{"id":2737,"date":"2008-03-12T06:08:10","date_gmt":"2008-03-12T10:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2008\/03\/12\/bush-declares-fairness-doctrine-unfair\/"},"modified":"2008-03-12T14:13:06","modified_gmt":"2008-03-12T18:13:06","slug":"bush-declares-fairness-doctrine-unfair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2008\/03\/bush-declares-fairness-doctrine-unfair\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush Declares “Fairness Doctrine” Unfair"},"content":{"rendered":"

Statesman.com<\/a> | Ken Herman | Mar. 11, 2008<\/p>\n

During a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, President Bush said there\u2019s nothing fair about the so-called \u201cFairness Doctrine\u201d that once required broadcasters to offer air time for competing ideologies.<\/p>\n

The FCC got rid of it about 20 years ago. Now, some Democrats in Congress – long the target of popular conservative radio talk-show hosts – think it\u2019s time to bring it back. <\/p>\n

Perish the thought, Bush told the religious broadcasters in the following passage that ends with a veto promise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis organization has had many important missions, but none more important than ensuring our airways – America\u2019s airways – stay open to those who preach the \u2018Good News.\u2019 The very first amendment to our Constitution includes the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. Founders believed these unalienable rights were endowed to us by our Creator. They are vital to a healthy democracy, and we must never let anyone take those freedoms away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201d I mention this because there\u2019s an effort afoot that would jeopardize your right to express your views on public airways. Some members of Congress want to reinstate a regulation that was repealed 20 years ago. It has the Orwellian name called the Fairness Doctrine. Supporters of this regulation say we need to mandate that any discussion of so-called controversial issues on the public airwaves includes equal time for all sides. This means that many programs wanting to stay on the air would have to meet Washington\u2019s definition of balance. Of course, for some in Washington, the only opinions that require balancing are the ones they don\u2019t like.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know who these advocates of so-called balance really have in their sights: shows hosted by people like Rush Limbaugh or James Dobson, or many of you here today. By insisting on so-called balance, they want to silence those they don\u2019t agree with. The truth of the matter is, they know they cannot prevail in the public debate of ideas. They don\u2019t acknowledge that you are the balance \u2026 The country should not be afraid of the diversity of opinions. After all, we\u2019re strengthened by diversity of opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n

. . . more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Statesman.com | Ken Herman | Mar. 11, 2008 During a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, President Bush said there\u2019s nothing fair about the so-called \u201cFairness Doctrine\u201d that once required broadcasters to offer air time for competing ideologies. The FCC got rid of it about 20 years ago. Now, some Democrats in Congress – … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[79,72,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freedom","category-leftism","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}