Don't be stupid, support the fairness doctrine

Patrick McIlheran, Jessica McBride, Charlie Sykes and other members of the MSM -- Milwaukee's stupider media (and in some cases Madison's stupider media) -- are all bent out of shape after a  Wisconsin National Public Radio talker called for moderation in the airwaves.

Censorship! They cry.

Well, let them cry. The Brawler says it's time we bring back the fairness doctrine -- or something like it. Essentially the fairness doctrine called for equal time for opposing viewpoints. It was laid to rest during the Reagan administration. Conservative talk radio then blew wide leading to the polarized country we now inhabit.

The Brawler always vaguely thought something like this should happen. Then his thinking crystallized last week. What prompted it? A billboard on 94 westbound outside Milwaukee, presumably in Waukesha. It's a WISN billboard that shows a Republican elephant stomping his hind legs on a supine Democratic donkey. "Don't be stupid. Be right."

Now, the Brawler is all for different voices to be heard. But he will be goddamned if he will tolerate a radio station -- one of hundreds -- whose positioning is "We beat up on Democrats." The airwaves are ultimately the public's property. And last I checked, a majority of the public was not Republican. It might serve a corporation's marketing strategy, or political strategy, to have programming dedicated to bashing Democrats (or, as a Chicago radio station says on a billboard, Liberals hate us). But as a taxpayer and a citizen I resent that, profoundly. It is manifestly not censorship to make sure that the voices on the radio do not represent a narrow slice of voters that reliably vote for Republican and corporate interests.

And I don't think I'm alone in thinking that.

The Brawler will be returning to this topic.

Comments

[grumps]

And of course those same radio stations will chase whatever dollars are out there to be had. Right now WIND panders to the Rush-crowd but it's not so many years ago that they were locked in a deathmatch with WLS for the hearts and minds of the teen make-out crowd.

The stations are fickle, as the McBrides of the world will find out, and will pursue the pocketbooks of the ins at the expense of the outs.

Politics is a pendulum and not an arrow. It will swing back into the faces of those who are pushing it now and they will squeal when it happens. A little fairness now might be what they're craving when things wind up swinging the other way.

[Jim]

Regardless of who's in power, liberal talk radio will likely never do well. Look at Air America. You can slam right wing radio all you want . . . fact is, it kills liberal talk in virtually every market. Don't like it? Don't listen to it. What so hard about that? Tune in NPR. Joel McNally is oh so entertaining. And just as polarizing himself. I'm all for more lefty talk radio. But fact is, it doesn't sell.

And what about other media outlets? Think the Journal has been any friend to the republicans? Think CNN is cozy with Bush?

Turn the dial.

[Tim]

That's right, because racism, bigotry and hate sell ... that's why right-wing talk radio does so well.