So about a week ago, Rush Limbaugh said he'd have an editorial in the WSJ today urging the president not to go through with a revival of the 'fairness doctrine' which mandates that radio stations present ideologically opposing views (and which was killed by Reagan and has never been revived). Ok, that's fine. Of course, Obama said last summer that he opposed a fairness doctrine revival, so it's not really an issue, but presidents don't always live up to their campaign promises, so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
On wednesday, the White House released its official stance:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/18/white-house-opposes-fairness-doctrine/No fairness doctrine. Clear enough. Guess we won't be seeing that column frida--
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123508978035028163.htmlOh.
If you were ever in school, wrote a paper, and had to redo your thesis but felt kinda lazy about it, it might turn out like this. Gone is the fairness doctrine, replaced with a variety of "contrivances, such as 'local content,' 'diversity of ownership,' and 'public interest' rules," which Rush is very concerned the president will use to kill AM radio. One might expect that any of those three terms would be defined.
One might also suspect that when Limbaugh mentions a "new effort at regulating speech is not about diversity but conformity" championed by "a chorus of advocates for government control over radio content" that he may be able to, y'know,
name one. Bill Clinton, who is mentioned in the article, doesn't count, if all he did was complain about radio's content.
Limbaugh ends on this note: "We in talk radio await your answer. What will it be? Government-imposed censorship disguised as "fairness" and "balance"? Or will the arena of ideas remain a free market?"
Guess he forgot to revise that last sentence from his original article about the fairness doctrine. Woulda been a real zinger in the original, I suppose.
