The Fairness Doctrine isn't Coming Back

This is the theme of an article over at Commondreams from the Capital Times. The article makes it clear that Rush and Congressional Republicans are aware of this.

They have never been all that worried about the fairness doctrine.

They're worried about what always scares them: a wide-open, freewheeling debate and the competition of ideas that encourages everyone to have their say and trusts the American people to sort things out.

Well I'm not sure that's entirely correct. I certainly am in favor of different points of view on the radio, but the right wing commentators point has always been that non-Conservative points of view aren't profitable. People don't want a liberal Rush Limbaugh, in their viewpoint, or at least they don't want a Rush Limbaugh bad enough to support him. The American people demand the opportunity to be constantly harangued by right wing nut jobs and don't want free wheeling debates or competition of ideas. So if you mandate that; well, that means radio owners are going to be required to place on the air people their audience doesn't want to listen to. Which will lead to a loss in advertising revenues, which will lead to a format change. "Hey if I am a talk radio station, I have to spend half my time alienating my customers, but if I am a country radio station, well no worries."

Now that's necessarily the world's great argument; I think there ways to encourage greater diversity of views without placing straight jackets on radio stations, and Republicans / Conservatives always leave out the toxic influence of Clear Channel on our radio environment. One of the simplest ways to provide a balance in local radio markets would be to help out small local radio stations, both existing ones and new ones.