An Opinion on the Fairness Doctrine

Imagine tuning into your favorite country radio station and after a couple songs, you hear rap. Or imagine tuning into a rap station and hearing country. It is only fair that each genre-based music radio station play a diverse selection of music to give listeners a rounded selection of songs on one station. You may want to simply enjoy a country performance, but you cannot deny that it is only fair to have equal airtime for the rap-genre to play music as well. [/sarcasm] This might only be an imagined up scenario, but the “Fairness Doctrine” is very real.

Fortunately, the doctrine will not meddle with your music preferences on the radio. However if you enjoy conservative radio talk shows then you might be irked to find out just what the Fairness Doctrine proposes. Many extreme Leftists, the liberals of America, are working on passing this doctrine. It demands that free airtime be supplied for a liberal point of view on CONSERVATIVE radio talk shows. Of course, in return, conservatives will get airtime on liberal talk shows. This seems ‘fair’, except that there aren’t very many liberal talk shows. The conservatives dominate the talk show world.

This doctrine poorly disguises itself with the name ‘Fairness’. In reality the extreme liberals have no qualms about making their point. They want to silence conservative talk shows. The television has very little to offer in the way of religious channels. Some might agree that a few are enough. It is the radio that really gives conservatives a well earned place to speak freely. That is rapidly changing though.

Instead of imagining a country music station, imagine a conservative talk show. You tune in to listen to your favorite talk show host address an issue or give a sermon on air. And then a liberal host comes on air for an equal amount of time to refute everything that had just been said. I don’t know about you, but I pick my forms of entertainment based on what I enjoy and what interests me. If I were interested in hearing liberals tear apart a conservative case, I’d find an online discussion forum geared towards debates. It is truly wonderful to learn both sides of a story and educate yourself in issues by looking at each side with an open mind. However, it’s a joke for a station to have to hand out free airtime to an opposing opinion.

Many stations are funded by listener’s donations, fundraisers, and corporations. The government and state are known to fund about ten percent of what keeps a station alive. What conservative or liberal listener would want to pay to have the opposite opinion aired when they could be listening to what they tuned in for? Problem is: a conservative station that depends on listener’s donations might not be able to afford to keep the talk show alive when free airtime is given out. Will conservative stations die because listeners stop tuning in due to the liberal discussions? It would seem this way. Which leads me to ask, what is the true motive behind the Fairness Doctrine?