The Democrats drive for the 'fairness doctrine'

Talk radio has become big business, and taking on major broadcasting companies is not something Democrats – or any politicians – are all that eager to do.

Among Democratic presidential candidates, only Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio regularly talks about the issue – when he is asked about it on the road. I surveyed the leading contenders on the topic, and got only silence as a response.

But some senior House Democrats are interested, I am told, and Kucinich himself is planning to hold hearings on the question of whether the broadcasters are properly fulfilling their public service obligations under federal communications law.

On the Senate side, Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has quietly been urging the party leadership to take up the same question.

A misuse of public airwaves?
The Democrats are moving carefully in public, but in private they fret at their lack of clout – and at what they see as a misuse of the public airwaves.  Limbaugh’s rebuttal is simple: that Democrats and liberals just can’t make the sale in the marketplace.

As for the new efforts to review broadcast rules, “I don’t think it’s ever going to succeed,” Limbaugh told his listeners this week. But that didn’t keep him from sounding an alarm. The Democrats are pursuing a “pure Stalinist tactic,” he declared, “to silence or shut people like me up.”

There’s little chance of that.

The Democrats just want to sound some alarms themselves. Former talk show host Al Franken, now running for the U.S. Senate in his home state of Minnesota, has his own suggestion for reform.

“You shouldn’t be able to lie on the air,” he told me. “You can’t utter obscenities in a broadcast, so why should you be able to lie? You should be fined for lying.”

Federal fines for lying on the air? As a way to fill the federal treasury, it makes perfect sense.   

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