The Plot to Hush Rush (and Others on the Right)

Brian C. Anderson sent me a link to a long article he wrote for the City Journal regarding the move to reenact the Fairness Doctrine and to use campaign finance law to silence critics, primarily on the right. The left has few voices of consequence on the public airwaves, so the lefties who are trying to quiet their critics don't risk causing much trouble for their own. This excerpt is an example of the hatred on the left for conservative voices:

Small wonder, then, that House Democrats proposed two bills in 2005 to bring the Fairness Doctrine back—and as a law, rather than a mere agency regulation. New York Democratic representative Louise Slaughter, who introduced the first of the two bills, says that Right-ruled radio is a grave threat to American freedoms, “a waste of good broadcast time, and a waste of our airwaves.” People “may hear whatever they please and whatever they choose,” she tells PBS’s Bill Moyers, in a statement as incoherent as it is illiberal. “And of course they have the right to turn it off. But that’s not good enough either. The fact is that they need the responsibility of the people who are licensed to use our airwaves judiciously and responsibly to call them to account if they don’t.” In other words, people can’t be trusted with freedom but need the supervision of a paternalist government.

Slaughter doesn’t want to re-regulate only radio. When asked by Moyers if she was also proposing the new Fairness Doctrine for Fox News or MSNBC, Slaughter responded: “You bet. . . . Fairness isn’t going to hurt anybody.” If there’s anything liberals hate more than talk radio it’s Fox News, which has dominated cable news by appealing to conservative viewers fed up with the networks’ liberal bias. New York Democratic representative Maurice Hinchey, sponsor of the second Fairness Doctrine bill, went so far as to host a special Capitol Hill screening of Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, a “documentary” hit job. Slaughter, Hinchey, Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders, Washington State congressman Jay Inslee, and several other House lefties have recently formed the Future of American Media Congress to push for a media crackdown.

To anyone who believes the First Amendment really means what it says, this is scary stuff. Not only will radio and TV be in the crosshairs, but bloggers who take political stands could also be the target of various campaign finance laws.

Yet another reason to keep the Dems from regaining control of any branch of government. Read the whole thing.