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Senate Bars FCC from Reconsidering Fairness Doctrine

By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Civil Liberties, Senate

Some good news for free speech today: the Senate has used its oversight authority to bar the FCC from reconsidering the Fairness Doctrine.

While President Obama has publically opposed reinstating the arcane rule that required equal time on the airwaves for opposing political views, Republicans wanted to make sure the Democratic-controlled government didn’t recreate the law as an attempt to quiet conservative talk radio. For once, Rush Limbaugh was right about something.

With the wide variety of media sources and endless variety of opinions available on TV and the Internet, there is no conceivable reason we need the Fairness Doctrine. Free speech might be messy, but it’s a cornerstone of democracy. I’m glad the Senate made sure the FCC will stay out of the business of regulating political speech.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 and is filed under Civil Liberties, Senate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Senate Bars FCC from Reconsidering Fairness Doctrine”

  1. Jimmy the Dhimmi Says:
    February 26th, 2009 at 5:04 pm

    Its not over, Senator Durbin introduced an ammendment that forces the FCC to impose “diversity” standards:

    The amendment is written as follows:

    “To encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership, and to ensure that the public airwaves are used in the public interest.”

    We’ll see what happens in the house if the republicans can clear up the language and Democrats fall in line.

  2. ExiledIndependent Says:
    February 27th, 2009 at 6:30 am

    Is that similar to encouraging diversity in home ownership?

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