Remember the bad old days before Ronald Reagan won the presidency and Al Gore “invented” the Internet? Back in the 1960s and ’70s, Big Labor bosses largely enjoyed free rein, thanks to the fact they represented roughly a third of American workers and enjoyed the slavish fealty of Democratic majorities in Congress.
It was also when the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) regulated political expression on radio and TV via the Fairness Doctrine. Views that weren’t considered acceptable simply weren’t heard because ABC, NBC and CBS were the only national television outlets. Today’s Democrats in Congress yearn for the way things used to be.
Last week, Democrats approved legislation to cut the budget of the lone federal agency that serves as a watchdog over labor union corruption and mismanagement. And this week, the Democrats’ campaign is revving up to restore the “Fairness Doctrine” so the FCC can again decide which political views will be aired on the nation’s airwaves. Like Yogi Berra said, it’s déjà vu all over again.
The 2 percent cut in the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards may seem a trifle in a $2.9 trillion federal budget. But President Bush wants to increase the OLMS budget, not cut it, because the obscure agency is shining light where labor bosses prefer darkness.
Since 2001, federal courts have ordered restitution of more than $70 million in OLMS criminal cases against corrupt union officials. In fact, a mere 6 percent of all unions comply with modest federal financial disclosure requirements, according to OLMS. Anybody doubt that the 2 percent cut this year is a mere down payment on the planned gutting of OLMS if Democrats win the White House?
Then there is the Fairness Doctrine that liberal activists have been demanding be restored ever since Reagan ended it in 1987. There followed the flowering of talk radio’s Rush Limbaugh and other popular conservative bloviators. Now, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., is reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine legislation he says is needed “to ensure fairness and accuracy injournalism.” Hinchey also wants a return of government controls on media ownership. But Democrat PR operative and political appointee Bill Ruder put the lie to that argument long ago when he admitted that the Democrats’ pre-Reagan strategy was “to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue.”
Democrats like Hinchey ought to at least admit that silencing Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio is what this campaign is really all about. And in the era of CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC and C-SPAN, not to mention the Blogosphere, NPR and satellite radio, the Fairness Doctrine is at best a silly anachronism.
That said, listening to Keith Olberman, Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly sometimes makes us wish it be could be selectively applied.
