The Farness Doctrine and the Elimination of the Unfit Pundit (T.P. McWhorter)

  Oct. 28, 2008 (World News Trust) -- Lately, it seems, even here in Malta, that there is lots of great talk about regulation and deregulation.  There are many assertions of speculation, taxation, accusation, and politicization going on every day and will continue to be a spectre on the landscape of unending stories.  But where does all of it start, and surely we all want to know: when does it stop?

  The USA as a beacon of democracy and shining example of how freedom can be established and done with balance of respect and honor has been tarnished by the deregulation opined by what is called the Republican Party.  Firstly, the Republican Party was good, way back when they set free the slaves in the 1860s, and they elected Abraham Lincoln, and helped restore the USA after the Civil War, they sure were good back then, but, and this is a big but, now they have become a different animal.  And I use the term "animal" and I do not use it lightly, as an animal is an entity that acts only on instinct alone, with no remorse or concept of the actions it takes will negatively affect the world around the actions.  The description preceding this sentence describes what the Republican Party has devolved into, fully.  In other words, the Republican party has become not the vision of Conservativism, or better yet, or, I say, much worse, the vision of ULTRA-Conservativism they claim or aim to be.  As a matter of fact, the way the Republicans have conducted themselves is that of extremists, and extremist to the point of literally, and I don't use the word "literally" unless it means something very important, "to destroy the fabric of democracy."  When John McCain uttered those same words, he was still holding firm to the Republican hypocrisy, while aiding and abetting the failing of democracy to usher in Nationalism and Socialism draped in a veil of democracy.  Here's the definition of democracy by Webster's dictionary: government by the people; especially: rule of the majority B: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections. The absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges.  What the Republicans PERPETRATED was not democratic as it still does not rest ion the hands of the people, but only a select few, but that is what comes to the heart of this commentary today.

  Deregulation of established forms of keeping things in check began in 1980 right at the beginning of the Reagan years -- a vehement Republican, revered, by the current Republicans as one of the greatest presidents EVER.  And here is where it all started.  I mentioned this in my last commentary, and only touched on the subject for a moment but feel so strongly to connect the dots that I am writing this today.  The point I made was about the FCC and the Fair and Balanced act, technically known as The Fairness Doctrine. The following was taken from the Museum of Broadcasting website http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/fairnessdoct/fairnessdoct.htm -- Under U.S. Broadcasting Policy:

   "The policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission that became known as the "Fairness Doctrine" is an attempt to ensure that all coverage of controversial issues by a broadcast station be balanced and fair. The FCC took the view, in 1949, that station licensees were "public trustees," and as such had an obligation to afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of contrasting points of view on controversial issues of public importance. The Commission later held that stations were also obligated to actively seek out issues of importance to their community and air programming that addressed those issues. With the deregulation sweep of the Reagan Administration during the 1980s, the Commission dissolved the fairness doctrine.
This doctrine grew out of concern that because of the large number of applications for radio station being submitted and the limited number of frequencies available, broadcasters should make sure they did not use their stations simply as advocates with a singular perspective. Rather, they must allow all points of view. That requirement was to be enforced by FCC mandate.

   From the early 1940s, the FCC had established the "Mayflower Doctrine," which prohibited editorializing by stations. But that absolute ban softened somewhat by the end of the decade, allowing editorializing only if other points of view were aired, balancing that of the station's. During these years, the FCC had established dicta and case law guiding the operation of the doctrine.

   The fairness doctrine ran parallel to Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1937 which required stations to offer "equal opportunity" to all legally qualified political candidates for any office if they had allowed any person running in that office to use the station. The attempt was to balance -- to force an even handedness. Section 315 exempted news programs, interviews and documentaries. But the doctrine would include such efforts. Another major difference should be noted here: Section 315 was federal law, passed by Congress. The fairness doctrine was simply FCC policy."

   How the Fairness Doctrine affected the landscape of the democracy known as the USA is that it kept certain perspectives in check so that both sides to a coin, so to speak, are heard and when that was no longer the case, punditry became the Republican mantra, to again I use the phrase, "destroy the fabric of democracy."   I say that because what the Pundits have done is to warp the landscape of getting both sides of an issue, and began a systematic promulgation of partisan propaganda directly aimed at breaking down what had been built up over decades, creating cultural rifts, bringing back racism, class discrimination, and a host of other negative issues that now plague the US ECONOMY.  The backlash of all of the breakdown of the USA economy started with people being fed only one idea, constantly, by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'reilly, and the people being fed that narcissistic  drivel bought it hook, line, and sinker, because they were only being told one side, and not being given the other because deregulation of the Fairness Doctrine eliminated the necessity of being told the opposing opinion.  With that in mind, when that one thing was eliminated, it gave way to the other deregulations, like the ones in the stock markets that are leading us all, worldwide, on a path to global financial meltdown.  I heard the writer Robert Friedman say on Real Time with Bill Maher this past Friday night talk about America's role in the world being one of hope and optimism and that if America fails it brings down the whole world.  Well, in one fell swoop, he was correct in that as America's financial markets flounder, the rest of the world ponders the edge of financial doom it stands upon, so his assertion of the USA being that beacon of hope, optimism, and democracy is spot on.  And it ALL falls on the heads of the Republican extremists, not conservatives mind you, because conservative behavior would have kept the regulators in place to keep things flowing, not to deregulate and open the floodgates of unbelievable action.  The lying, the hypocrisy, the anti-gay while actually gay rhetoric, the punditry against those who would dare be freethinkers being considered unpatriotic, the leading of democrats to the edge of the precipice only to set them up to be complicit in the fraud or war today shows implicitly, that the Republicans are not only anti-American, but also, are the extremists, terrorists, and destroyers of what the world has been built on for the past hundred or so years.  In conclusion, the reinstatement of the Fairness doctrine, would bring more of the USA back to the center of thought, to allow other regulation back and also, would bring back the respect of the world that watches as America falls further and further from what it once was as a system of balanced ideas.  The reduction of unanswered pundits must come to close because the single-minded ways of the Limbaugh's, the O'reilly's, the FOX News network, and the Republican party must be put down like a sick animal, or removed like a cancer because it is that kind of terrible propaganda they spew ceaselessly and can because of republicans owning the stations for which they work for that is breaking the entire world into  a fractured mess.  Deregulation started with the FCC and must be the point for which regulation begins again.  We must begin with the reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine and the removal of the unfit pundit.