The Wall Street Journal gives a preview of coming attractions should the Democrats build a veto-proof majority in the Senate. Two items caught my eye, although the Journal lists them separately:
...the Fairness Doctrine is likely to be reimposed either by Congress or the Obama FCC. A major goal of the supermajority left would be to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition....
Google and MoveOn.org would get "net neutrality" rules, subjecting the Internet to intrusive regulation for the first time.
The "Fairness Doctrine" is aimed squarely at talk radio. It would require broadcasters to give "equal time" to opposing viewpoints, as though there were only two. It was the law of the land until 1987, until repealed by the Reagan Administration. Here's a more thorough discussion of the problem:
"Net Neutrality," broadbandly-speaking, means that internet service providers would need to provide uniform service to all comers. The economics of this are more-than-questionable.
But the immediate threat is in harassment lawsuits, claiming that providers are discriminating against carriers of certain political viewpoints. After all, if talk radio is denied to conservatives, the next logical move would be to internet radio. Net Neutrality, combined with a liberal reading of the Fairness Doctrine, could provide cover for interfering with carriers such as Blog Talk Radio.
Given the FCC's approval of the Sirius-XM merger, a legal argument exists that applying the Fairness Doctrine solely to broadcast radio would be to discriminate against a medium with plenty of competition. That would be a slender reed, indeed, though.
