NEW YORK, NY — It didn’t take long for arch-conservatives to begin finding new things to protest after their smackdown in Tuesday’s presidential election. With president-elect Barack Obama headed for the White House in January, fundamentalists have turned their hate- and fear-mongering attention to different targets.One of the first to feel the sting of the religious right’s barbs was Sen. Charles “Chuck” Schumer, the senior Democratic legislator from New York. Within certain constraints, Schumer supports the concept behind a proposed resurrection of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” an abandoned Federal Communications Commission regulation that required broadcasters to incorporate contrasting views in their news and opinion programming (but did not require “equal time for contrasting views,” as has been misstated). The doctrine was repealed in 1985 after a number of Supreme Court battles determined it actually hampered instead of encouraged free and open discourse, but its specter arose from the dead last summer, due in part to negative political campaigning and a proliferation of politically biased pundits in the media.
During an election-day interview on Fox News, Schumer suggested radio and television stations should be required to be “fair and balanced.”
“The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC to limit pornography on the air,” Schumer said. “I am for that. I think pornography should be limited. But you can’t say ‘government [keep your] hands off’ in one area to a commercial enterprise, but ‘you’re allowed to intervene’ in another. That’s not consistent.”
Schumer was taking a poke at conservative, pro-family groups and media personalities who demand the government curtail the proliferation of adult content online and in the popular culture while ramping up their own hate speech against anyone who doesn’t agree with their limited definition of “moral and proper.” Conservative radio and television talk-show hosts have been outspoken about their concern that a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all but destroy their industry.
The neocons hit the roof right away. City Journal editor and A Manifesto for Media Freedom co-author Brian Anderson accused Schumer and other Democratic leaders — including Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Al Gore and John Kerry — of wanting to eliminate conservative voices in the press.
“What was kind of surprising in Schumer’s argument was the contention that talk radio and porn are basically on the same level — so that if you seek to regulate pornography in some way, that legitimizes the regulation of political speech,” he told conservative Christian website OneNewsNow.com. “Now this is an inversion of any kind of understanding of the First Amendment on the part of the founders [of the United States]. They’d be rolling in their graves right now.”
Anderson also told the website he expects the Democratic majority in Congress to push for a restoration of the Fairness Doctrine in another form.
According to OneNewsNow, “the Obama administration will seek a host of other regulations that are similar to the Fairness Doctrine,” despite Obama’s stated opposition to the doctrine itself.
