We need to re-establish the "Fairness Doctrine" which used to be the norm when I was growing up in the 1960's and 1970's. We used to have it and the news was much more independently reported and objectively presented from all sides than it is now.
The Fairness Doctrine would guarantee that slanderers and rumor mongers like Rush Limbaugh would be forced to allow for EQUAL TIME to their innuendo, unsubstantiated assertions and outright character assassination. The accused need to have a chance to answer their slanderer(s), whether they are on the left or on the right.
As it is now, people like Limbaugh can function much like an unaccountable minister of propaganda speaking for a one-sided party machine and posing as an entertainer or a newscaster, people like him can vastly influence millions of Americans who listen to them and don't know any other side to issues.
It is not doing anyone a public service to have one party or one viewpoint overwhelmingly predominate, giving the media personalities who spew their personal invective a great deal of political power since they function as a type of unelected public official, in their posing as 'newsmen' and the 'press'/ People who haven't heard both sides of issues tend to believe what they hear in the national media. They are not privy to the fact that such views only represent one side of the ideological spectrum.
I am not saying people like Limbaugh don't have a right to free speech, but they also ought to be subject to having to withstand some honest debate and defend their views when they wield so much inordinate political power and make outrageous claims and even destroy peoples' reputations. They are unelected and unaccountable.
A Fairness Doctrine in which the public gets to hear both sides of issues is how things USED to be up until Ronald Reagan did away with the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s. What we have had since then is a concentration of power among the media outlets in the hands of right-leaning corporations and a near monopoly of talk radio by the right wing.
The right claims that it is because right wing propaganda sells and left wing does not. That they say is why left wing leaning talk radio shows don't stay on the air. The argument that because something is commercially successful that it is also good for the country, is absurd. I'm not sure why talk radio is dominated by the right, except that left wingers tend to be much less focused on blaming 'out groups' for national problems and are more interested in pushing for social justice, at least as they see it.
Besides, as we know from terrorism in the Middle East, the popularity of fanaticism among a majority of the population in the Middle East does not make terrorism 'correct' or 'beneficial'.
Our right wing base here in the US at most comprises a maximum of 40 percent of our population. So there is no reason why it should be more prevalent except that it uses greed, selfishness, whipped up anger and fanaticism and ideological 'outing' as ways to 'entertain' a deeply ignorant, doctrinaire base of poorly educated, bigoted,d mostly marginalized and resentful males who listen to such drivel while they drive to and from work.
We used to operate under the Fairness Doctrine during the heyday of our Demcracy after World War II. If it was considered proper then, why is it not considered proper now? All it would do is make Rush Limbaugh on the right,or Michael Moore on the left, have to answer opposing views that would be required to be aired when they put out a partisan political message that influences a large number of people.
The right doesn't want such accountability. They slander from a basis of impunity, posing as 'fair' to ignoramuses and the poorly educated audiences in the media markets. The lies and half truths that have 'elected' several presidents using smear and distortion of fact have gotten their traction from just such an absence of any requirement to air both sides of issues. The Republicans have made a tool of their LACK of accountability by purveyors of what is essentially partisan propaganda posing as 'objective'.
That is why the right vehemently opposes re-establishment of the Fairness Doctrine. Their lack of candor cannot withstand the light of day and they know it. A return to balance in presentation of views is certainly not unreasonable, seeing that it once held sway and our Democracy was the better for the population being exposed to all sides of the issues. If it was good enough for people of my Daddy's generation, why isn't it good enough for mine?
