Editorial: Get your hands off our talk radio

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Why do liberals like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., keep trying to tell the rest of us what political opinions we must listen to in the media?

Feinstein says she is “looking at” reviving the Fairness Doctrine to counteract the decidedly conservative bent of talk radio. Former President Reagan and a Democratic Congress repealed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.

She wants to bring it back because she thinks “one-sided programming” pushes the American people into “extreme views” — such as their current opposition to the Bush/Kennedy/McCain immigration bill. She wants “an opportunity to present the other side” by forcing radio stations to offer more liberal fare.

Of course, nobody thinks a revived Fairness Doctrine would only be applied to radio. It wouldn’t be long before we would hear liberals demanding that broadcast TV and the Internet be made “fair,” too.

What Feinstein really wants is for federal bureaucrats to decide what political opinion programming we should hear. She presumes to know better than listeners what is “fair.”

We remind the senator that talk radio emerged only after decades of federal bureaucrats suppressing the expression of conservative viewpoints from the public airwaves. If Feinstein doubts this history, she should read “The Good Guys, the Bad Guys and the First Amendment” by Fred Friendly. The former CBS News president details how John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy were especially enthusiastic users of the Fairness Doctrine to suppress political criticism of their policies from religious conservatives.

Feinstein’s comments are of a piece with other liberals who in recent months have been loudly talking about reviving the Fairness Doctrine, most notably Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. There is also that infamous “legislative fix” conversation that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., deny ever having.

What is especially revealing about these trial balloons for renewed regulation of political speech is that America already has an incredible diversity of media giving vent to opinion and commentary on every conceivable issue in public policy. Thanks to the Internet, America is in the midst of an unprecedented political news and commentary explosion. Anybody with an opinion can start a blog that can be read by anyone in the world with an Internet connection. There are literally millions of political blogs, podcasts, video blogs and blog-based radio operations providing analyses from every conceivable ideological position.

Political expression in America is being liberated as has never before been done in human history. Why does that bother Feinstein, Boxer, Clinton, Kucinich and other Fairness Doctrine advocates?

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