The New Republic

Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and other friends have spent the past year
screaming about the horrors of Barack Obama. And, while it's true
that they talked ad nauseam about socialism and the Weathermen and
Jeremiah Wright, careful listeners would have noticed a recurring
theme of anxiety: that Obama was going to use the newly acquired
levers of government to destroy them. Specifically, conservative
paranoia over the possible reinstatement of the "fairness
doctrine," a defunct policy requiring that broadcasters allow
opposing points of view to be heard over the airwaves, has reached a
fevered pitch. In September, George Will was warning his readers
that, "[u]nless McCain is president, the government will reinstate
the ... 'fairness doctrine.'" In October, The Wall Street Journal's
editorial page chimed in, predicting that under the spooky-sounding
"liberal supermajority," the fairness doctrine was "likely to be
reimposed," with the goal being "to shut down talk radio and other
voices of political opposition." And, two weeks before the election,
the New York Post blasted: "dems get set to muzzle the right."On Election Day, conservatives found a new bogeyman in Senator Chuck
Schumer, after Fox News host Bill Hemmer cornered him about the
issue on the air. Schumer just smirked: "I think we should all try
to be fair and balanced, don't you?" Rush Limbaugh seized on
Schumer's comments as evidence that the Democrats would "do
everything they can" to bring the doctrine back. Two days after the
election, National Review's Peter Kirsanow tried to rally the troops
to preempt the return of the policy. "Waiting until Inauguration
Day to get geared up is too late. By that time the Fairness
Doctrine Express will be at full steam-- wavering Democrats will be
pressed to support the new Democratic president, weak-kneed
Republicans will want to display comity, the mainstream media will
not be saddened to see talk radio annihilated and much of the public
will be too enraptured by Obama's Camelot inauguration to notice or
care."

To figure out who was causing such agitation, I went searching for
the proponents of the fairness doctrine. I looked at Obama's
position--and it turns out that he doesn't want the policy
reinstated. Then I called the array of Democratic congressmen who
had been tagged by conservatives as doctrine proponents. But they
all denied any intention to push for its reinstatement. As some of
the world's great egotists, it's not surprising that Limbaugh and
Bill O'Reilly believe they would be the first political prisoners
interred in an Obama administration. But, the more I searched for
actual evidence of the doctrine's return, the more I had to
conclude that Schumer was just messing with their heads.

The fairness doctrine was adopted by the Federal Communications
Commission in 1949, under the argument that the airwaves were a
finite public resource. License holders were considered public
trustees, with a responsibility to present opposing viewpoints on
controversial issues. From the beginning, the doctrine was
imprecise and difficult to enforce, and, by 1987, the policy was
repealed.

It has become obvious by now that the biggest beneficiaries of the
doctrine's demise were the conservative media. Last year, a study by
the Center for American Progress (CAP) found that 91 percent of
weekday talk radio is conservative, compared with just 9 percent
that is progressive. Far from establishing an unencumbered
marketplace of ideas, the free-market approach, critics complain,
edged most voices out of the debate.

It's no wonder, then, that conservatives fear the fairness
doctrine's return and busily document any favorable mention of the
policy by Democrats. One of the most recent remarks that fueled the
paranoia occurred in June, when John Gizzi, a reporter from the
conservative magazine Human Events, asked House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi if she would allow a vote on a bill called the Broadcaster
Freedom Act, which was introduced last year by former talk-show host
turned House member Mike Pence in an attempt to permanently outlaw
the reinstatement of the policy. Pelosi said she wouldn't,
mentioning New York Representative Louise Slaughter as an active
proponent of reinstating the fairness doctrine. But Slaughter, like
many other media-reform advocates, has shifted focus away from the
doctrine in recent years, instead working to rein in the
consolidation of media ownership. Shortly after the Human Events
piece surfaced, a Democratic leadership staffer called Pelosi's
office to ask if the mention indicated that the speaker had plans
to move on new legislation promoting the doctrine. Pelosi's staff,
according to that aide, confirmed that she did not. And, even if
Pelosi were to allow the legislation to move forward, another
staffer says, she would not have the Democratic support to get it
passed.

Conservatives also focus on the 2005 effort by Democratic
Representative Maurice Hinchey of New York to introduce a bill that
would have reinstated the doctrine. But that effort went nowhere.
At the time, Andrew Schwartzman, president of the Media Access
Project, explained to the congressman that the measure did not have
the support of the media-reform community. Schwartzman doubts
Hinchey will try again. In fact, the last time a revival of the
doctrine seemed possible was in 1993. Limbaugh's declaration that
he was being "gang- muzzled" unleashed a public outcry against the
bill, and Congress backed down.

Today, the doctrine has almost no support from media-reform
advocates. According to Mark Lloyd, co-author of the CAP report, "I
don't think there's any movement [to restore the fairness doctrine]
at all. ... We don't support it. " Craig Aaron of the media-reform
group FreePress says, "[I]n reality, the fairness doctrine as it
existed is never ever coming back."

Responses from the offices of most of the Democrats who have been
pegged as fairness-doctrine proponents--Schumer, Dick Durbin,
Dianne Feinstein, and others--have ranged from a firm denial that
the issue is a priority at all to disbelief at finding themselves
at the center of a manufactured controversy. "Somebody plucked this
out of the clear blue sky," says the press secretary for New Mexico
Senator Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat who was questioned about the
issue by a conservative radio-show host a few weeks ago. "This is a
completely made- up issue." Senator Durbin's press secretary says
that Durbin has "no plans, no language, no nothing. He was asked in
a hallway last year, he gave his personal view"--that the American
people were served well under the doctrine--"and it's all been
blown out of proportion." In fact, as recently as last year, the
House voted by an overwhelming three-to-one margin to temporarily
prohibit the FCC from imposing the dead policy; 113 Democrats voted
to support the move.

Meanwhile, the president-elect himself has said in no uncertain
terms that he does "not support reimposing the fairness doctrine on
broadcasters." Republican paranoia is nothing more than that.

Democrats may scratch their heads over why this has lately become a
right- wing obsession, but the paranoia is not without precedent.
The prospect of being in the opposition often brings out the worst
in conservatives--paranoia and self-pity. Plus, when the
conservative coalition seems threatened, there's no better way to
unify the party than scaring up liberal bogeymen.

Take last year, when Congress failed to pass immigration reform.
Some House members blamed Rush Limbaugh for whipping his listeners
into such an anti- amnesty frenzy that would-be Republican
supporters of the bill jumped ship. Conservatives were staring down
a deep chasm. Their coalition looked vulnerable and ineffective.
Then, Senator James Inhofe remembered that he had overheard Barbara
Boxer and Hillary Clinton conspiring in a Capitol Hill
elevator--not quite the place where those ladies usually do their
strategic planning--to deliver a "legislative fix" to the Limbaugh
problem. First Inhofe said that he had overheard them "the other
day"; later, he said that it was three years prior. No matter.
Shortly thereafter, Pence introduced his bill to permanently defeat
the doctrine. Invoking fear of the doctrine turned out to be a quick
fix after all: The bill never got out of committee, but it quickly
gained the support of more than 200 congressional Republicans--and
countless dittoheads.

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