Posted by
jarhead on Wednesday, June 27, 2007 3:50:22 PM
So the disgruntled Left and the befuddled Republicans supporting the immigration bill currently back before the Senate don't like having their little backroom deal exposed to daylight before they could shove it through the Senate undebated. And because talk radio has taken the lead in informing the public on these shenanigans they become the target of an attempt at censure.
Censure is exactly what this is. It has nothing to do with fairness. The Constutituion, in the First Amendment, clearly states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press..". Freedom, not fairness, not balanced-just Freedom.
Talk radio exists because the product can pay for itself. The product is ideas and in the marketplace of ideas those espoused by the bulk of talk radio are clearly very marketable. If they were not marketable there would be no listenership, therefore no advertisers and therefore no show. That is exactly why Air America failed-a dirth of ideas that could attract enough listeners to fund itself through advertisers. It is at its very most elemental exactly what our society is all about. Freedom of choice in the freedom to choose what we listen to and the freedom to speak out on ideas.
The fairness doctrine is not fair at all. It is an attempt to force the public to listen to ideas they do not give a fig about at the expense of those ideas that do sell. That is unAmerican.