FD - Can we move on already

[Bob Nelson]

A cartoon showed a teeter-totter with a bunch of liberal-leaning media
on the left side
and just one thing, "talk radio" on the right. A man with a T-shirt
that said "libs" is shown
saying, "Hmm. That's not right." Next panel: "Better regulate talk radio".

One one side of the FD debate was (mostly) conservatives who felt that
the imposition of the Doctrine
could kill off ALL talk radio, especially conservative, where it has
been dominant.Stations would rather change formats than be subject to
speech regulation or put on potentially unpopular shows. On the other
side, FD supporters felt the Left wasn't getting a fair shake. Andrew
Breitbart's piece in today's
(right-leaning) Washington Times talked about Rush Limbaugh's speech
at the Conservative
Political Action Convention. He felt Rush made a tremendous speech,
and that left-leaning
media (including "anonymous" comments on blogs) brought back the old
Rush-is-evil
talk in reaction. Breitbart said that the media mostly tilts Left and
that newspapers and TV hate Rush and "for good reason"--because he's
contributing to their demise (newspapers at least).
Rush has said "I _am_ equal time."

Breitbart's column got a bunch of responses, including one from
someone who said that
the GOP's hopes are pinned to "a drug addict". One thing is true: He
is on 600 stations
because he draws ratings and advertisers. If the Left got their own
Limbaugh, who would
wind up on the same amount of stations, then great: it would be the
free market in action.
Having "opposing views" foisted on radio by government isn't right,
though. One could
only imagine a Fairness Doctrine applied to TV, newspapers, magazines,
movies, music,
and ALL radio as well.

The day NPR gets conservative political talk (equal to liberal talk)
is the day we will indeed be fair and balanced :) Political talk that
attracts listeners and advertisers, not mandated
by Big Brother.

I just don't like the idea of government regulating speech. President
Barack Obama and
former President Jimmy Carter don't either. They didn't support the
Fairness Doctrine. Are
we being alarmist here? Maybe so, but you can't be too careful.