With Limbaugh Battles Raging, Republicans Unite Behind Media Freedom
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
March 3, 2009
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As Rush, Rahm, Michael and the White House fight it out, the GOP holds the line on freedom for broadcasters.
In the midst of ongoing disputes between conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, and the Obama White House -- all focusing on Limbaugh's influence within the Republican Party -- Republicans in the Senate have united in unprecedented ways this year on the issue of protecting conservative talk radio.
After three moderates joined Democrats to pass the stimulus bill in mid-February, Senate GOP leaders worried whether there would be any issue on which the party's 41 senators would be able to agree. Now, with talk radio, they've found one. It happened after a long-simmering conflict over Democratic plans to limit the reach of conservative talk broke into the open with a showdown last week between Republican Sen. Jim DeMint and Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin. When Durbin offered a proposal that would diminish the influence of conservative talk, all 41 GOP senators -- including moderates Arlen Specter, Susan Collins and Olympia Snow -- voted against it, while every Democrat (with the exception of the absent Ted Kennedy) voted for it.
The fight began when DeMint proposed a measure that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from reinstating the old Fairness Doctrine. Repealed in the 1980s, the doctrine required broadcasters to present equal sides of issues in each program, and nearly everyone agrees that re-imposing it today would kill talk radio.
Democrats denied any such intention, and DeMint's amendment put them to the test. "We knew if we could get the prohibition of the Fairness Doctrine on the floor and force a vote, a lot of Democrats would be shamed into having to vote for it," DeMint told me Monday. And indeed, they were; DeMint's measure passed with the support of 46 Democrats, in addition to every Republican. If the proposal ultimately becomes law, the Fairness Doctrine will be dead.
But anyone who has followed the debate over media freedom in recent months knows the doctrine is no longer the real issue. Of greater concern is the question of "diversity of ownership" -- that is, a government attempt to break up the holdings of some of the broadcasting companies that bring talk radio to millions of Americans. By forcing, or at least pushing for, changes in station ownership, Democrats hope to drive some conservative talkers off the air -- in other words, to change the content of talk radio without actually censoring anything.
So Durbin introduced a measure of his own, which would order the FCC to take unspecified actions to "encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership, and to ensure that the public airwaves are used in the public interest." Durbin's language caught the attention of Republicans across the ideological spectrum. Just what did the words "communication media ownership" mean, exactly? The old Fairness Doctrine applied only to over-the-air broadcasters. Was Durbin proposing to encourage and promote "diversity" in ownership across the media landscape, including cable TV, Internet, and other forms of communication?
And what is "diversity," anyway? "'Diversity' is not defined," DeMint told me. "Who's going to say what diversity is? It could be anything from sexual preference to political diversity to geographic diversity. I don't know what it means."
The fuzziness, and the far-reaching implications, of the Durbin measure united Republicans in a way that the stimulus debate and other battles had not. When the vote was taken, the GOP was unanimous in opposition.
Durbin told me Monday that Republican fears are unfounded, that his amendment covers only over-the-air broadcasting. "It does not affect cable or the Internet," he said. Durbin also told me that if the amendment makes it to a conference committee, he would be willing to make its language more precise.
But the question of "diversity" is more troublesome. In a speech on the Senate floor last week, Durbin said, "When I talk about diversity of media ownership, it relates primarily to gender and race and other characteristics of that nature." But Durbin's proposal doesn't say that, nor did Durbin rule it out on the Senate floor. In our conversation, Durbin said the definition of diversity is "an issue for the FCC to determine." But, he added that the agency had “focused on promoting minority and female ownership in the past."
Of course, that's not to say that the FCC will continue to do so. And Republicans argue that the re-allocation of radio and television station ownership, done at the behest of the government, could undercut the power of talk radio. Government-driven changes to make the ownership of local stations more "diverse" could mean that stations currently playing conservative talk would change formats.
Since there are a lot of radio stations in this country, there would still be plenty of outlets for Limbaugh and other top talk personalities. But the change could have a dampening effect on some local conservative hosts whose programs might be thrown off the air by ownership changes. The campaign for more "diversity" in media ownership wouldn't kill Limbaugh, but it could kill the next Limbaugh before he or she has a chance to succeed.
And that is what this fight is about. Even though the issue under debate is media ownership, the real issue is content. Democrats want to change the political character of talk radio, and they intend to use their powers to make it happen. "The ownership of a station…doesn't mean that you're going to get a predictable point of view from anybody," Durbin told me. "But we're convinced that if there is diversity, then that is going to give us the kind of diversity of opinion that America wants to hear."
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