No Fair!

PHUTATORIUS
This was a right-wing talking point for a while — usually served up in tandem with union card-check: Obama's going to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, a policy that once called for the FCC to enforce viewpoint neutrality on the broadcast bands. He's a tyrant who doesn't believe in free speech!
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And of course he isn't going to do that. The Senate voted 87-11 today to prohibit the FCC from reviving the fairness doctrine. The 11 dissenters are named in Politico; they're Democrats, so everyone can go ahead and talk about how awful it would be if Democrats were running Congress.

This after Obama said last June that he opposed the Fairness Doctrine, and a spokesperson recently confirmed the Administration's position to Fox News. Obama's position never changed in the interim — but then again, whispered the Forces for Truth, Justice, and the American Airwave, you never know what a politician REALLY thinks.

Obama's position means that the FCC won't require broadcasters to extend corrective airtime to politicians when radio nut jobs make shit up about them to scare people. That's the right answer, as a policy matter. But that doesn't mean certain of us at FO can't say to the nut jobs (and at least one of our other writers), Duh — that's what we've been telling you.