Censorship: the Fairness Doctrine

March 19, 6:37 PMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

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Many people live in small towns like, say, Sherman, Texas, and they have better things to do with their lives like, say, raise their families, than to follow every nitpick and nuance of political bickering like, say, the pros and cons of the Fairness Doctrine.

So Donna Fallis, known to Examiner.com loyalists as the Sherman Family Examiner, asks the following question: 

 “Is the Fairness Doctrine such a bad thing? I understand that it would require radio stations to add commentators and what not, but wouldn't that also entail the same of left-slanting commentary, as well? It's not an earth-shattering question, but is there more to the Fairness Doctrine than what they are stating?” 

The Fairness Doctrine is a left liberal desire for a government mandate that would coerce every individual radio station into giving equal airtime to “both sides” of a political issue.

Libertarians frame the issue this way: In our relatively free society, people of all persuasions have the right to pursue access to radio. The political right dominates the airwaves simply because far more rightwing folk like to listen to radio yappers than leftwing types do. Simple supply and demand has made national stars out of like, say, Rushbo and Hannity. Local markets are full of rightist runners-up. Dallas/Ft. Worth has like, say, Mark Davis, Philadelphia has Michael Smerconish, Cincinnati has Bill Cunningham, and so on. (Conservative Politics Examiner Kathy Shaidle has her Best Of list.)

The left tried talk radio. Al Franken launched something called Air America. It flopped. Apparently, would-be liberal listeners don’t find it trendy or zeitgeisty to listen to talk radio. There was just no liberal listening demand for the liberal talk supply.

So what would the Fairness Doctrine do, force people to listen?

Broadcasters see it this way: They would simply dump the talk radio format, or at least jettison all political palaver. Why? Say you have Limbaugh lecturing the lefties for three hours a day. He’s immensely popular with the right, his ratings are out of sight and the ad revenue comes rolling in. But the Fairness doctrine demands that you also give equal time to “the other side,” which means like, say, a three hour show of Al Gore’s monotone droning on about inconvenient truths.

The Fairness Doctrine: switching
the mic OFF. (graphic source:
Libertarian Party blog)

Even liberals don’t want to listen to this guy. Or any other leftwing talker, as Franken already found. Which means no listeners, no ratings, no ad revenue, and no more radio station because every penny made from Limbaugh’s lips has been lost by giving Gore’s global grousing a free ride.

The idea of “both sides” of an issue is a fiction anyway, since virtually every issue has multiple sides that would include like, say, the libertarian side. So the few libertarian radio voices out there like, say, Neal Boortz or Larry Elder, would be washed away by the Fairness Doctrine as well.

And what will happen to John Stossel on ABC-TV?

The phony “both sides” straightjacket is designed to ignore the reality that there are more than “two sides.”

The political right is composed of a Republican Party side, a conservative side, an evangelical side, a neocon side, a free-market capitalist side, a States Rights side, a White Supremacist side, and so on.

The left includes a Democrat Party side, a progressive side, a radical liberal side, a socialist side, a Marxist side, an egalitarian side, a communitarian side, a civil rights welfare entitlement side, and certainly many more sides.

Even libertarians have their Libertarian Party side, their small government “minarchist” side, their free radical libertarian side, their anarcho-capitalist side, their Ayn Rand Objectivist side, their Murray Rothbard anarchist side, their Austrian economics side, their Chicago School of economics side, ad infinitum.

No broadcaster can satisfy everybody and still stay in business. That’s why there’s no Fairness Doctrine for music. “Hey all y’all country fans, we’ll be playing teenage airhead female pop favorites for the next thirty minutes, followed by a half hour of Brahms, then we’ll broadcast Broadway’s gayest show tunes, then a medley of traditional New Orleans Dixieland tailgate trombone, then 50’s rock and roll, then techno, then the wonderful sounds of disco, baby!”

And face it. If the radio talk show industry was dominated by left liberals today they would make no mention of a “Fairness Doctrine.”

Censorship is a term that applies only to Government. That's why the libertarian response to all this is simple. There is already a Fairness Doctrine. The fairest of all fairness doctrines. It’s called freedom.