Taking his cue from the liberals Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon blames the lack of a Fairness Doctrine for the passage of the immigration law that Gov. Brewer signed last month.

From B & C

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who opposes his state’s controversial new immigration law, blames the Reagan-era FCC, at least in part, for the law’s passage.

In a Center For American Progress forum on May 14, Gordon said the seeds of the law go back to 1987, when the FCC scrapped the fairness doctrine as unconstitutional.

“I think it goes back to the Reagan era when the fairness doctrine was dropped,” he said, “and instead of requiring both sides of a debate to be aired, only one side was given the chance depending on who was providing that.”

He said that even more important was the change in tone stemming from that decision.

“Language that was never acceptable became maintstream,” he said. “Those that were deemed to be in disagreement with those on television or radio were demonized as traitors and extremists and hateful and language that we have never heard seen.”

The result, he said, was that such demonization became “acceptable in the mainstream media and acceptable in
debates.”

The National Hispanic Media Coalition last year asked the FCC to investigate what they said was hate speech on
radio and TV, particularly as directed at the immigrant community. But they also said they were not looking to reinstate the doctrine, which required broadcast stations, radio and TV, to seek out opposing viewpoints on issues of national importance.

Conservative talk radio and some cable news programs have been targets of complaints about anti-immigration speech.

The ACLU led a legal challenge May 17 to the Arizona law, which instructs police to seek documentation of the status for anyone they suspect of not being in the country legally. The groups say the law “encourages racial profiling, endangers public safety and betrays American values.”

That’s right the law is all based on the hate speech so prevalent on right wing radio and has nothing to do with the federal government’s inability to enforce the law.  That’s a pretty standard liberal line in this debate.  But to blame it on the lack of a Fairness Doctrine?  The liberals hated the Fairness Doctrine because it resulted in conservatives challenging liberal programs but now that conservatives dominate talk radio they can’t act fast enough to try and revive it.  No hypocrisy here.

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