The Fairness Doctrine

One of the items on the Congressional agenda is the Fairness Doctrine, where the Government would require broadcasters to provide equal time for both sides. While it sounds good at first listen, the Fairness Doctrine is, to borrow from the Jurassic Park movies, the dumbest idea in the history of dumb ideas!! First, the government mandating coverage flies in the face of the First Amendment. Second, who gets to decide if something is a liberal/conservative view point or a balanced view point? Some bureaucrat gets to decide if Wolf Blitzer is being a liberal or just a neutral commentator? Come on!!

It appears to me that if there is any place for the Fairness Doctrine, it should be NPR and PBS, which are directly funded by taxpayers. And yet, any unbiased listener recognizes that these organizations are loaded with liberals. Virtually every show at these networks, with the exception of the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, takes a decidedly biased view on the issues. Maybe we can start with dictating that such organizations need to be more balanced or lose taxpayer funding?

Full Disclosure: I listen to NPR and PBS extensively, and have contributed to NPR in the past. I have however decided against further support for NPR until their editorial content changes to present more view points.