The Fairness Doctrine

“In response, the FCC began to reconsider the rule in the mid-80s, and ultimately revoked it in 1987, after Congress passed a resolution instructing the commission to study the issue. The decision has been credited with the explosion of conservative talk radio in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. While the FCC has not enforced the rule in nearly a quarter century, it remains technically on the books. As a part of the Obama administration’s broader efforts to overhaul federal regulation, the FCC is finally scrapping the rule once and for all.”

So the Fairness Doctrine finally died, and with it democracy itself.

The Fairness Doctrine was an attempt to regulate political speech on radio and T.V.  

It did not apply to newspapers or magazines.

And conservatives hated it.  

Their excuse for screwing up the country every time they got control was the liberal media.  You can hear echoes of that in Trump’s rants about the unfair media.

What we don’t hear about is the fact that corporations own the media.  And corporations are no friend of liberal democrats.

In fact, the Trump phenomenon is a product of the Fairness Doctrine being gutted.  

We had an example of it yesterday.  Trump, who was sagging in the polls, decided to try a Hail Mary and take the foolish offer of a meeting from a politically crippled Mexican President.  So off he flew to Mexico to act Presidential.  Meanwhile Hillary Clinton was meeting with the American Legion,  a tradition that both Presidential candidates do every election.  Usually the American Legion speech is well covered by the media, since it is a major foreign policy speech.

We didn’t hear hardly a thing about Hillary’s speech; which was surprising well received by the American Legion.  

What we saw was a corporate media cover the Trump circus all the way to Mexico and back.  Meanwhile not ONE new policy change was forthcoming from Trump.  He went to Mexico, lied as usual to the sucker President (claiming they did not talk about the wall while the President of Mexico tweeted that they did and Mexico was NOT paying for it).  Then Trump turned right around, after sounding almost diplomatic in Mexico, and fed red meat to his racist rabid supporters.  

In short, he got a full day of “breathless coverage” blocked Hillary from any publicity at all, and “won the news cycle”.  We got absolutely nothing new policy wise from Trump…It was an enormous con!

He also has not bought any real political advertisements to speak of. Why is that?   

Usually this would be a death knell, but without any shred of the Fairness Doctrine left, there is no regulation of balanced and fair coverage of the Presidential candidates.  Trump, an entertainer, figured out a long time ago, that he could dominate the daily news cycle in the absence of any Fairness Doctrine with his lies and bullshit.

And there is nothing any of us can do about it, except turn off the T.V.  

I have a good friend who is a Democrat text me last night asking, “Do you have MSNBC on?”

The reason was Trump was making his Immigration Announcement, which as it turns out was the SAME policies he has been spewing out for over a year…no change, nothing.

It was all a con!    

Meanwhile Hillary goes to the American Legion, makes a major foreign policy address and receives practically no coverage at all.

Look, Trump won the primary doing the same thing.  He is using the huge hole conservatives put in any kind of fairness in political coverage, with greedy media giant corporations, some who are very conservative (Fox and Disney come to mind), who are working openly to elect Trump.  

Democracy requires that all sides can communicate their positions to the public.  Currently the media is fixed to only carry the most conservative messages.  It took a Trump to figure out that he doesn’t even have to buy political advertisements, all he has to do is be a showman, drive up cable T.V. ratings, and even MSNBC carries him 24-7.

And sure enough, the polls are tightening as we hear nothing but about Hillary’s emails and the Clinton Foundation and Trump, Trump, Trump.

The problem is this:  One sided news coverage prompted by political agendas that drowns out the opposition can lead to dictatorships.  That’s right, fascist dictatorships.

How do we know?  Look at Nazi Germany.  The first thing Hitler did when he took power was to get the Reichstag to pass a law making negative press coverage of his actions a CAPITAL offense; that’s right the death penalty.   The second thing Hitler did was burn down the Reichstag, ending even the sham of democracy.

The first thing Trump has done, as he demands that Hillary have a press conference (knowing full well the email faux “controversy” will be brought up by Fox and Friends) is to exclude certain newspapers from even his rallies that don’t follow his party line.   His “Fairness Doctrine” is to exclude those medias that don’t pay him blind attention:  like Fox News.   

With the Fairness Doctrine he could not have done that.   The Fairness Doctrine demanded equal time for example if one political candidate attacked the other.  There was a rebuttal time, similar to what you see when the President gives the State of the Union (by the way there is NO requirement that happen anymore because the Fairness Doctrine is totally gone). 

What we have  now is publicity control by those who seek to destroy our democracy.  We have lost the principle of equal time for opposing viewpoints.  

So as you drone away watching Fox, or even MSNBC, you are watching political whores, who will sell out democracy for a ratings uptick.

And we have nothing to protect us from this; we allowed the Fairness Doctrine to die, and our way of life will die with it.

The Reckoning!