[BC] Fairness doctrine by another name? aka censorship?

[Donna Halper]

And this was quoted--
>Also involved in "brainstorming" on "Fairness Doctrine and online 
>monitoring has been the Center for American Progress, a liberal 
>think tank, which has published studies pressing for the Fairness 
>Doctrine, as well as the radical MoveOn.org, which has been speaking 
>to committee staff about policies that would allow them to use their 
>five to six million person database to mobilize complaints against 
>radio, TV or online entities they perceive to be limiting free 
>speech or limiting opinion.

Oh dear.  So much conservative bias, and so little time.  The 
right-wing blog or newspaper this came from clearly has an agenda, 
and telling the objective truth isn't part of that agenda 
evidently.  First, I am a member of MoveOn, and I am far from a 
"radical". And the Center for American Progress is not exactly 
"liberal"-- it does have a number of liberal members, but it also has 
some centrist and moderate Republicans who do research for it.  And 
the CAP has not been pressing for the Fairness Doctrine-- it did a 
very thorough study, quoted in newspapers of all political 
persuasions, which showed that 90% of all current talk shows are 
identifiably conservative.  And they discussed some possible 
solutions to the lack of diversity on radio.  That's what think-tanks 
do-- they issue papers and offer solutions to problems.

Further, the myths about the Fairness Doctrine continue to swirl 
around.  At the risk of shilling for my latest book, I can document 
that under the Fairness Doctrine, FREE SPEECH WAS NOT STIFLED.  In 
fact, rightie talk show hosts did just fine, and made lots of 
money.  Joe Pyne was alive and well and getting huge numbers under 
the Fairness Doctrine.  Many stations had famous rightie 
talkers.  But they also had some famous leftie talkers.  And nobody 
was censored.  This kind of inaccurate rhetoric, while making my 
rightie friends feel good, does nothing to advance the discussion.

Soooo, riddle me this:  my friends Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller 
(distributed by Dial Global, formerly Jones Radio Network), have been 
turning a profit for ages-- Ed's show has been profitable since 2005 
in fact.  Like him or not, Ed gets a very respectable niche audience 
and Talkers magazine (which seldom if ever writes about progressive 
talkers) gave Ed an award last year as one of the 5 most influential 
talk hosts in the USA, the first time a leftie talker made the top 
5.  Ed and Steph are both on far fewer stations than the rightie 
talkers, and many of the stations they are on have weak signals. And 
yet, they keep getting good numbers and making money.  What harm 
would it do if they were on a few more stations?  Many owners are 
conservative and prefer conservative talk.  I can respect that.  But 
when 90% of talk radio is dominated by one ideology (right-wing and 
Republican), that is not good for democracy.  Both sides of the 
issues should be heard.  And nobody that I know of on the left is 
advocating censorship.  I don't want this to deteriorate into an 
endless political rant, but as a radio consultant who HAS trained 
rightie talkers, I also feel the best leftie talkers deserve a chance 
to be heard.