There is growing alarm among talk radio personalities and executives nationwide as the Obama administration embeds socialistic values into the American mainstream. Thanks to President Reagan, broadcasters have been free from the Orwellian Fairness Doctrine for over twenty years. The number of talk stations has grown from 125 to now over 2000 thanks to his great wisdom of repealing this doctrine which muzzled free speech. Radio and Television owners simply didn’t want to risk being turned into the FCC and potentially lose their broadcast license if they said something controversial. I worked for twenty years under this doctrine and we never broached major controversy – free thought and expression was tightly controlled over the airwaves. When Reagan dropped the restrictions, Rush Limbaugh and a multitude of other conservative hosts emerged and succeeded because there was so much pent up demand by those who felt their views negated by restrictions and by the overwhelming liberal media bias. Now, Democrats want to restore speech restrictions and it is simply covert censorship.
The FCC will soon have a 3-2 Democrat majority. It’s no secret that two of the Democrats serving on the FCC favor restoring balance to talk radio – in other words, they would move conservatives out and balance them with liberals. They call it balance and diversity, but whenever government regulates free speech, it is censorship. Whenever government proscribes a certain amount of speech, it is speech control. John Madison who helped craft the First Amendment would roll over in his grave.
This debate is one of the hottest topics on radio today and with the White House declaration of war on Rush Limbaugh there is almost a fever pitch in Washington by Democrats to take back the airwaves because they think conservatives dominate talk radio and Fox News. That’s true. But, we don’t dominate the rest of the media which includes hundreds of NPR stations, the liberal network Air America, dozens of cable news and public affairs channels, dozens of magazines, 1400 newspapers, and tens of thousands of Internet sites.
On any given day, Americans can get any point of view anywhere which makes the argument for control of American airwaves moot, at best. Yet, the debate is moving ahead and Democrats are carefully writing language for regulation of our broadcast media. It is personal for them. They want to control it all and they want to eliminate conservative views from the media.
I’ll be writing more about this in the days and weeks ahead and through my contacts in the media will soon be publishing a book entitled Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio from Simon & Schuster on May 5th. I hope to share key content with you and keep you posted on the fight for free speech under the new administration. In the meantime, look out for the speech terrorists. Check this out from the liberal censors on the left. It states bluntly what they want to do – muzzle the right. At least they get a gold star for their honesty.
The ongoing “War on Words” by the left in America is intensifying on many fronts. Stay tuned.