More on the "Un"Fairness Doctrine

Howard Fineman:

Democrats have two media-access goals.

One is to prod local broadcast television and radio stations to renew their atrophied commitment to producing and airing their own public-affairs programming—shows that Democrats think would at least give them a chance to be heard. Some Democrats want to require stations to give free time for campaign debates, and even free campaign advertising as part of the stations’ “public-service” licensing requirement.

The Democrats’ more ambitious (and longer-range) goal is to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine.”

snip

As for the new efforts to review broadcast rules, “I don’t think it’s ever going to succeed,” Limbaugh told his listeners this week. But that didn’t keep him from sounding an alarm. The Democrats are pursuing a “pure Stalinist tactic,” he declared, “to silence or shut people like me up.”

There’s little chance of that.

The Democrats just want to sound some alarms themselves. Former talk show host Al Franken, now running for the U.S. Senate in his home state of Minnesota, has his own suggestion for reform.

“You shouldn’t be able to lie on the air,” he told me. “You can’t utter obscenities in a broadcast, so why should you be able to lie? You should be fined for lying.”

Federal fines for lying on the air? As a way to fill the federal treasury, it makes perfect sense.

Hey Al, who gets to determine what is a lie?