Democratizing the airwaves

Redefining terms is a favored rhetorical strategy of the left. It allows support for policies and politics that otherwise would be unsupportable by any rational person. Take the word democracy for example. Democracy literally means, “rule of the people.” But in the leftist lexicon it means something more like rule of the collective.

Thus it is that leftists like Hugo Chavez and his supporters see the working of democracy in silencing the ‘the most watched televsision station in Venezuela’ purely because of the political content of the station.

Chavez defends the decision as a legal move to democratize the airwaves by turning over RCTV’s signal to a public service channel. ~washingtonpost.com

What I find most interesting is that most of the American leftist media outlets are silent about this. DemocracyNow, Alternet, the Nation, they routinely accuse Bush of being exactly what Chavez is, a dictator. Of course, they like Chavez and support him nonetheleless.

Chavez has removed all criticism of his regime and replaced it with state propaganda. Isn’t that nice.

This is what is known as a society based on, “shared responsibility,” rather than individual rights. Bringing the country back to collectivism is a liberal’s highest calling. Just ask Cindy Sheehan, Danny Glover, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest…

The government turned over RCTV’s license to a new state-funded public channel, which showed a documentary on explorers in Antarctica, a children’s program and exercise programs, interspersed with government ads repeating the slogan “Venezuela now belongs to everyone.” ~breitbart.com

It can happen here too! The Fairness Doctrine is an attempt to do exactly what Chavez is doing– silence dissent.

Legislation currently is before Congress that would reinstate a federal communications policy known as the “fairness doctrine.” The legislation, entitled the “Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1993,” is sponsored in the Senate (S. 333) by Ernest Hollings, the South Carolina Democrat, and in the House (H.R. 1985) by Bill Hefner, the North Carolina Democrat. It would codify a 1949 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation that once required broadcasters to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance.”

Democrats call it democratizing the airwaves as well, because ‘the people’ are supposed to own the airwaves. They see a need for a fairness doctrine because they want to silence those they disagree with.

Backers of the plan often point to the monolithic makeup of talk radio as an example of why mandated balance is necessary. Despite having a country almost evenly split between the two dominant parties, talk radio is almost uniform in its right-wing politics. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) complained about exactly this issue in a 2004 interview with Bill Moyers, telling him that “at least half the people in the United States have no voice because they’re not allowed in on talk radio.” ~arstechnica.com

So seeing a political threat, they want to silence it. The fairness doctrine, using the power of the state (a monolithic monopoly), is the perfect tool to do that. Free speech should not be free for conservatives. Liberals think free speech should have a high cost when it comes to views that oppose their own. The costlier the better in their minds because conservatives aren’t ‘telling the truth’. i.e. disagreement equals lies.

The Democrats are vying to reinstate the ‘fairness doctrine’—in a bid to combat conservative dominance of the radio airwaves.

…Democrats have two media-access goals.

One is to prod local broadcast television and radio stations to renew their atrophied commitment to producing and airing their own public-affairs programming—shows that Democrats think would at least give them a chance to be heard. Some Democrats want to require stations to give free time for campaign debates, and even free campaign advertising as part of the stations’ “public-service” licensing requirement.

The Democrats’ more ambitious (and longer-range) goal is to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine.” ~msnbc.com

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with fairness. It is merely a way for Democrats and liberals to cheat and use the power of government to silence those they disagree with.

Former talk show host Al Franken, now running for the U.S. Senate in his home state of Minnesota, has his own suggestion for reform.

“You shouldn’t be able to lie on the air,” he told me. “You can’t utter obscenities in a broadcast, so why should you be able to lie? You should be fined for lying.”  ~msnbc.com

That’s basically the only way liberals believe they can overcome conservative arguments, not by making an argument, but by ending the argument altogether. Some concept of free speech, huh?

Traditionally, the Fairness Doctrine applied only to radio and TV, but why should it be limited to that narrow band of communications? Indeed, the left sees no need to limit their vision of fairness which looks a great deal like crushing of dissent to me:

Time for a Digital Fairness Doctrine
By Jeffrey Chester, AlterNet. Posted October 19, 2004

The public outcry over the Sinclair controversy underscores the need not just to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, but to expand its application to include new and emerging technologies.

The debate on Sinclair Broadcasting’s plans to air an anti-John Kerry documentary on its 62 stations underscores the need for new national safeguards for the electronic media in the U.S. Policies that ensure that digital media – including cable, satellite, and the broadband Internet – have an obligation to provide diverse viewpoints are more necessary than ever.  ~alternet.org

What about newspapers? Movies? Comedy acts? Why not all media? Why not use it to silence anti-war protests… are there any opposing views at liberal rallys and anti-war protests? Perhaps we need equal time (at organizers expense) for conservative voices to be heard at every anti-war rally. It’s only fair after all.