Obamist Newspaper Columnists Claim Talk Radio Won't Be Shut Down

RUNNING INTERFERENCE

Obamedia's Trickery Over Coming Talk Radio Censorship





*** IT'S GETTING CREEPY OUT THERE V: NIGHTMARE ON OBAMA STREET ***


Quick to protect their Dear Leader from criticism over plans to crack down on political dissent, liberal newspaper columnists have gone on the offensive, blaming talk hosts themselves for daring to suggest the medium may soon be shut down.

It's a classic case of running interference: cover for Obama by calling his intended targets "paranoid". This has the added benefit of potentially convincing talkers and fans to let down their guard ahead of the real plan.

With each passing day, the need to protect Obama from political criticism becomes even more pressing. Clearly, the Dear Leader didn't have a post-election battle plan and has subsequently ceded much of his power to the Clintons.

That has his media defenders in a tough spot, as the "change" candidate gives way to a Bill & Hillary rerun once in office (one which even Bob Woodward thinks is nuts). After making so many crazy promises on the campaign trail, Obama's handlers are now busy reducing expectations.


With that unnerving scenario now playing out, the media's response is to return to an old stand-by: blame it all on Rush Limbaugh and talk radio for daring to suggest the Fairness (read: censorship) Doctrine may be on the way.

At the Kansas City Star (which has a weird obsession with El Rushbo), far-left columnist Aaron Barnhart takes all the shots he can fit into a piece:

First and foremost, Rush is all about Rush — especially now that he has a bloated new radio contract to justify. That is why he adamantly will not allow the facts to stand in the way of his assertion that Barack Obama is bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, the old government rule that required broadcasters to present all sides of controversial issues.

As the respected trade publication Broadcasting and Cable reported in June, President-elect Barack Obama does not support the return of the Fairness Doctrine, which was abolished in 1987. Just to be sure, B&C re-quizzed the campaign just before Election Day and was told that Obama thinks trying to regulate the airwaves would be a “distraction” from more important national business.

Is it possible the new president will change his mind once in office? Is it possible a Democratic Congress will ram the Fairness Doctrine through and force him to sign it back into law? Perhaps — but as the Senate’s rapid about-face on the Joe Lieberman matter shows, the legislative branch shows no sign of bucking the wishes of the executive branch.

Some members of the paranoid class, afraid of recrimination for all those months trying to scare people into voting against Obama, point out that he has flip-flopped before.

Beyond the silliness of calling any broadcast trade publication "respected" (they are largely advertorial in nature), Barnhart leaves out any mention of the Democratic Party senators who have outright called for a return to the "Fairness Doctrine", which would shut down talk radio as we know it today.

In addition, Democrats have included this position in their party platform for a number of years. Even one current FCC Commissioner believes it could be reinstated.

Here, Barnhart demonstrates that he really doesn't have a grasp of the issue at hand:

Now, I have one question for the paranoids: In what scenario would it be politically expedient to bring back a controversial regulation that members of his own party oppose, would endanger his allies in the Air America network (not to mention NPR) and give a bottomless barrel of material to people who have nothing better to do all day than complain at the top of their lungs?

No such scenario exists.

Obviously, Barnhart didn't do his homework, as he missed this recent interview with Air America's CEO Bennett Zier:

RADIO INK: What do you think of all the speculation about the return of the Fairness Doctrine? Would that be a big problem for Air America?

BENNETT ZIER: If there’s a Fairness Doctrine, one would say that would be a good thing for left-of-center talk. But I think if Air America puts forth relevant, entertaining, provocative content, it’ll be a balance. People will be interested in what we want to do. We believe that we need to control our own destiny, and we’re going to do that by giving the listeners, the viewers, and the readers what they want in a lot of different technologies.

Clearly, Zier expects a Fairness Doctrine to force low-rated Air America programming onto major conservative talk stations. And frankly, he's right, that would be the result. That's why Democrats WILL push for this, it's in their best interests to do so.


Meanwhile, at the far-left Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jay Bookman uses the exact same rhetoric, accusing Limbaugh and others of paranoia and manipulating their audiences. Like Barnhart, he doesn't mention the senators that have called for this policy:

Talk-radio hosts play their listeners as well as Yo Yo Ma plays the cello, stroking a string and making their audience respond exactly the way they want. It’s bizarre how easily they can manipulate people who like to think of themselves as sturdy, independent-minded Americans.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the fabricated right-wing outrage about reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine. Under that long-abandoned rule, radio and TV stations that use the public airways were required to give equal time to various sides of every political issue. The rule was well-intended, but in practical terms radio and TV stations found it safer to avoid political discussion altogether rather than risk running afoul of the law.

For that and other reasons, the Fairness Doctrine was abandoned more than 20 years ago, a change that quickly led to the boom in right-wing talk radio.

However, with Democrats in control of Congress and Barack Obama about to become president, the maestros of talk radio are eager to take advantage. They know that the more threatened their audience feels, the higher their ratings get. And what better way to get their listeners riled up than to claim that the Democrats are out to silence talk radio itself, the medium that brings conservatives the truth as they want to know it?

So for months, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others have been warning their audiences that once in power, the Democrats plan to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Politicians such as Newt Gingrich have joined the chorus, and the issue is now being cited as a critical reason why Saxby Chambliss has to be re-elected to the Senate. Right-wing pundits insist the issue will be part of Obama’s agenda in his first 100 days in office.

But of course, it’s all made-up nonsense, backed by no evidence whatsoever. In the current issue of the New Republic, Marin Cogan goes looking for those Democrats supposedly plotting to kill talk radio but ends up empty handed.

Clearly, Cogan must not have looked very hard, or she would have come up with statements from Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Chucky Schumer (D-NY), and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), all of whom support a crackdown on Obama critics (the latter has since hedged on the issue, at least for the moment).

But looking at Cogan's actual piece, rather than Bookman's oversimplification of it, Schumer and Bingaman's positions are discussed, but they've been allowed to weasel out of previous statements with new ones, purely for partisan political purposes.


Finally, Randy Dotinga of the North County Times in San Diego pushes his luck even further, quoting a professor from the widely-discredited UC-Santa Cruz campus to make his point:

The FCC killed off the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 amid the growth of cable television, which offered more broadcast voices to the public. It wasn't a big deal: UC Santa Cruz professor Matthew Lasar wrote in a recent commentary that the federal government hardly ever bothered to enforce the rules.

Since then, right-wing talk radio has taken off. According to one estimate, 90 percent of talk radio is conservative; that number may be even higher on talk stations in San Diego, where the sole left-wing talk station tanked in 2007.

Talk-show hosts and their fans fear that the new Congress and president will create a new Fairness Doctrine, designed to make sure a Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz is around to respond to everything that Sean Hannity or Michael Savage say on the airwaves.

Looking into Lasar's work, it's clear he's a left-wing extremist, certainly a job requirement at UC-Santa Cruz. Though he's written extensively about both the FCC and the Fairness Doctrine, it's difficult to find where he's provided evidence that it was "hardly ever" enforced.

But there's plenty of data to support the idea that the Fairness Doctrine is a major headache for broadcasters. Even though successful complaints were fairly uncommon (70 between 1973 and 1976 at a time when only a small number of talk stations were on the air), they were forced to fend off tens of thousands of typically-frivolous complaints by political foes:

If the fiscal years 1973 through 1976 are combined, a total of 49,801 fairness complaints received by the Commission resulted in 244 station inquiries (.406 percent of complaints), 54 adverse rulings (.108 percent of complaints), and 16 general fairness doctrine rulings (.0321 percent of complaints).

That kind of bureaucratic nightmare would convince any station owner to practice self-censorship, even ahead of the policy's implementation. In order to appease conservative talk's enemies, broadcasters would quickly surround Rush's program with Air America's offerings, leading to a ratings and revenue disaster.

Let's face it: the Fairness Doctrine should really be known as the Liberal Talk Radio Welfare Act of 2009. With single-party rule now poised to control Washington, don't think for a moment they will resist the temptation to make this the law of the land.


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