Maybe We DO Need To Bring Back The Fairness Doctrine
April 11, 2009 · carl · Print This Article
The members of Congress who want to re-impose the “Fairness Doctrine” claim that all they want to accomplish is a fair balance between liberal and conservative points of view on America’s radio stations.
Anyone with the common sense of a goldfish knows that it would require a federal law in order to attract an audience to a liberal talk-radio program, however the thought occurred to me that perhaps I should investigate just how far talk radio is tilted to one side of the political spectrum.
So I decided to check the programming schedule of the talk radio station where I live.
And frankly, I was surprised by what I discovered.
They carry (live) three hours of Rush Limbaugh, the undisputed King of conservative talk radio.
On a tape delay, they air three hours of Michael Savage, who, although he is more libertarian than he is conservative, is not a friend of the liberal point of view.
And Savage often gets pre-empted by coverage of local sports events.
Then things take quite a different turn.
They carry all five hours of Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.
George took over the show in 2003 when Art “where’s the Loch Ness Monster hiding” Bell decided to retire.
He spends most of his on-air time talking about the paranormal and UFO’s.
They have one hour of Jim Bohannon, who took over Larry King’s radio show in 1993.
That alone should tell you all you need to know as far as his political feelings.
Bohannon describes himself as a moderate, but the closest he ever came to that title was when Ron Paul was a guest on the program.
They air two hours of Michael Smerconish, who hops from one side to the other so often I can’t tell what side of the fence he stands on.
He has filled in for both Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.
But he has also substituted for Chris Matthews on Hardball.
He claims to be politically conservative, yet he endorsed Barack Obama for President.
The rest of the broadcast day is filled out with local on-air personalities.
They have two hours and forty five minutes of a show hosted by a woman who does lean more to the right than she does the left, but I would have to describe her as a moderate.
They air three hours of a program hosted by a man whom anyone listening would describe as a liberal.
And they also broadcast three hours of a show hosted by a male/female duo who are so rabidly left-wing that they make Al Franken sound like a moderate!
I sometimes listen just to make sure that my high blood pressure medication is working.
So there you have it.
That is the state of AM talk radio in my neck of the woods.
In regards to local programming, you have three hours of a moderate, three hours of a liberal, and three hours of a pair who are so unabashedly liberal that they only enter the station through the left side door.
On a national level, you have three hours of a conservative, three hours of a libertarian (when his time slot isn’t taken over to broadcast a minor league hockey game), an hour of one man who claims to be a moderate, two hours of a guy who doesn’t know whar side of the political spectrum he identifies with, and five hours of programming hosted by a man who probably has a pinched nerve in his neck from alternately looking under his desk for monsters or from looking up and searching the sky for flying saucers.
Yet there are members of Congress who feel that they need to bring back the “Fairness Doctrine” because such a programming schedule is too heavily biased towards conservatives.
Maybe George Norry can tell us what planet they come from.
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