With the prospect of Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, it’s time to starting talking about reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine, which required required broadcast licensees to present controversial issues of public importance, and to present such issues in an honest, equal and balanced manner. According to Wikipedia:
Conservatives, in contrast, see attempts to revive the Doctrine as an attempt to silence conservative voices, noting that sectors of the media they believe to have a liberal bias (major newspapers, newsmagazines, evening newscasts of the broadcast networks) would not be touched by the Doctrine.
However, what we have experienced in the past 20+ years is the growing dominance of the media by conservative voices, not only on rightwing talk radio, but also in network news and commentary, and in the major newspapers. The conservative movement has developed message amplification techniques to promulgate their views very effectively. Further constraint on reporting and on progressive and dissenting opinion has resulted from media consolidation into the hands of a few large corporate players, as well as voluntary self-censoring in the wake of 9/11 and the Bush administration’s subsequent bullying stance.
To be fair, in the past few months we have seen and heard a few peeps of reviving courage on the part of the mainstream media (with special kudos to Keith Olbermann for his outspoken courage), as they began to sense that things were not going too well for the Republicans.
However, a number of the newly elected Democrats are distinctly out of step with traditional Democratic values, and ran on fairly conservative platforms. This shouldn’t be surprising, as both they and their constituents have been bathed in rightwing messaging for decades. The Democrats in Congress, while moving into the majority, are still going to be constrained by public opinion. This means that they will be constrained by what the people can see and hear with the rightwing messaging machine still in place and major corporations still in control of our main media outlets.
If we want to see real change, we need to have public opinion on our side. Informed public opinion will depend on getting moderate and progressive voices heard widely in the nation’s marketplace of ideas. That’s why bringing back the Fairness Doctrine should be a top priority for the incoming Congress.