Kucinich Wants To Bring Back the "Hush Rush" Bill

Presidential hopeful (or hopeless) Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Nut-Ohio) isn't really all that fond of the free market for free speech, which explains his desire to bring back the "Fairness Doctrine":

Over the weekend, the National Conference for Media Reform was held in Memphis, TN, with a number of notable speakers on hand for the event. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made an surprise appearance at the convention to announce that he would be heading up a new House subcommittee which will focus on issues surrounding the Federal Communications Commission.

The Presidential candidate said that the committee would be holding "hearings to push media reform right at the center of Washington.” The Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee was to be officially announced this week in Washington, D.C., but Kucinich opted to make the news public early.

In addition to media ownership, the committee is expected to focus its attention on issues such as net neutrality and major telecommunications mergers. Also in consideration is the "Fairness Doctrine," which required broadcasters to present controversial topics in a fair and honest manner. It was enforced until it was eliminated in 1987.

That description of the "Fairness Doctrine" is extremely misleading, because the real purpose of bringing that nonsense back is to silence conservative talk radio which flourished after it was tossed out by Ronald Reagan. It's not coincidence that the "fairness doctrine" died in 1987 and Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio took off in 1988.

Should the doctrine be reinstated, radio stations would be required to "balance" conservative talk shows with an equal amount of time dedicated to liberal views. For the lefties that sounds "fair", but in reality it could kill AM radio once and for all because programmers know that liberal talk radio will not attract an audience (as aptly demonstrated by Air America), and thus will not attract advertisers. Many stations would be faced with dropping popular conservative shows because they couldn't afford to take the hit required to provide "balance".

Conservative talk radio flourished because it met a need in a broadcast market that was already full of liberal views, and if anything, finally provided the "balance" that was needed to offset the unified lefty views of the mainstream media.

The good news is we still have a Republican president, and unless he has become completely cowed by the Dems, he can veto whatever nutty stuff Kucinich comes up with, and there's no way there would be enough votes to override the veto. The radio market, like everything else, works better when it's allowed to operate freely, and turning it back into some socialist vision of "balance" is a terrible idea.