Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [127]
In other words, talk radio is the ideal medium for simpleminded bull-shit, at which the paranoid right excels and pedantic liberals seem unable to master.
So all we have to do is reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, right? Conservative radio stations and Fox News will be forced to diversify or go bankrupt, and maybe Glenn Beck’s head will explode when his paranoid fantasy comes true. Hooray, America is saved.
But it’s not going to happen. First, the Democrats lack the votes in the face of stiff resistance to pass a bill that would require the FCC to reinstate it, and President Obama has twice indicated through spokes-people that he opposes reinstatement.14 Second, even if the doctrine were restored, this genie is out of the bottle. A new fairness doctrine would create burdens for talk radio and cable news stations; they might cut marginal conservative programs, but headliners like Limbaugh and Beck are far too profitable to drop. Most stations would simply introduce a few liberal programs and take the hit on their lower ratings.
In addition, the rationale for reinstating the Fairness Doctrine is flawed. The original doctrine was never designed to block extreme political speech. If it had, it would have been unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds. When the doctrine was written, electronic media was a limited resource, so the FCC sought to ensure that Americans would have access to opposing views on controversial issues. But today, with hundreds of cable channels and millions of news sites, blogs, and podcasts, as well as satellite radio and Internet radio, the nation is awash in opposing views on controversial issues. Heck, we’ve got opposing views on noncontroversial issues. Even the Flat Earth Society has a web page and a Twitter account. (One of its tweets: “I finally have a follower. Hello, little follower. 4:45 PM Jun 4th via TwitBird iPhone.”)15 And as broadband technologies improve, we will continue to receive more and more video and audio content over the Internet where the potential sources of information are for all intents and purposes limitless.
Thus, technology has demolished the Fairness Doctrine’s raison d’être. To argue that Americans lack access to a diversity of perspectives would be disingenuous. In short, we cannot look to the government to suppress right-wing persecution paranoia because despite what Glenn Beck says, even progressives believe in the First Amendment.
Boycott Beck
But there is another way to restrain the media fearmongers. The Constitution gives the citizenry power that the government lacks. As any good conservative will agree, the government can’t tell the people where to spend their money, and money, as they say, is power. We can use our freedom of choice in the marketplace to pressure the companies that offer platforms to the demagogues—media companies like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which owns Fox News, and radio conglomerates like Clear Channel, whose subsidiaries host Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage. Regardless of the political affiliations of their owners, these companies’ first allegiance is to the dollar, and effective advertising boycotts can at least push them to rein in the worst offenses of their right-wing stars.
After citizens launched a boycott against Beck’s show because of his comment that President Obama hated white people, he has generally avoided inflammatory race rhetoric. Fox News chairman Roger Ailes has also reportedly talked to Beck about his “negative tone.”16 According to one of the boycott’s promoters, The Glenn Beck Program lost over half its revenue during the first month of the boycott when sixty-two advertisers signed on. The number of boycotters soon grew to over two hundred in 2010.17 While the program has found replacements for lost sponsors, these have been lower-tier advertisers who are likely paying less than what Fox News used to charge for the spots. And in the UK, The Glenn Beck Program has