Pelosi Supports Return of Fairness Doctrine
AIM Column | By Bethany Stotts | June 26, 2008
The mainstream media have remained virtually silent about Pelosi’s support for the Fairness Doctrine.
Talk radio’s suspicions of a movement to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine were confirmed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Tuesday June 24 during her comments at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. When John Gizzi, an editor for Human Events asked Speaker Pelosi whether she favored a return of the Fairness Doctrine, she told him an unhesitating “yes,” reports Gizzi.
Moreover, when Gizzi asked if she supports the Broadcaster Freedom Act, “She added that ‘the interest in my caucus is the reverse’ and that New York Democratic Rep. ‘Louise Slaughter has been active behind this [revival of the Fairness Doctrine] for a while now,’ he writes.
Representative Slaughter (D-NY) introduced the 2004 MEDIA Act to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and reintroduced it in 2005 as the Fairness and Accountability in Broadcasting Act.
Conservative critics have been very concerned that Congress had supported a one-year moratorium on the return of the Fairness Doctrine, but has not supported the Broadcaster Freedom Act (BFA), which would permanently prevent these regulations from returning.
Representative Mike Pence (R-Ind.) introduced the BFA last June, where it is still awaiting a vote. As of June 25, 200 Members have signed a discharge petition which would force the House to make an up or down vote on the legislation, but an additional 18 signatures are needed.
“And so far, not one single House Democrat has signed our petition for an up-or-down vote on broadcast freedom...and now we know why,” announced Pence in response to Pelosi’s comments. “I say to Speaker Pelosi with respect: Defending freedom is the paramount interest of every Member of the American Congress.”
In his Human Events article, Gizzi recounted his conversation with Pelosi:
“‘So I don’t see it [the Pence bill] coming to the floor,’ Pelosi said.
‘Do you personally support revival of the ‘Fairness Doctrine?,’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ the speaker replied, without hesitation.”
The Fairness Doctrine would force radio broadcasters to provide equal time for opposing points of view—essentially giving the government the ability to regulate media content.
107 Democrats and 3 Republicans voted for the one-year moratorium on the Fairness Doctrine but have not signed the discharge petition. This has prompted groups like Hypocrisy Caucus to launch grassroots efforts targeted at the wavering House members. AIM has published The Death of Talk Radio?, which details the history of the Fairness Doctrine and efforts to reinstate it.
Speaker Pelosi’s favorable view towards reinstating the Fairness Doctrine may explain House Democrats’ reluctance to support the discharge petition. Still, discussions of the issue remain charged.
“The public has already shown that they’re interested in this medium, that’s why it’s so popular. That’s why they want to shut it down. If we had no audience, they wouldn’t want to shut this down,” radio host Laura Ingraham told Accuracy in Media.
“Surely, we have evolved to the stage here in this century that we can understand some sort of balance, some sort of sense. To me it is a feeling that my country is spilling out hatred and lies on many, many of these stations to people who hear nothing but that, who never believe or hear any countervailing opinion,” Representative Slaughter told Bill Moyers in 2004 while promoting her MEDIA Act.
“I think this is one of the most dangerous things in the world, and it actually cuts out a point of view of half of America,” said Slaughter. “And anything that we own as Americans, as a government, like the radio and television waves, should not be used in that way.” .
Slaughter criticized Rush Limbaugh’s previous attempts to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. “I should point out to you that when we tried to reinstate [the fairness doctrine] again in ‘93, one of the reasons we couldn’t was that Rush Limbaugh had organized this massive uprising against it, calling it ‘The Hush Rush Law.’ Which again said that while Rush can speak and anybody that he wants to can speak on those stations, the rest of us can’t. But he aroused his listeners so that they contacted their members of Congress and killed the bill, and that’s not the first time we’ve seen that,” she said.
Not all media reform activists have expressed support for the Fairness Doctrine. Others, such as the left-wing Center for American Progress (CAP), prefer legislation targeted toward increasing diversity and media “localism,” as well as preventing media consolidation. Their stated reasoning: the unfair “structural bias” of talk radio toward conservatives. “91 percent of the political talk radio programming on the stations owned by the top five commercial station owners is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive,” write the study’s authors.
“Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management,” write the authors (emphasis added).
An article by John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable says that Presidential candidate Barack Obama does not support a return of the Fairness Doctrine. It quotes Obama’s Press Secretary, Michael Ortiz as saying “[Obama] considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible...That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets.”
What the article does not note is that Obama’s legislative agenda for media reform greatly mirrors that of CAP’s, which emphasizes localism and minority ownership as an antidote to the alleged conservative bias. As AIM has documented, recent pushes for public interest media regulation, media localism, and other “media reforms” are presented as alternatives to the Fairness Doctrine—but may achieve similar ends.
The mainstream media have remained virtually silent about Pelosi’s support for the Fairness Doctrine. A visit to the Christian Science Monitor web page, for example, finds no mention of her comments, harping instead on the pall of sexism supposedly surrounding Hillary Clinton’s nomination defeat.
“On the positive side, Senator Clinton has advanced the cause of women in government and her candidacy has been a positive contribution to the country and had a positive effect on the political process. I am a victim of sexism myself all the time, but I just think it goes with the territory…. I’m a full-steam-ahead person,” Pelosi told the CSM audience.
The only media outlets I found that mentioned Pelosi’s comments were Human Events, a Washington Times editorial, Cybercast News Service, Broadcasting and Cable, and Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.
But silence will not quell conservative talk radio’s fears of these regulations returning. As AIM has documents in The Death of Talk Radio?, two of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioners favor the return of the Fairness Doctrine. For the doctrine to be reinstated, all that is needed is for a President to appoint a third sympathetic commissioner and the regulations could go back into effect without any vote at all.
By preventing a vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act, Speaker Pelosi is helping to make that scenario a reality.
Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer for Accuracy in Academia, and can be contacted at
13 Comments | Post a Comment
If they are going after talk radio and FOX News, will they go after Time Warner, Washington Post, Disney, Viacom, New York Times Company, and Cox Communications among others.
Will they go after blogs and Wikipedia (User:Miller17CU94 editor ranked #556 in number of edits as of May 23, 2008)?
The left has more respect for Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto” (1848) than they do for the First Amendment of the United States Constitution (1787). Pelosi’s statement confirms this.
The news media is corporate - not liberal or conservative. I think Fox News found a niche and filled it and should taking the other side increase their bottom line, they will do that also.
They are all there to promote corporations - and any agenda that works for that.
The scary thing is that either of the so called two parties will be silenced. It is that the people and free speech will be silenced.
Think they won’t come after blogs and discussion boards as well??
What could anyone expect from Nancy Pelosi? She is one stupid b_tch. She is rotten to the core and a waste of human DNA… the excrement of modern politics.
The so called “fairness doctrine” like the current campaign limits; will only apply against honest, fact backed media.
If it were to apply to National TV News, or public radio or TV; it might have some plus.
We have seen that campaign finance reform, exempted all groups that are not consertive. The regular outlets will continue to be able to slant and made-up news. Dan Rather and 99% of network news never goes by the standards of AIM and 99% of talk radio.
If Rush has a 98.2 % acurate rating for truth and the same for AIM; why do our outlets not broadcast their % of acurate and documented work; along with the actural low % of truth of the National Networks and PBS.
The problem is in what group is going to decide what’s ‘fair’???
You could think that if some really good group, one might admire and espouse, were in charge, that might be fine.
Remember, every law, every regulation that is put in place will be in the hands of some group from the ‘other side’, at some point in time.
Remember someday it could be in the hands of someone who intends to use it to silence any truth, any facts, and even more so for propaganda purposes.
The best way to assure fairness in the media is simply vote with your money and your time. The same could go for most any problem in this nation.
Yet, when we feel something is wrong we say, ‘the government out to’ or ‘there ought to be a law’ - when laws are not needed to fix many things wrong in this country today.
You know everyone who thinks the media is slanted,either way, should simply call up your satellite company, or your cable company and tell them they need to take such and such off the programming ‘because——’ or you will drop the service. If they gave them a month, then dropped it, it would have an effect.
Call up the sponsors and do the same for them.
But we don’t, we wait, and we argue with each other based on political parties rather than issues.
In talk radio, the target of the so-called fairness doctrine, the host first has to show the opposing point of view, and then, take it apart, point by point, explaining why his view is correct. Liberals tend not to do this, either using straw man arguments, ad hominem arguments, or just plain argument by fiat.
Laissez-faire would be the best ‘fairness doctrine’ as those who would be able to provide the most compelling reasons would be the ones who would prevail. By compelling reasons, I do not mean a Congressional subpoena, which is how the current majority tends to argue.
“To me it is a feeling that my country is spilling out hatred and lies on many, many of these stations to people who hear nothing but that, who never believe or hear any countervailing opinion,” - Rep[ugnant] Slaughter
The Dumbocrats only hear hatred and lies when it’s opposed to their own hatred and lies. When the hatred and lies are their own, it’s called “Fair and Democratic.”
The Democrat party needs to be renamed the Hypocrat party.
Resistance to this issue should be couched in the language of Amendment I—“Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; ...”
The fact that some people may oppose my views does not mean that I am obliged to provide them a microphone. As Ronald Reagan once said: “I paid for this microphone!”
“And anything that we own as Americans, as a government, like the radio and television waves, should not be used in that way.” - Rep[ugnant] Slaughter
The government does not own the “radio and television waves” Communist! The “radio and television waves” are created by the equipment that is owned by the private citizen who chooses to create the broadcast.
The politicians have foisted on us the collectivist concept that the electromagnetic spectrum is “owned by the government” rather than exploited by whomever is clever enough to do so. The politicians were able to slip that one over on us because there needed to be an agreed-upon method to resolve conflict between private citizens wishing to create radio or television broadcasts to prevent one person from jamming or overpowering another’s signals.
The politicians are doing the same thing with mineral rights and in particular, oil and coal under lands that are under government stewardship. Those natural resources belong to whomever has the ingenuity and resources to extract them, thereby earning the property rights to them, yet the politicians have foisted the concept that the stuff is owned by “the people.”
Who is “the people?” Is that you and me? Just try to exert your ownership over your “fair share” of what is “owned by the people” sometime. You’ll end up in prison!
Who is “the government?” It is the politicians! When they claim that “the government” owns anything they are claiming that they themselves are the owners. They are emulating the Fascists who’ve taken over the Kremlin.
The fact is, truly it is, ALL politicians would like to see a fairness doctrine - where fairness is decided by them.
With a fairness doctrine in the hands of people even more despicable than some of our present politicians - we could be a totalitarian government in no time.
I’m not worried about the talk show host. I’m worried about truth. Talk show hosts have a view and they put it out there. Our failing is when we assume any one side or show has a corner on truth. That’s dangerous.
The airwaves may not be owned by the people. I never believed that, but I don’t know where the idea originted. Did the government subsidize or finance the creation of it? Do they say that because it is ‘controlled’ (??) by the government?
It started benignly enough with permits (licenses) to broadcast on a particular frequency of the spectrum. Licenses acted like mining claims to enable one person exclusive use of a specific frequency in a specific geographic area.
Once politicians saw permits and licensing as a potentially huge revenue source, the next logical step for them was to “auction” licenses to use the spectrum. From there it’s a simple step to claim that the gubmint owns the spectrum and rents pieces of it out to broadcasters.
Oh, and of course the revenues are used “for the common good” of keeping the politicians in office.
That sounds about right.
With licensing, they can also dictate who, what, where and when broadcasting takes place, can’t they?
I’m wondering just what angle they will use to get the internet - completely? As if they needed one - but just wonder what they will use.
Security - child porn - taxes - ??????
A clean sweep of Congress AND the White House by the Dem-Socialists in November will most certainly doom conservative talk radio. Ignorance of the issues in the public domain will be mandated by our new overseers. Frankly, I am not hopeful that 1st amendment Americans can stem the tide. Looks like our only hope for safeguarding our liberties in the long haul is the 2nd amendment—until that’s eventually taken away from us too. Creepy and very scary.
June 26 at 9:12 pm | #1 | Link
What can you expect from Pelosi, her Fairness with full of wrong Doctrines.
Okey, Fairness Doctrine may be implemented…, in one condition: Not just radio, but all MSM outfits…. and… in the Congress itself.
Think of the scenario: When Pelosi humiliate Bush… give Bush same time period to humiliate Pelosi.
That’s not bad for Pelosi after all.
If the Democrats try to make a Conspiracy Theory against the seating Republican President… why not allow the President to give the same dose of medicine to the such hypocrite Democrat.
Does Pelosi want the above “real” fairness doctrine?
Any given day… Fairness Doctrine…. curtails FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
HAVEN’T DEMOCRATS SAID ENOUGH DOOMSDAY TO THE PEOPLE? Please, enough is enough.