Tag: Fairness Doctrine

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Politics

Instead of a Fairness Doctine, a Fair Shake

[digg-reddit-me]Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m no fan of the Fairness Doctrine. (See this, this, and this.)

I believe – as do many other liberals whom I respect from Bill Moyers to Lawrence Lessig – that in a media environment such as we have today with blogs, Twitter, cable TV, the network news, talk radio, books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, online communities, Facebook, and the other half-dozen types of media, it does not make sense for to have a law impinging on free speech as much as the Fairness Doctrine did.

But I do think it is worthwhile – as a society – to stand for fairness, including in the coverage of controversial matters in the media. We don’t need government regulation to express our own opinion and to direct our behavior as a consumer. Rather than seeking to boycott Glenn Beck because he says something outrageous, we should demand that he include alternate points of view in his show and threaten to boycott him if he does not comply with this. Rather than attacking Keith Olbermann for his rants, we should demand that he give over some minutes to a conservative and have a real debate – without using the O’Reillian trick of cutting off his opponent’s mic.

The fact is – as this Bill Moyers piece catalogues, there is a real cost to our society that comes from the one-sided extremism that dominates so much of our media. Coupled with this, we have less and less contact with people of other opinions, as Americans are increasingly clustering geographically by political views. This creates and encourages the cycle of hatred and eventually violence that we can see operating in various extremists groups around the world; it creates a dynamic of escalating moral outrage.

The government should not be the solution to all of our problems. And this is not a matter of essential security. It is about the type of society that we are, whether or not we will be a well-informed citizenry. I’m still thinking on the issue – but I would think a set of basic standards would be helpful – that can be equally applied to the right and left – with gradually escalating steps of opposition to those who refuse to honor them.

In the end, if the principles were articulated clearly, and it was not used for merely partisan ends, I could see such an initiative affecting the national debate. The fine line that would need to be drawn would be between allowing commentators to address controversial issues while giving their opinion – and determining how the other side could be treated fairly. In the end, no matter what standards were suggested, it would have to be a matter of judgment rather than of formula.

[Image by Rich Lewis licensed under Creative Commons.]

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Barack Obama Criticism Domestic issues Politics The Opinionsphere The Web and Technology

Don’t Be Idiots: Stop Talking About the Fairness Doctrine

[digg-reddit-me]

I didn’t think the Democrats were stupid enough to start talking about reimposing the Fairness Doctrine. But I was wrong.

For those not up-to-date with the Fairness Doctrine controversy, it goes back to the late 1960s when the FCC began to push radio and television stations to air material about controversial matters including some consideration for both sides of the issue. ((The Fairness Doctrine was actually created earlier, but it was not incorporated into FCC guidelines until the late 1960s.)) The justification for this government interference was that with a very limited amount of media channels available, and with the airwaves owned by the public and merely licensed to the media companies profiting from them, this was a reasonable request and a necessary one in order to encourage an informed citizenry. By the late 1960s, the powerful corporate forces in the right-wing movement had begun to bankroll a conservative movement at this point – giving enormous amounts of money to create advocacy groups, think tanks, magazines, and other means of pushing conservative messages. One of their goals was to eliminate the Fairness Doctrine – and in 1987 they succeeded. At right about this time with no more obligation to be fair or present both sides of controversial issues, right-wing talk radio took off. Simon Rosenberg publicized this sequence of events – and Steve Rendall at Commons Dreams gives an overview of the liberal take on this history which is worth a read. Since then, conservative talk radio has mobilized the conservative movement – and perpetuated quite a few lies and distrortions. 

In this context, you can see why some Democrats want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.  After all, if Steve Marlsburg, nemises of this blog, can use the public airwaves to talk for two hours about how Barack Obama is evil and no good people can support him and go on and on supporting this with one lie after another distortion, wouldn’t everyone benefit from a bit of the other side getting a word in edgewise? And if a handful of media titans control almost all of the media, the concentration of power in their hands ensures that opinions they agree with are aired – and oftentimes, that opinions they disagree strongly with are not aired. 

In this context, Bill Clinton mused about reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on a liberal radio show; Democratic Senator Stanbow wants hearings on something like a Fairness Standard; Senator Tom Harken was quoted on another liberal talk radio show saying, “We gotta get the Fairness Doctrine back in law again;” and a number of other Senators and Congressman have similarly suggested something be done to restore “fairness” to the radio. ((It’s worth noting that all of these more recent comments were made by politicians on liberal talk radio – and only after being prompted by their hosts.)) Barack Obama though made it clear during his campaign that he did not support this – and reiterated his opposition again after he took office.

And with good reason: reimposing the Fairness Doctrine might sound like a decent idea given the above history. But there are some major reasons not to:

  1. It won’t accomplish much. Cable and broadcast television shows already give alternative views on controversial issues. They might present one side much better than the other (think Hannity and Colmes) but they give the other side a platform as well. Listeners to conservative talk radio today choose to listen to right-wing nutjobs who don’t try to balance their opinion with facts over more serious sources of news. They have other options if they want them.
  2. It would endanger the important goal of net neutrality. Conservatives are already calling net neutrality a “Fairness Doctrine for the internet.” This is a ridiculous claim – but it will gain some credence if those who support net neutrality also support the Fairness Doctrine. The right continues to push this meme [pdf] and has been having some success in polarizing the support for net neutrality, picking off those right-wingers who are most gullible. As I wrote earlier about this campaign to link these two very different policy ideas: 

    3. [T]his propaganda campaign [to link net neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine] does not seem directed to the public at large, but at conservative activists. The Fairness Doctrine is not something that gets the blood of the average American boiling. But it does evoke a Pavlovian response among conservative activists and right-wing radio listeners. And although these groups are not large enough to force their way, they are large enough to derail the political conversation and make it harder to enact this obvious policy.

  3. It would also endanger other goals such as breaking up media monopolies. In terms of other issues, Rush Limbaugh in his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed began to lump in rules about “local content” and “diversity of ownership” as the Fairness Doctrine by other means. Rush Limbaugh here is clearly carrying water for Clear Channel Communications who recently gave him a $400 million contract and who would be threatened by rules regarding local content and diversity of ownership as they already own such a large portion of America’s radio stations. Byron York followed Limbaugh’s lead repeating the same talking points in a recent column.
  4. It will provoke a backlash. Right now, aside from the musings of a few prominent liberals and impassioned editorials from liberal talk radio hosts themselves, there is no serious effort to push this idea forward. Liberal ideas are out there – on newspaper editorial pages, on political opinion shows, and most of all on the web. The people most excited by the revival of the Fairness Doctrine are the conservative talk radio hosts and the right-wing movement they lead. I follow this matter closely – reading most articles published on it – and almost every article I read is from some conservative publication or blog hyping the threat to free speech and all that is good and holy that is the Fairness Doctrine. Which is why the Heritage Foundation has this piece of trash written by Rory Cooper insisting that the White House is “rushing” to the Fairness Doctrine – despite the aforementioned opposition by the White House. (A propaganda outlet such as Heritage has not patience for such “subtlties” as facts.) Which is why Senator Inhofe is promoting the view that the Fairness Doctrine as yet another assault on the Christians. Which is why Bryon York recently penned a column linking the Fairness Doctrine to breaking up media monopolies as assaults on “media freedom.” Which is why the World News Daily has distorted Senator Sherrod Brown’s comments to claim he supports the Fairness Doctrine. Which is why Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the talking heads can’t shut up about it. This is a fight the right wants – and for good reason. It plays into the liberal stereotypes conservatives promote – especially the idea of a nanny-state attempt to control free speech. It makes the right look important; it makes the Democrats look petty; if the right loses, they will be able to claim the mantle of victimhood that conservatives seem to relish as much as any other group. 
Categories
Criticism Domestic issues The Opinionsphere

Don (George) Will Tilts At Imaginary Liberals

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”

“What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.

“Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.”

“Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. “Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone.”

George Will – my favorite columnist – had a stunningly wrong-headed column this weekend on the Fairness Doctrine. I certainly would expect him to dislike the long-vanquished doctrine.

What I wouldn’t expect was for Will to write an entire column to refute a straw man argument used merely to bash liberals. Will constantly invokes what liberals want to do regarding this – but cites not a single one in his piece. In fact, Marin Cogan of The New Republic was unable to find any congressperson pushing legislation to this effect or any liberal policy wonks promoting a return to the Fairness Doctrine.

Will though manages to be an expert on what these anonymous liberals think:

And these worrywarts say the proliferation of radio, cable, satellite broadcasting and Internet choices allows people to choose their own universe of commentary, which takes us far from the good old days when everyone had the communitarian delight of gathering around the cozy campfire of the NBC-ABC-CBS oligopoly. Being a liberal is exhausting when you must simultaneously argue for illiberal policies on the basis of dangerous scarcity and menacing abundance.

If reactionary liberals, unsatisfied with dominating the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood, were competitive on talk radio, they would be uninterested in reviving the fairness doctrine. Having so sullied liberalism’s name that they have taken to calling themselves progressives, liberals are now ruining the reputation of reactionaries, which really is unfair.

Next up would be George Will’s column on how Net Neutrality would be like a Fairness Doctrine for the internet.

Matt Yglesias summed up this Fairness Doctrine controversy best a few weeks ago:

Political movements mischaracterize the other side’s general goals all the time. But I’ve never heard of anything like the current conservative mania for blocking a particular legislative provision that nobody is trying to enact.

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Barack Obama Domestic issues Politics The Opinionsphere

The Manufactured Fairness Doctrine Controversy

Yglesias on the manufactured Fairness Doctrine controversy:

It’s very strange. Political movements mischaracterize the other side’s general goals all the time. But I’ve never heard of anything like the current conservative mania for blocking a particular legislative provision that nobody is trying to enact.

Part of this blog’s continuing coverage of the manufactured Fairness Doctrine controversy, especially as related to net neutrality:

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Barack Obama Domestic issues Politics The Opinionsphere The Web and Technology

Bringing Back the Fairness Doctrine

Marin Cogan in an investigative piece in The New Republic has trouble finding any media-reform liberals or Democrats who are actually want to bring the Fairness Doctrine back or are trying to do so.

As Kevin Drum points out at The Washington Monthly:

Given the collapse of the Republican Party’s electoral fortunes, folks like Limbaugh and Michael Gerson have to create a rallying cry, and there’s no better way to whip up the Republican base than to make far-right activists feel like victims. “Liberals are coming to take away your talk radio!” is, obviously, pretty effective.

At the same time, a conservative effort is underway to label legislation protecting net neutrality (which prevents the internet from being structured to favor certain sites over others and was one of the founding principles of the internet) a “Fairness Doctrine for the Internet,” which may be the only chance the big corporations who oppose net neutrality have to stop it – as Adam Reilly of The Boston Phoenix pointed out, citing me.

It seems the Fairness Doctrine is one of the key components conservatives will be using to keep their partisan backs up in the coming lean years – as well as being a potential fundraising tool.

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Domestic issues Politics The Opinionsphere

Adam Reilly Argues Against the Fairness Doctine

[digg-reddit-me]This blog has a new favorite newspaper – the alternative weekly Boston Phoenix which I actually used to read while I went to college in Massachusetts.

Adam Reilly, media critic for the paper, recently fashioned an argument against the Fairness Doctrine – including the specter of it being used against Net Neutrality:

Regarding Net Neutrality, McDowell asked, “Will Web sites — will bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views, rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?”

This is a stupid question. The Fairness Doctrine involved government mandating, in certain cases, that specific content be added to a particular media entity. In contrast, Net Neutrality doesn’t involve intrusion into content; it only dictates absolute freedom of (virtual) movement. It’s the opposite of what McDowell seems to think.

But as Joe Campbell, author of the blog 2parse.com, recently noted in a post linking Thierer’s paper and McDowell’s remarks, this is about tactics, not logic. If conservative Net Neutrality supporters come to see it as the Fairness Doctrine 2.0 — something that’s more easily done if the Fairness Doctrine is already on everyone’s brain, as it is today — they might rethink their support. Given Democratic gains in Congress and Obama’s support for Net Neutrality, Campbell argues, “This is the big corporations’ only chance to squash Net Neutrality.”

Now that’s a scary prospect. The Web is the future of news media. (It’s also a battleground where, at the moment, Democrats are totally dominating Republicans.) Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine is a dubious proposition, period. But if doing so could jeopardize the success of Net Neutrality, it’s downright reckless.

Continue reading “Adam Reilly Argues Against the Fairness Doctine”
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Domestic issues Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics The Media The Web and Technology

‘The Fairness Doctrine for the Internet’ is a Conservative Strawman


[FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell at a Tech Policy Summit. Picture by TechPolicySummit used under a Creative Commons license.]

[digg-reddit-me]With some new information, I’m adding to the timeline I created to demonstrate the significance of FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell’s comments on net neutrality (which is also a useful link to check out if you’re unfamiliar with the Fairness Doctrine) a few days ago.

The situation:

The Politics:

Obama is in favor of net neutrality.

McCain thinks it’s all confusing ((His exact quote is: “I go back and forth on the issue.)) and claims he doesn’t know what his position is (though he has made definitive statements opposing it.)

The Democrats are generally in favor of net neutrality.

It has not been a big issue for Republicans, but a few have come out against it (see Ted Stevens.)  The conservative base hates the Fairness Doctrine though with a passion.

Since the idea occured to them: Big internet companies want to charge more for customers to access certain internet sites, or to allow certain sites to have priority and to slow down others, and in general to assert control over internet content.

October 2007: The Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank funded by companies opposed to net neutrality, publishes a report explaining that a good way to attack net neutrality is to call it “The Fairness Doctrine for the Internet (PDF).”

Spring 2008: Internet providers begin experiments with tiered pricing and other anti-net-neutrality practices.

After McCain secures Republican nomination: He begins to rake in large sums of money from AT&T, the US Telecom Association, Verizon, and other companies opposing net neutrality.

June 2008: A Republican Congressmen introduces a bill to outlaw the Fairness Doctrine (which has been illegal since the 1980s).

Later in June 2008: A conservative reporter publishes a story which alleges that Nancy Pelosi is considering reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

August 12, 2008: FCC Commissioner, Robert McDowell, says that net neutrality could lead to the regulation of political speech on the internet, as if it’s the Fairness Doctrine for the internet.

The Drudge Report publicizes the speech with the scare headline:

FCC Commissioner: Return of 'Fairness Doctrine' Could Control Web Content...

Now: Conservative talk radio hosts are talking about how net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine for the internet. (I heard Steve Marlsburg, a bete noir of this blog, who is so old he probably still calls the internet the world wide web ranting on this subject on his show yesterday.) Conservative bloggers are jumping on the bandwagon.

Next week, McCain plans on releasing the details of his Technology Policy which is reported to be “market-oriented.”

Then for my pessimistic speculation…

These conservatives begin to raise the issue in attacks on Obama, liberals, etcetera. Progressives and liberals defend net neutrality.

And then: Independent-minded people and journalists who haven’t been paying attention to this issue finally notice now that conflicts are arising.  Journalists cover the issue giving “both sides” and independents throw up their hands, unable to pick a side.

And: Conservatives mount a campaign attacking Democrats.  Even those conservatives who support net neutrality are silent because they’re happy for any issue on which they can hit Democrats and which they can use to fund raise.

Finally, January 2009: After the election, Democrats attempt to pass net neutrality legislation.  A grass-roots structure has been created to oppose them, and many Republicans have publicly committed to oppose it.  An obvious policy choice that should have bipartisan support becomes a struggle to enact.

(On a hopeful note, I think this is a fight the Democrats and supporters of the internet can win.)

This is how public opinion is manipulated.  This is how our political system is corrupted as the obvious and clear policy is shrouded in spin and the consensus is replaced by deliberate polarization.

…

Matt Stoller of OpenLeft is more sanguine about the effects of this campaign to tar net neutrality:

Now, the question is not substantive, it’s whether this campaign will work to persuade people that up is down, that black is white. I don’t think it will.

But what I think Stoller is missing is that this propaganda campaign does not seem directed to the public at large, but at conservative activists.  The Fairness Doctrine is not something that gets the blood of the average American boiling.  But it does evoke a Pavlovian response among conservative activists and right-wing radio listeners.

And although these groups are not large enough to force their way, they are large enough to derail the political conversation and make it harder to enact this obvious policy. Even if some do realize they are being manipulated, many are willing to go along with the party-line and take the necessary positions to gain power.

All of which points to one thing: without Barack Obama as president, net neutrality may not have the necessary support.

Categories
Domestic issues Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics The Opinionsphere The Web and Technology

The Battle Over Whether Net Neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine for the Internet


[FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell at a Tech Policy Summit. Picture by TechPolicySummit used under a Creative Commons license.]

[digg-reddit-me]Yesterday marked the opening of the political battle over net neutrality.

To this date, all the talk of “serieses of tubes” and the sporadic and localized attempts to create a tiered internet have been mere skirmishes.

But yesterday, Robert McDowell, an FCC Commissioner, attempted to push net neutrality into the political fray during an election season – and unleashed the first coherent attack on net neutrality.  To date, the arguments of opponents of net neutrality have focused on two fronts: pure incoherence (see Ted Stevens) and scapegoating “pirates.”  ((AAAAAARGH!))

McDowell attempted to attack net neutrality (which has not been an especially polarizing or partisan issue to date) in a way that was both clever and dishonest – by linking net neutrality to the Fairness Doctrine reviled by conservatives.

(Because I feel there is a lot to explore with this topic, I’ve divided it up into three section – a synopsis of the situation/timeline; a more in-depth explanation; and an explanation of why it is so dishonest to equate the Fairness Doctrine and Net Neutrality.)

The situation:

The Politics:

Obama is in favor of net neutrality.

McCain thinks it’s all confusing ((His exact quote is: “I go back and forth on the issue.)) and claims he doesn’t know what his position is (though he has made definitive statements opposing it.)

The Democrats are generally in favor of net neutrality.

It has not been a big issue for Republicans, but a few have come out against it (see Ted Stevens.)  The conservative base hates the Fairness Doctrine though with a passion.

Since the idea occured to them: Big internet companies want to charge more for customers to access certain internet sites, or to allow certain sites to have priority and to slow down others.

October 2007: The Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank funded by companies opposed to net neutrality, publishes a report explaining that a good way to attack net neutrality is to call it “The Fairness Doctrine for the Internet.”

Spring 2008: Internet providers begin experiments with tiered pricing and other anti-net-neutrality practices.

June 2008: A Republican Congressmen introduces a bill to outlaw the Fairness Doctrine (which has been illegal since the 1980s).

Later in June 2008: A conservative reporter publishes a story which alleges that Nancy Pelosi is considering reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

August 12, 2008: An FCC Commissioner says that net neutrality could lead to the regulation of political speech on the internet, as if it’s the Fairness Doctrine for the internet.

The Drudge Report publicizes the speech with the scare headline:

FCC Commissioner: Return of 'Fairness Doctrine' Could Control Web Content...

Next: Conservative talk radio hosts begin talking about how net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine for the internet.  Conservative bloggers agree and publicize this as well.

Then: These conservatives begin to raise the issue in attacks on Obama, liberals, etcetera. Progressives and liberals defend net neutrality.

And then: Independent-minded people and journalists who haven’t been paying attention to this issue finally notice now that conflicts are arising.  Journalists cover the issue giving “both sides” and independents throw up their hands, unable to pick a side.

And: Conservatives mount a campaign attacking Democrats.  Even those conservatives who support net neutrality are silent because they’re happy for any issue on which they can hit Democrats and which they can use to fundraise.

Finally, January 2009: After the election, Democrats attempt to pass net neutrality legislation.  A grass-roots structure has been created to oppose them, and many Republicans have publicly committed to oppose it.  An obvious policy choice becomes a struggle to enact.

This is how public opinion is manipulated.  This is how our political system is corrupted as the obvious and clear policy is shrouded in spin and the consensus is replaced by deliberate polarization.

The backstory

The Fairness Doctrine (which required companies that licensed public airwaves “to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner deemed by the FCC to be honest, equitable, and balanced”) had been considered a key impediment to a conservative agenda after many conservatives came to believe that that the media played a key role in their eventual defeat as they fought against the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s and anti-war movement in the late 1960s. They believed that the media was essentially liberal and that the battling liberal and conservative opinions that were forced onto the airwaves because of the Fairness Doctrine merely ended up legitimizing the inherent liberal bias of the news itself rather than effectively getting across conservative viewpoints. After legal challenges beginning in the late 1960s, the Fairness Doctrine was finally abolished in 1984.  This led directly to the right-wing talk radio boom in the late 1980s – from Rush Limbaugh to Bill O’Reilly to Sean Hannity.  This talk radio boom was an essential part of the creation of the right-wing echo chamber and conservative successes that followed, beginning with the 1994 Gingrich revolution.  Without the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the launch of talk radio, even Newt Gingrich acknowledges that the Contract With America would not have been possible.

This history is not well known among liberals – but it is common knowledge among the millions of right-wing radio listeners.  And there are many such radio listeners.  Rush Limbaugh’s audience alone is estimated to number over 20 million a week (and his recent contract extension has him making $50 million a year until 2016).  After the 2004 election, many Democrats, trying to re-group and understand the Republican dominance of the ideological debate since the 1980s, saw the attacks on the Fairness Doctrine as an essential part of the Republican strategy take control of the political debate.  (Democrats John Kerry, John Edwards, Dick Durbin, and others have all made positive comments about the Fairness Doctrine, although none has declared explicit support for it’s return.)

This June, John Gizzi of Human Events magazine (which has been spouting conservative propaganda since 1944) reported that Nancy Pelosi was in favor of reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.  This revelation – though not picked up by the mainstream media – echoed through the conservative blogosphere and talk radio energizing a dispirited conservative movement.

Putting aside policy considerations, the Fairness Doctrine is as anathema to conservatives as the tiered internet is to the web-savvy.  They see it as a threat to their power, to free speech, and as an attempt to marginalize them and their politics.

Which is why McDowell’s comments today are so savvy.  By equating the Fairness Doctrine with net neutrality, he is attempting to polarize the public away from a consensus in favor of net neutrality into two competing camps. This is not all McDowell’s genius idea.  The Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF) published a paper in October 2007 laying out this exact argument titled Net Neutrality: A Fairness Doctrine for the Internet (PDF).  The PFF of course is an “independent-minded” organization and think tank bankrolled by Comcast, AT&T, Clear Channel, Time Warner, and Microsoft among other enormous companies that stand to profit from opposing both the Fairness Doctrine and net neutrality.

What struck me when reading McDowell’s description of net neutrality as a kind of Fairness Doctrine for the internet was how off the comparison was – and I knew immediately that it was either the result of idiocy similar to Ted Stevens’s tubes or a deliberate attempt to mislead the public about net neutrality.  After finding this white paper above and tracing the history of how the Fairness Doctrine suddenly and conveniently became a political issue in this electoral cycle – it seems clear that this is part of a Republican attempt to energize their base in opposition to net neutrality and find an issue on which to attack the Democrats come November and most important, to boost fund raising among those companies that oppose net neutrality in the meantime.

Which is why I say: The battle over net neutrality has been joined.

The forces that oppose net neutrality are now attempting to break up the bipartisan coalition that has supported efforts to legislate net neutrality. They are finally advancing serious (if dishonest) arguments against it.  With the Democrats likely to expand their majority in Congress and the frontrunner for the presidency a Democrat who has been a vocal advocate of net neutrality, this is the big corporations’ only chance to push net neutrality through.

If you’re wondering about McCain’s position on net neutrality, he’s not sure.  He told Brian Lehrer of WNYC that he “goes back and forth on the issue” – although conservative sites have reported that he flat-out opposes it.  Of course, McCain still doesn’t know how to “get online by [himself].” Given John McCain’s recent history of giving up principled positions in order to win over the right-wing, I think it’s a safe bet that a President McCain would finally figure out his position on the issue of net neutrality to the detriment of all internet users.

Why Net Neutrality is Very Different from the Fairness Doctrine

While the Fairness Doctrine forced broadcasters using the public airwaves to include dissenting opinions when discussing controversial issues, net neutrality prohibits internet service providers from discriminating based on content.  It’s comparing bananas to strawberries.  Both involve government regulation.  Both involve content.  Both involve media.  One forces the media to add content they would not otherwise.  The other prohibits those delivering the content to discriminate and favor some content over others.

This inherent openness is widely described as the core strength of the internet.  It allows dissenting voices to be heard.  It allows a more free market to emerge.  It is one of the essential characteristics of the architecture of the internet.

The Fairness Doctrine, despite a vogue among certain Democrats who have flirted coyly with the idea recently, seems outdated in this world with far greater media options.  It was designed for a world in which the national media was dominated by three television stations and dissenting opinions could be quashed merely by ignoring them.  Lawrence Lessig, a great proponent of net neutrality, has said that in today’s media environment, he believes that the Fairness Doctrine is unconstitutional. Barack Obama, another liberal and a strong supporter of net neutrality, has also indicated he is opposed to reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine.

Net neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine are entirely seperate and distinct.  The Republican efforts to confuse the public on this issue have begun.  Stay on the lookout – for you can bet this isn’t the end of this campaign.