Fairness Doctrine takes a back seat for now

Senators Durbin, Feinstein, and Kerry. Take a seat. No Fairness Doctrine for you!

By a vote of 309-115, the House amended the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill to bar the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from requiring broadcasters to balance conservative content with liberal programming such as Air America.

Unless there is another bill to change that, the FCC won't be implementing the "Unnecessarily Fair" Doctrine for the next year or so. The vote count was a bit surprising. I expected a closer vote than that but it seems that the talk show radio hosts have a stronger influence on our congressional representatives.

It is quite a stinging rebuke against those Democratic senators and policy experts who wanted to regulate talk radio.

Democrats pointed out that the FCC won't do anything because President Bush is in power and that the Commission's membership is tilted to Republicans. The Republicans are concerned that if a Democrat wins the White House in 2008, he or she may try to get the FCC to institute the Doctrine.

Sponsor Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) took a shot at the Senate saying: “This House will say what some in the other body are not saying, that we believe in freedom on the airwaves. We reject the doctrines of the past that would have this federal government manage political speech on the public airwaves.”

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said yesterday that listeners should be able to decide if they want to hear different political arguments.

“The best way is to let the judgment of the American people decide, and they can decide with their finger,” Boehner said.
“[People] can turn it off or they can turn it on. They can go to their computer and read it on the Internet.”

TheHill.com - House votes to ban FCC on ‘fairness’