Use of the Airwaves

[Stone Island]

From the Los Angeles Times (Monday, March 9, 2009) (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/):

Re “Talk radio in the balance,” Opinion, March 3

Brian C. Anderson (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-anderson3-2009mar03,0,3448325.story) fails to mention three basic facts. First, the airwaves are owned by the public and not the broadcasters. Second, radio stations have a no-fee lease from our government that allows exclusive use of a particular broadcast spectrum. And finally, in return for this exclusive free use of public property, broadcasters are required to serve the public interest. Talk-radio hosts who mislead, take stuff out of context, ignore significant facts and just plain lie are not serving the public interest. This describes Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, among others.

The Fairness Doctrine may be problematic, as Anderson suggests, but our nation is ill-served when the public airwaves are used to confuse and mislead.

Bill Stanton
Garden Grove

First, I have a sneaking suspicion that one man’s “hosts who mislead” is another man’s ideological lodestar. Second, I’ll bite: the government should sell off these parts of the spectrum, getting out of the business of deciding what does and what does not serve the public interest altogether

x-posted (http://patterico.com/jury/2009/03/09/use-of-the-airwaves/)

[Beerina]

As someone who used to listen to Rush for about 3 years in the 1990s, I can tell you that it was nice to have someone talking much more along the lines I think, as opposed to every other damned channel.



I also find disturbing this attitude: "We can't just flat-out censor, because that would be perceived as wrong. I know! We can force them to put on an equal amount of time for an opposing viewpoint. Then nobody wants to put on a boring, money-loser for 3 hours just so they can have Rush on for 3 hours. That'll work! I've done it! I can de facto censor while keeping my mental model pure of any accusation that I'm censoring things!"




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[GStan]

From the Los Angeles Times (Monday, March 9, 2009) (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/):



First, I have a sneaking suspicion that one man’s “hosts who mislead” is another man’s ideological lodestar. Second, I’ll bite: the government should sell off these parts of the spectrum, getting out of the business of deciding what does and what does not serve the public interest altogether
x-posted (http://patterico.com/jury/2009/03/09/use-of-the-airwaves/)

Yes. Let the public decide by listening to what they are interested in and turning off that which they are not interested in.

[D'rok]

I also find disturbing this attitude: "We can't just flat-out censor, because that would be perceived as wrong. I know! We can force them to put on an equal amount of time for an opposing viewpoint. Then nobody wants to put on a boring, money-loser for 3 hours just so they can have Rush on for 3 hours. That'll work! I've done it! I can de facto censor while keeping my mental model pure of any accusation that I'm censoring things!"

A quick bit of investi-googling reveals that equal time was not a requirement of the Fairness Doctrine. I don't really have an opinion on the issue as a whole, but aren't you being a little disingenuous here?