Democrats vs Free Speech

It seems like many on left only belief in free speech that supports their agenda. Everything else they want shut down. Some think the Don Imus firing was a trial run to getting talk radio hosts shut down. The other method is through legislation.

What unifies the two schools of leftist media criticism, beneath their apparent opposition, is pure elitism. Media abundance (which the scarcity critics must implausibly wave away as a mirage) has meant more room for right-of-center viewpoints that, while popular with many Americans, the critics find completely unacceptable. The fact that Bill O’Reilly gets better ratings than Bill Moyers perturbs them to no end. It’s just not fair!

Both liberal groups would love to put their thumbs on the scale and tilt the media in their preferred direction. Scarcity-obsessed Dennis Kucinich has recently introduced plans in Congress to revive the Fairness Doctrine, which once let government regulators police the airwaves to ensure a balancing of viewpoints, however that’s defined. A new Fairness Doctrine would affect most directly opinion-based talk radio, a medium that just happens to be dominated by conservatives. If a station wanted to run William Bennett’s show under such a regime, they might now have to broadcast a left-wing alternative, too, even if it had poor ratings, which generally has been the case with liberal talk. Sunstein also proposes a kind of speech redistributionism. For the Internet, he suggests that regulators could impose “electronic sidewalks” on partisan websites (the National Rifle Association’s, say), forcing them to link to opposing views. The practical problems of implementing this program would be forbidding, even if it somehow proved constitutional. How many links to opposing views would secure the government’s approval? The FCC would need an army of media regulators (much as China has today) to monitor the millions of webpages, blogs, and social-networking sites and keep them in line.

Whenever I read left wing blogs and see how they talk about Fox news, their derision masks an obvious fear that its some kind of threat, when it’s only one of many news networks. None of the others share its leanings. They hated and attacked it from the start. But he fact that it became the #1 cable news channel should speak more of how out of touch the other channels are with the public.

Of course, the solution lefties seem to have when people don’t want to listen to them is shut down all opposing views. This is why the left is not liberal. And free speech needs to thrive. Any politicians who want to shut down debate are enemies of free speech, and by extent, the constitution and should be viewed as such. The public really needs to vote this people out of office and never let them back. 

I can’t see ideas like that getting anywhere.

I suppose a site about Holocaust awareness would then have to link to a sight denying it.  Or a site about a religion would have to link to a site denying the existence of god.  Maybe NCB would have to start advertising the programs on ABC.  Ridiculous.

Posted by  on  04/16  at  01:20 PM

I agree, however, governments make stupid laws on a regular basis. People would ignore it, but they could always use that as a weapon against people who don’t comply when they decide to go after them.

It would be more dangerous for big media than bloggers, though. And it would probably limit what they can say even more.

Posted by James Hudnall  on  04/16  at  02:02 PM
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