE GOVERNMENT who would decide what you should see, hear, or read!
The way it is now, you DO have a choice. Two in fact - the turner, and the on-off button/dial.
That simple. If there were enough people to turn OFF Rush, O'Reilly, or whomever, then the stations would have to look for ad dollars elsewhere. They're a business. They depend on profit making to stay afloat.
Apparently, there IS an audience, and the advertisers spend their ad dollars to access those consumers.
Okay ... So WHY do I care about this issue in the first place? Because it is just MORE GOVERNMENT CONTROL! And folks, we have far too much control by them now, so adding one more single control over OUR lives, is not what I want. I would hope that you don't want more of the government in your business either.
In the words of Sir William Wallace...... FREEEEEDOMMMMMMM! (Okay, you had to see Braveheart to understand.)
