Op-Ed
Fairness Isn’t Free
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'Twas about a year ago that I found, buried within my inbox, an e-mail inviting me to meet my congressman — so to speak.
His name? Maurice D. Hinchey. His game? Representing the 22nd Congressional District of the State of New York — including, for about nine months each year, every Cornell student who calls it home.
The honorable Mr. Hinchey was coming to campus to give a talk and he wanted me and you and everyone else to be there.
Realizing that the representative-in-question was our de facto voice in the House — for two out of four seasons, give or take — I decided to do my homework, to find out more about the self-described “progressive Democrat” whose district is known nationwide for its institutions of higher learning.
I didn’t have to look too far before more than one furrow etched its way across my brow.
While wondering aloud as to why U.S. forces in Afghanistan failed to capture Osama Bin Laden in the weeks immediately following 9/11, Congressman Hinchey had said some very interesting things about President Bush and Co. a few days prior — and, luckily for me, the folks at the Mid-Hudson News Network had not been shy about writing all of those very interesting things down.
“[T]hey didn’t want to capture Bin Laden,” Hinchey had mused of the current administration, “because if they captured Bin Laden and wiped out the Taliban, which they could have done at that moment, there would have been no justification for going to war in Iraq, and they wanted to use that as a justification for attacking Iraq.”
After lifting my jaw off the keyboard, I wrote a note to some friends from the Cornell Democrats.
“Think President Bush didn’t do enough to capture Bin Laden? Fine. Say that. That is a perfectly debatable issue — and one that John Kerry dogged his opponent with during the 2004 election,” my letter read. “But claiming that Bush ‘didn't want to capture Bin Laden’ falls into a very different category, and it is not something that I want any man or woman who represents me to say without irrefutable proof.”
To accuse a fellow American of intentionally allowing the world’s top terrorist to run free is — plainly and simply — to accuse him or her of nothing less than the highest form of treason imaginable. And that was precisely the accusation Mr. Hinchey had hurled at Mr. Bush.
Needless to say, I did not approve, either of the statement or the man who made it.
Unfortunately, recent news from Capitol Hill has given me even less reason to approve of the latter.
The same politician whose speech I ended up skipping last February is back in the headlines; this time, however, his actions threaten to damage more than just his own credibility.
Together with Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich, fellow New York Representative Louise Slaughter and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, our very own Representative Hinchey is currently pushing Congress to pass his Media Ownership Reform Act, or MORA.
This, it turns out, has the potential to become one of the more abhorrent acronyms the country has seen in a while.
Why?
The first big goal of MORA, according to Hinchey’s website, is “to restore integrity and diversity to America's media system by lowering the number of media outlets that one company is permitted to own in a single market.” That in itself is eminently questionable. But it is particularly after hearing the second big goal of the bill that my blood begins to run a little cooler than normal.
MORA, Hinchey’s website continues, “also reinstates the Fairness Doctrine to protect fairness and accuracy in journalism.”
Care to elaborate, Congressman?
“A diverse American media that presents a wide array of ideas from all sides of the political spectrum is essential to the maintenance of our democracy,” Hinchey asserts.
The catch, of course, is that in order to create a fair media, our government must disregard and even undermine that most American of ideals: the free media.
To be sure, the Fairness Doctrine is nothing new. Originally rearing its head in 1949, the Federal Communications Commission would enforce the doctrine for almost four decades until, in August of 1987, First Amendment concerns and other worries led the FCC to drop it entirely. It had arisen, Val Limburg writes for the Museum of Broadcast Communications, as a way to ensure that broadcasters “did not use their stations simply as advocates with a singular perspective,” and as a means to force them to “allow all points of view.”
Speaking to alternative news website The Raw Story, a Hinchey staffer touched on what was both a big problem back in 1949 and, if MORA goes forward, what will still be a big problem in 2007: “There is no way to have an exact science” in determining what is fair broadcasting and what isn’t. Ed Murrow and Fred Friendly (who would later be played in the movie Good Night, and Good Luck by David Strathairn and George Clooney, respectively) are just two of many examples of newsmen who would become keenly aware of this when trying to combat McCarthyism and its namesake in the 1950s; Friendly would eventually play a vital role both as author and activist in bringing about the death of the original Fairness Doctrine during the final years of the Reagan era.
Whether well-intentioned or not, Congressman Hinchey is proving himself to be as irresponsible a legislator as he is a speaker. There is simply no excuse for the government to meddle with the media in the manner that he and his allies see fit. In the Fourth Estate, the fairest system is the freest system.
Anything else, and I may just have to yell treason.
The concept of “free
The concept of “free media” in this context is a canard being pushed by mass media corporations to continue filling airtime with the message du jour as paid for by the highest bidder (advertisers). Mr. Combs is simply advocating protecting corporations that have no responsibility to the constitutional concept of free speech.
Go ahead and call for a reduction in regulation on corporate-owned media, but don’t willfully misrepresent the argument as against “free media” or freedom of speech. That is either humor or ignorance.
Does Mr. Combs honestly not understand that the Constitution does not apply to the corporate-owned media or is he expecting his readers are ignorant?
It seems to me that you are
It seems to me that you are masking yourself as a moderate, much like fox news does. Based on your facebook page, however, you seem to be a rightwinger and fox news supporter (you have just posted a fox news clip of Bill O'Reilly saying he makes a very good point). I'm not try to engage in ad hominem, but I question the objectivity and credibility of your article. Are you really arguing for the fairest system, or are you arguing for the system that YOU like the most?
Resembling Our Remarks
Why do I loathe politics and even more so politicians and yet more those who blindly shill for them?
Examine our relationships to the Democrat and Republican party(s), this abstract concept where people ascribe themselves some invisible and (truly) undefinable attribute that's somehow supposed to be representative.
Representative of what? Of whom?
You think the Democratic party is the party "of the people?". It's the party of the party. period. Republicans? The party of the bumbling fools. Both equally parties of hypocrisy and equal in corruption.
Why people still shill for career politicians is still a mystery to me. Of course it's been going on for a long time. It's exactly the same psycholigical foible that makes us laughing rabid for sports teams - pom poms waiving and all. Yet, the results of this game have far more serious ramifications; and never in history has politics been this intrusive and clearly desctructive to our world.
But the concern of the shrill? It's whether someone watches a particular newscast or what. Am I surrounded by idiots? Or am I the idiot for my minority wanting of the conversations to more on?
My genuine concern is that our Constitution, serving us quite well thus far especially in the context of world history, is constantly being questioned which is the most serious of all ideas of politics.
This deserves, I feel, more examination than what media figure does one admire. And not just that, but all the sand kicking and temper tantrums. The newspaper is now the Enquirer, displaying the real world soap opera, put on for our entertainment.
You think I'm kidding - exaggerating? Literally - look very closely (closer than you ever have in your life) at yourself in the mirror. Now think about what you see, think and say every day when it comes to politics. Mostly what's wrong with someone else isn't it? Now look hard and ask yourself seriously "Do I show up as many time resembling my own remarks".
If you're highly, politically charged, and you said no to that questions, you're a liar and a fool for lieing to your own self. If you are at least wondering if it could be so, go to Google News and just read the headlines. Now what do you think?
My political stance?
Please support the "Vote the Incumbents Out" movement. No exceptions - all incumbents must go.
Fairness Doctrine
The most extreme change has been in the immense volume of unanswered
conservative opinion heard on the airwaves, especially on talk radio.
Nationally, virtually all of the leading political talkshow hosts are
right-wingers: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Oliver
North, G. Gordon Liddy, Bill O’Reilly and Michael Reagan, to name just a
few. The same goes for local talkshows. One product of the post-Fairness
era is the conservative “Hot Talk” format, featuring one right-wing host
after another and little else.
When Edward Monks, a lawyer in Eugene, Oregon, studied the two
commercial talk stations in his town (Eugene Register-Guard, 6/30/02),
he found “80 hours per week, more than 4,000 hours per year, programmed
for Republican and conservative talk shows, without a single second
programmed for a Democratic or liberal perspective.” Observing that
Eugene (a generally progressive town) was “fairly representative,” Monks
concluded: “Political opinions expressed on talk radio are approaching
the level of uniformity that would normally be achieved only in a
totalitarian society. There is nothing fair, balanced or democratic
about it.”
Over-the-air broadcasting remains the most powerful force affecting
public opinion, especially on local issues; as public trustees,
broadcasters ought to be insuring that they inform the public, not
inflame them. That’s why we need a Fairness Doctrine. It’s not a
universal solution. It’s not a substitute for reform or for diversity of
ownership. It’s simply a mechanism to address the most extreme kinds of
broadcast abuse.
Radio and TV broadcasters, though, use these airwaves free of charge -
even though they make enormous profits from them. In return for this
favor, by law, broadcasters are supposed to serve the “public interest.”
One single corporation, Clear Channel, owns more than 1,200 radio
stations in the country, reaching over one-third of the U.S. population.
And ten companies control two-thirds of radio stations nationwide.
Radio is the medium closest to the people.
Corporations – Media or otherwise – have no First Amendment rights, the
airwaves belong to the public, which licenses them to broadcasters, and
that the public needs and deserves a diversity of opinions on its
airwaves.
Ian Gallagher