House Moves to Prevent Return of Fairness Doctrine: Easily Passes 309-115

The House moved to protect conservative talk-radio shows from being restricted by the Fairness Doctrine a couple of days ago, voting to bar the FCC from reinstating the Doctrine (for one year) by a comfortable margin of 309-115.

Some had feared that immigration proponents would try to muzzle the opposition to their incredibly bad immigration bill, or retaliate after the bill was killed a second time.

The defeat of the immigration bill was due largely to conservative talk-show radio programs focusing attention on the bad parts of the bill, which lead angry conservative voters to start calling their Senators.

It was a reminder to Congress as to just how powerful conservative talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage remain. Some senators began openly commenting about reinstating the Doctrine, which would require conservative talk show hosts to present a liberal point of view as well as their own; the same would be required of liberal hosts presenting a conservative point of view.

In short, it would unravel modern political talk-radio and muzzle the hosts; it would also effectively cut the host's time for presenting their argument in half. That's bad for business.

Does anyone remember Air America Radio? It was a liberal radio network that was to counter Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage and other conservative radio hosts. They went on the air in mid-2004 but declared bankruptcy in October 2006 due to several factors. Their business model was really strange. Several big lawsuits went against Air America Radio.

But the major factor was that conservative listeners who make up the majority of talk-radio listeners wouldn't listen to a liberal program; many felt (as I did) that liberals control most of the media; talk-radio is a conservative stronghold. The market proved that point when AAR filed for Chapter 11.

When Kerry, Durbin and Feinstein started making comments about "fixing" conservative talk-radio after the defeat of the immigration bill, conservatives felt that since the market wouldn't support a national liberal radio network with liberal programming, liberal members of Congress were going to force the issue by making conservative talk-shows talk less in favor of their point of view.

They already present their side of the story on CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and NPR, with no consideration to what the other side is saying. They don't need to dominate talk-radio too.

So Congressman Pence of Indiana (a former conservative talk radio host himself) introduced an amendment to HR 2829, blocking funds that seek reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.

This is a good move that will preserve the independence of talk-radio and maintain the First Amendment right to free speech. It's interesting to note that every Republican that cast a vote was in favor of the amendment, while 113 Democrats joined them. 115 Democrats voted against the Amendment.