You Couldn't Have a FOX News under the Fairness Doctrine

My own:

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: “This devolution of the American Press began in 1988, when Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine. We had a rule in this country that was passed in 1928 at the dawn of commercial radio… and that rule said that the airwaves belong to the public. The broadcasts can be licensed to use them, but only with the proviso that they use them to promote the public interest and to advance American democracy.”

“There were three requirements under the Fairness Doctrine — number one; they had to air issues of public import. That’s why there’s a 6 o’clock news hour on the networks. Not because they wanted it — they wanted entertainment put in that slot. The news departments traditionally were money losers. So, they were forced to do that as part of the Fairness Doctrine, and that’s why the radio stations periodically update you on the news, as part of the original requirement under the Fairness Doctrine that they’re still doing as a tradition.”

“Number two; if they were going to give ‘opinion,’ they had to tell both sides. You couldn’t have had a FOX News under the Fairness Doctrine. You couldn’t have had a Rush Limbaugh. You could have had Rush 4 hours a day, but then they would have had to put somebody else on, a counter-availing voice, for the next 4 hours. You couldn’t have Rush and his dittoheads 24 hours a day on the same station. Rush Limbaugh got started in 1988, the year that Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine.”

“Number three; they had to avoid corporate consolidation. Congress wanted to make sure that people in Kansas could get crop reports, that people in North Dakota could get tornado warnings, that people in the South could get country music, that you wouldn’t have programming and content dictated by a couple of corporate epicenters in remote areas of the country… and that part of the Fairness Doctrine, incidentally, strengthened in 1945, FORTIFIED, BECAUSE THEY SAW (the Congress saw) WHAT HITLER HAD DONE IN EUROPE, and other fascist governments had done, where they had allowed these corporate consolidations, and they had given these contracts and special favors to the media, and they had co-opted the media and got them on their side. And so anyone who criticized them was either muzzled or was branded as unpatriotic. And they said (in 1945) that we can’t let this happen in our country, so they strengthened that part of the Fairness Doctrine.”

To see the rest, watch Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., “How the News Media Fails Us,” on brasschecktv or YouTube

I know! The W stands for Widowmaker!

By Jack Damage [who has every right to fly his flag sticker upside-down on Memorial Day, or any other day.-ed.]:

No, I disagree, it is not a harsh headline, it is an accurate headline ["DEAD TROOPS REMEMBERED BY PRESIDENT WHO HAD THEM KILLED"-ed.]… Mr. Geiger’s leadin paragraph exemplifies why I can’t even pretend to care about memorial day these days. Yea, I have my personal moments during the day when I contemplate what it all means to be a veteran of this nations armed forces.. I look at my uniform in the closet under plastic with the ribbons displayed and ponder eternity and where all the dead are and whether or not they are resting in peace and so on… But I won’t go to any parades or any ‘officially sanctioned’ services/celebrations in honor of the vets who have fallen specifically for the same reasons cited by Mr. Geiger as to what sickens him about the last seven years… To hear that pussy mouth platitudes to and about people, events and principles he has zero idea about is enough to make me vomit as well as the writer…

One of these days when this pox called Bush is gone from the scene I believe I’ll be able to be fully proud of being an American once again, depending on who gets the WH this coming fall. Proud to go to patriotic parades in honor of the millions of brave Americans who gave their lives in service to this country over the last 232 or so years. And proud to be associated with all that thru my own service some 25 plus years ago…. That wasn’t this memorial day, nor any of the last seven years memorial days past…. I look forward to a time I can be completely proud of my nation again, not fringe aspects of it. Truly proud and not chagrined of my personal service to it. I long for that…

When that time comes, I’ll be ready to go to parades again and what not, and I’ll take a little flag stickon in my residence and shift it from the position denoting our nation in distress which it has been postioned in since 2000 and return it to its normal representation… These days and that sense of pride in it all will happen only when Bush is gone… That he, thru his actions and words, have stolen this sense of pride in my nation and my armed forces service to it as well as sullying the nations world image itself, is just another reason why I’d like to personally kick the shit out of that sonofabitch… Delete if you must site monitor, but don’t contrue what I just said as a desire to end his miserable life… No, I just want smack the smirk off his face once and for all… Just killing him outright would be letting the bastard off too easily for what he’s done to all of us. I weep for my country under the control of this pathetic excuse for a man…..JD