The Fairness Doctrine

At its heart, the “Fairness Doctrine” would only apply to the editorial content broadcast on radio and television. Straight news content would be exempt.

The trouble is that today's "straight news" is very heavily slanted to the left, and this isn't exactly a secret. In May 2004, the Pew Research Center for The People and The Press (in association with the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Committee of Concerned Journalists) surveyed 547 journalists and media executives, including 247 at national-level media outlets. The poll was similar to ones conducted by the same group (previously known as the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press) in 1995 and 1999. The actual polling was done by the Princeton Survey Research Associates. Key findings include:

* Five times more national journalists identify themselves as “liberal” (34 percent) than “conservative” (just 7 percent). In contrast, a survey of the public taken in May 2004 found 20 percent saying they were liberal, and 33 percent saying they were conservative.

* The percentage of national reporters saying they are liberal has increased, from 22 percent in 1995 to 34 percent in 2004. The percentage of self-identified conservatives remains low, rising from a meager 4 percent in 1995 to a still-paltry 7 percent in 2004.

* Liberals also outnumber conservatives in local newsrooms. Pew found that 23 percent of the local journalists they questioned say they are liberals, while about half as many (12 percent) call themselves conservative.

* Most national journalists (55 percent) say the media are “not critical enough” of President Bush, compared with only eight percent who believe the press has been “too critical.” In 1995, the poll found just two percent thought journalists had given “too much” coverage to then-President Clinton’s accomplishments, compared to 48 percent who complained of “too little” coverage of Clinton’s achievements.

There's much more information at the link provided, but you get the gist. Talk radio is, in fact, the only medium in which liberals do not have a staggering 'advantage' - and it's the only medium specifically designed around opinion, and not news.

In conclusion, it's obvious that the so-called Fairness Doctrine is, indeed, aimed at silencing the conservative viewpoint by watering it down with liberal information easily available - literally - everywhere.

Link:
http://www.mrc.org/biasbasics/biasbasics.asp