Last thoughts on the Fairness Doctrine....

[A. Joseph Ross]

On 16 Nov 2008 at 16:34, Dan Billings wrote:

> Very scary example, IMO.  Any time someone on a broadcast station
> attacks an author of a controversial book, the station would have to
> let the author respond.

Yes, that is the way it was.  And not just authors.  As I believe I 
mentioned recently, in the early 1980s, when I was president of the 
Brookline Tenant Union, I was on a talk show on WBUR with Boston-area 
landlord Harold Brown.  A clerk-magistrate in the Brookline District 
Court had recently issued a criminal complaint against Brown for a 
violation of the Brookline rent control bylaw.  When the subject came 
up, Brown said that the magistrate's decision was "coerced."   I 
defended the magistrate, saying (which was true) that he called 
things as he saw them, and you can't coerce him into issuing a 
criminal complaint.

I later learned from the magistrate that WBUR had send him a cassette 
of the program and invited him to respond.  Which he chose not to do. 
 But he sure liked my defense of him.

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                           617.367.0468
 92 State Street, Suite 700                   Fax 617.507.7856
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