Smasharoo wrote:
Not necessarily. There's a world of difference between setting standards for age-appropriate content and determining whether a particular political viewpoint got its fair share of airtime this month on a given network. Imposing social norms in public forums isn't really equivalent to imposing a common political view.
False. Exactly equivalent.
No. They're not.
A closer analogy would be a regulation that required any channel showing pornography to give equal time to offsetting programing, Like say children's shows. With the definition of "pornography" and "children's shows" up to the regulators.
If such a regulation were imposed we would expect that this would have the effect of preventing any channel from airing any content that might be categorized as pornography, since it'll end up costing them more money than it's worth. For example, Playboy TV would be required to put 12 hours of children's shows on. Given that I doubt any parents would tune in to Playboy for their children's entertainment needs, that would be lost revenue and would effectively put them off the air.
That's much closer to an equivalent example (although I used the example of a cable channel in this case). It was specifically targeted at one type of programming and placed undue burden on it. In an open market, if one area is heavily regulated and one isn't, the non-regulated area will tend to thrive. In practice, what happened was that most stations simply didn't carry any sort of political commentary. It was easier to air other content. The result is that political speech was curtailed.
It may not technically be a violation of the first amendment, but it's a really really bad idea. Also, in the form that many Dems want to bring it back, it's targeted solely at radio. So not only do we get the normal problems associated with the doctrine in the first place, but it would be applied solely in the area in which conservative talk has the most presence and not in the area in which liberal talk does.
Fairness? Not really...
Quote:
The fact that you're ok with one and not another doesn't actually make then distinct.
No. The fact that they aren't at all similar does.
Quote:
It just makes you a hypocrite. Shocking, I know, given your normal rigid ethical consistency.
No. A hypocrite would be someone who supports regulation on one form of speech, but only those that he doesn't like, all while claiming to support free speech.
Are you seriously making your core counterargument that if I don't like the fairness doctrine, and don't want to eliminate the FCC entirely that I'm a hypocrite? It's a regulatory body Smash. It's perfectly valid for me to be ok with one method of regulation and not another, without needing to toss the entire thing out.
Are you saying that someone can't disagree with a speed limit law unless they want to eliminate all laws regulating driving entirely? Isn't that a bit of a stretch? I think so...
Edited, Aug 26th 2008 7:01pm by gbaji
