FTC fairness doctrine for the internet?

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Over the past three years, we have seen the con­sti­tu­tion tram­pled on by every lib­er­al in DC yet the media bare­ly cov­ers these mis­cre­ants, in their ivory tow­ers. When will the media begin to report on these issues that effect all of the world…

Are we look­ing at yet anoth­er attempt to cen­sor the free speech of the inter­net?

Is this yet anoth­er fair­ness doc­trine attempt, this time in the name of pro­tect­ing con­sumers online?

When we have bla­tant­ly decep­tive com­mer­cial adver­tis­ing on net­work TV Cable and Radio, that are decep­tive yet are not enforced, what should the con­sum­ing pub­lic think of this?

What will hap­pen in the future?

So what is the Fairness doctrine?

source wikipedia.

The Fair­ness Doc­trine was a pol­i­cy of the Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (FCC), intro­duced in 1949, that required the hold­ers of broad­cast licens­es to both present con­tro­ver­sial issues of pub­lic impor­tance and to do so in a man­ner that was, in the Com­mis­sion’s view, hon­est, equi­table and bal­anced. The 1949 Com­mis­sion Report served as the foun­da­tion for the Fair­ness Doc­trine since it had pre­vi­ous­ly estab­lished two more forms of reg­u­la­tion onto broad­cast­ers. These two duties were to pro­vide ade­quate cov­er­age to pub­lic issues and that cov­er­age must be fair in reflect­ing oppos­ing views.[1] The Fair­ness Doc­trine should not be con­fused with the Equal Time rule. The Fair­ness Doc­trine deals with dis­cus­sion of con­tro­ver­sial issues, while the Equal Time rule deals only with polit­i­cal can­di­dates. The Fair­ness Doc­trine imposed two rules for broad­cast­ers: First it required broad­cast­ers to pro­vide con­tro­ver­sial news and pub­lic affairs, and it required broad­cast­ers to pro­vide rea­son­able oppor­tu­ni­ties for the pre­sen­ta­tion of con­trast­ing view points. The sec­ond rule required con­tin­gent access oblig­a­tions on broad­cast­ers to pro­vide reply time to issue ori­ent­ed cit­i­zens and edi­to­ri­al­ized on pub­lic issues. Broad­cast­ers could trig­ger fair­ness Doc­trine com­plaints with­out edi­to­ri­al­iz­ing. Spec­trum scarci­ty was the doc­trines rea­son for being made. Because more peo­ple want­ed to broad­cast than avail­able fre­quen­cies could accom­mo­date, broad­cast­ers’ pub­lic trustee oblig­a­tions required reg­u­la­to­ry clar­i­fi­ca­tion, the FCC rea­soned. The com­mis­sion required nei­ther of the Fair­ness Doctrine’s oblig­a­tions before 1949. Until then broad­cast­ers had to sat­is­fy only gen­er­al “pub­lic inter­est” stan­dards of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act.[2]

 

When will we learn as a peo­ple as a race of peo­ple that there are things in this world that are not fair.

That life is not fair, that some­times, the lives of sol­diers are required to insure the free­dom of peo­ple.

Some­times we see the things in this world and we want to do some­thing to make it fair, but the fact is there is no fair­ness to life, there is not a guar­an­tee, that peo­ple will be treat­ed the same way the same time every time.

When a man tried to equal­ize the world what hap­pens is that even­tu­al­ly the scale bal­ance’s itself.

The fair­ness doc­trine was a fail­ure, back in 1949 and it was a fail­ure in the 60s when they tried it, and it was a fail­ure in the 1970s when they once again tried, it.

The fact is that the fair­ness doc­trine will not work and it will not work for this case either.

The only way to be fair is to require it of every­one, if you require dis­clo­sure of one group you must require it of all groups.

 

It is time for politi­cians to tend to their own busi­ness and let us deal with ours.