Sounds innocuous enough, doesn’t it?
Everybody likes local. Local is a known. It’s something everybody wants more of.
Well, don’t be fooled, “Local ism is the new “Fairness Doctrine”
In a 2007 report, an ultra-liberal think tank known as The Center for American Progress issued a report called “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” Jim Boulet of English First says its agenda was to cleverly recast the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” by using the term “localism.”
“In 2007, they issued a report in which they bragged that if they could get more women and minorities to own stations, there’d be fewer stations carrying programs like Rush Limbaugh. What the regulations also do is we create a board of censors, really, who the radio station would have to meet with four times a year to listen to all their complaints — and if they weren’t satisfied, the radio station could lose its license,” Boulet points out.
Unfortunately, he says, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has bought into the agenda with its “Report on Broadcast Localism and Notice of Proposed Rulemaker.”
“Because the American people know how diabolical the Fairness Doctrine is, those who want to re-impose it on the airwaves and shut down programs have found a backdoor way to do it with the so-called ‘localism’ doctrine,” Boulet contends.
One of the proposed regulations would require racial and sexual quotas for station ownership, and another would require that all “licensees should convene and consult with permanent advisory boards.” Boulet says he knows what that will mean.
“These boards are going to be made up of people like the [Council on] American-Islamic Relations, The National Council of La Raza – all a bunch of professional grievance mongers who will never be satisfied until programs like Rush Limbaugh are no longer on the air,” Boulet explains.
I know they want to get their point across, but I still wish they wouldn’t use Limbaugh as their only example of non-leftwing radio.
Hit the above link and sign the petition. The FCC’s review process for these new rules ends tomorrow. The airwaves are yours. They do not belong to the extremist organizations who are going to do to radio what they’ve done to Canadian free speech.
Found via Duane Lester