Conservatives Fear Any Revival Of The Fairness Doctrine

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan ended a principle known as the Fairness Doctrine which meant that any opinions presented over the public airwaves were subject to offering time to counter opinions. Since that time there has been a growth of right wing radio such as Rush Limbaugh that often presents half-truths, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods without any real counter opinions to set the record straight.

All of this has helped to spur calls to bring back the Fairness Docrine to give a fair opportunity to other sides of arguments to respond to some unfair and one-sided opinions that paint liberals, progressives and others in a unfair negative light with gross misrepresentations of their views or records if they are elected officials.


Today, HUMAN EVENTS is sending out Emails from Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.d, President of The Heritage Foundation claiming that any return to the Fairness Doctrine could bring about the death of conservative talk radio and comparing fairness in allowing any side to respond to censorship with a graphic. This is nonsense. Is any opinion is a good one, built on good facts, then it can withstand a factual challenge.

If some opinions can only stand on their own by eliminating opposing opinions, then it should be quickly assumed that these opinions were not all that good and sturdy to begin with. Any return of the Fairness Doctrine should be no threat to reasonable and good opinions founded on solid fact.