Fairness

In recent weeks the Democrats have been repeatedly floating the notion of reinstating the badly-misnamed "Fairness Doctrine". Older readers will remember that before the Reagan administration (during which the "Fairness Doctrine" was repealed) there was very little political talk radio -- and the little that existed was so boring that virtually nobody listened to it. Then after the "Fairness Doctrine" was repealed, talk radio exploded to become, today, the biggest success story in radio.

What happened?

It's very simple, really: the "Fairness Doctrine" required radio stations to give equal air time to all sides of a political issue. If a radio station had a commercial success with, say, a Communist talk show host -- then they'd have to have an equally long conservative show, liberal show, centrist show, Green show, and who knows what other kind of show. This was, of course, completely impractical -- so the radio stations did the only thing they could: they nixed all the political shows. When the "Fairness Doctrine" was repealed, the radio stations immediately started airing political talk shows, and they were very popular. In the 20+ years since the repeal, these talk shows have been thoroughly market tested -- the networks and stations know exactly what kind of talk shows people want to listen to. There's no mystery about this; all you have to do is look at your local stations' schedules and it's obvious: conservative and (to a lesser extent) libertarian talk shows dominate the air.

Today a more formal study about this phenomenon was published:

In a report titled "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio," the Center for American Progress concluded that 91 percent of weekday talk radio is conservative, compared with liberal content at 9 percent. The group, which said it analyzed 257 news and talk stations owned by the five biggest radio broadcasters, calls for stricter media-ownership limits and public-interest requirements.

"There is little free speech or free choice in a market system that pushes out one-sided information 90 percent of the time on the radio," said John Halpin, a senior fellow at the center. "Radio stations are licensed to operate in the public interest. Promoting one point of view over all others does not meet any reasonable public-interest standard."

Halpin's comments toe the Democratic story line: it's unfair that conservative and libertarian shows dominate. Never mind that those are the shows that people want (as they demonstrate by listening to them), it's unfair! And that translates -- in their small, controlling, anti-freedom brains -- directly into action. They must be stopped! Their message must be forbidden! Americans must listen to us!

Unspoken is the subtext: so we can control them!

The controlling nature of modern American liberals (as amply demonstrated by their ambition to reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine") is most disturbing to me. From my perspective, it's invidious and downright un-American. It's what's behind the nanny-state ambitions in California: banning spanking, mandating CFLs, motorcycle helmet laws, seat belt laws, and on and on. There seems to be an almost unstoppable momentum behind this, much like (if slightly later than) what happened in Europe. We need some good ideas about how to stop this...