The Fairness Doctrine v2.0

I was in high school in the early 1980s. Although I do remember a few lessons and a few good friends from back in the day, I certainly don’t remember the Fairness Doctrine. Back then, I just listened to music and anyone who listened to talk radio was, well, old.

I do remember a day in the late 1980s when I visited my dad at work. He had the radio on in the shop and it was tuned in to Rush Limbaugh’s program on WTIC AM in Hartford. I must have heard one of the parodies or a response to a caller and I got interested in the program.

So I guess at some point, listening to Rush put me into the “old person” category when I was about 23.

When the first Fairness Doctrine was nixed by President Reagan, AM radio came back. Some say Limbaugh was the one to bring back a dead format.

American Thinker has a good piece on the Fairness Doctrine, what it’s designed to do, and what it really ends up doing.

The Fairness Doctrine was originally intended to encourage a public dialogue on controversial issues by ensuring that both sides of a topic were aired. As a former radio and TV journalist, I can assure you that the opposite was true. Station owners were afraid that their licenses would be yanked if there was the slightest possibility that they could be accused of violating the doctrine; it was far safer to simply avoid controversial matters.

Read the full post.

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air has more, including some video from a debate on Laura Ingraham’s new show – Just In – on Fox News channel between Rep. Mike Pence and Jennifer Palmieri of the Center for American Progress.