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s the liberal Boston Globe, which always can be counted on for favors by John Kerry, struggles on the brink of insolvency, the Massachusetts Dem has suddenly become concerned about the nature of news sources, and the peoples’ ability to find the sort of news they like.

A Senate panel is looking at the plight of struggling newspapers in the digital era.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said Wednesday’s hearing on the future of journalism comes as many papers falter and new ways of delivering information multiply by the day.

Kerry said steps must be taken so the news media can stay diverse and independent. (USA Today)

Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, D-Natch!, jumped on the bandwagon, saying it would be cool if the feds could ease the liberal news media into a new non-profit sort of entity, to ensure that they could blather at will without having to worry about offending readers.

Isn’t this all interesting?  Here’s John Kerry’s position on diverse and independent media in June 2007:

Senator John Kerry is calling for reimposition of the fairness doctrine.

In a radio interview on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, excerpted on YouTube, Senator Kerry said he thought the doctrine should return. Calling it one of the “most profound changes in the balance of the media,” he said conservatives have been able to “squeeze down and squeeze out opinion of opposing views. I think it has been a very important transition in the imbalance of our public dialog,” he said. (source)

And here’s Ben Cardin:

The government “has the responsibility” to make sure there are a “variety of opportunities for people to get information,” said Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) when asked about the Fairness Doctrine at the Democratic Senatorial Committee election night party on Tuesday. (CNS)

So they want to legislate liberal media in at taxpayer expense (non-profit status would relieve newspapers of tax burdens), while legislating conservative media out (the fairness doctrine would destroy their appeal, driving away advertisers).

Isn’t it funny how the same goal - the desire for multiple voices in the media - can look so different in the eyes of a big-government, anti-free market liberals?  It’s more evidence of the Dems’ refusal to learn lessons from history.

Until a few decades ago, cities in America were served by multiple newspapers: Liberal, conservative, trashy, Catholic, black, suburban, capitalist, socialist, all touting the news in their own voice, appealing to subscribers who liked that voice. There was no call for fairness, because the free market provided enough choice.  And when this model started evolving into the next, there were no calls from Congress save newspapers.

The second model, one prevailing newspaper per city, occurred primarily because the market determined it.  The evening news on TV killed afternoon papers, and the morning news and rising production costs left room for only one print vehicle. Again, Congress sat back and watched it happen.

The third model was the consolidation of these papers into national chains.  Congress saw nothing to complain about; in fact, with each transformation, the conservative voice of print media became more muted, so the big government, interventionalist Dems in Congress sat back and enjoyed the show.

It’s time for the next model, and all indications are that it will be much more difficult to control, and not as favorable to one (liberal) party:  online journalism, citizen journalism (think Michael Yon), the return of small-circulation, single voice print papers, talk radio, live webcasts of government agency meetings, and other options are all in the wings, ready to replace (for better or worse) the big newspapers.

John Kerry, Ben Cardin, Nancy Pelosi and other fans of neutering talk radio could just sit back and let America choose what media it wants without their meddlesome fingers in the mix.  But that’s not why they got themselves elected.  They know what you need better than you do, and they’re out to prove their right … despite what history tells us.

V

ampire fiction fans know that it’s not enough to put just any stake through the heart of a vampire; it had better be a stake made of ash wood; otherwise, to borrow the Billy Crystal/Miracle Max line from Princess Bride, the vampire may be just mostly dead. (Hawthorn wood is acceptable in Serbia, oak in Silesia.)

Such is the case with the Fairness Doctrine, which got some kind of stake through its heart today when the Senate voted 87-11 in favor of an amendment to the DC voting-rights bill that would prohibit the FCC from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.  (What does the Fairness Doctrine have to do with DC voting, you ask?  C’mon, this is Congress we’re talking about here.)

Michelle Malkin reports, though:

The DeMint amendment passes 87-11, but as Sen. DeMint Tweets: “Our ban on Fairness Doctrine passes 87-11. But fight not over, Dems have attacked from back door on media ownership, localism.”

That back door would be Turban Durbin’s amendment, which DeMint says …

… would achieve the same goals of the Fairness Doctrine through backdoor FCC regulations. His legislation forces the FCC to “take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership,” an attempt to dismantle successful syndicated radio programs. The Durbin amendment would hurt small, local radio stations who depend on popular syndicated programming for listeners and revenue.

Whoa, hold on here Dickie. When the FCC dropped the Fairness Doctrine over 20 years ago it was because the agency found it no longer served a purpose since the public had a wide array of political news sources to choose from. In the mid-1980s! That was before cable, the Internet, blogs, Twitter and all the rest.

There is no rationale to bring it back - so be careful! That means irrational Dems are hard at work.

Budget Office Has No Faith In Stimulus

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he Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan provider of economic analysis to Congress, isn’t the least bit optimistic about the effect of Porkasaurus on the economy. In fact, they see it as bad news:

President Obama’s economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.

CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net. [The House bill] would have similar long-run effects, CBO said in a letter to Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, who was tapped by Mr. Obama on Tuesday to be Commerce Secretary. (WashTimes)

And what of all the jobs Obama says (models) his bill will create?  CBO dismisses the impact of Porkasaurus jobs on the economy as “minimal.” And that makes this comment from “Suggestions4Obama” particularly pathetic:

I do not understand why people are having diffculty understanding. The number of unemployed people (11.6 million) and the unemployment rate (7.6 percent) rose in January. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 4.1 million. The Department of Labor reported today that nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply in January (-598,000) and the unemployment rate rose from 7.2 to 7.6 percent. Payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007, …. most of this mess happening only in past three months! And some wonder Obama is pushing so hard for a stimulus package. Is the Herbert Hoover approach, do nothing, all we need, leading us to a twelve year depression ??

Here’s the deal, S4O:  Simply stating the problem doesn’t make the stimulus a solution. Ask the guys in the photo - after all, the Depression got worse after FDR tried to spend his way out of it.

As Hugo Chavez forced an opposing voice off the air — it was only the longest-standing broadcast outlet in Venezuela — so he could impose his views, and only his views on the Venezuelan people, here’s how the left met the news, courtesy of Democratic Underground:

Caracas, May 28 (Prensa Latina) The new Venezuelan Social TV Network (Televisora Venezolana Social, TEVES) inundated channel two of Venezuela”s radio-electric spectrum on Monday, marking the beginning of a new era in Latin American media.

With the appearance of its signal in the first minutes of May 28, TEVES switched off the image of private Radio Caracas Television (RCTV channel), which had exploited the frequency for 53 years to benefit only its owners and their families.

At the same time, this was the materialization of a patient effort of the Venezuelan government in its struggle for democratization of the media in this South American country.

RCTV was off the air at the very moment its concession to use radio-electric space expired, as it was not renewed by authorities in order to facilitate the launching of the public service TEVES station.

The left is utterly without honor. It used to stand for something: For the liberal exchange of ideas, for freedom of speech, for government not heavy-handedly imposing its will on others.

That is now long-gone, as the left gleefully welcomes the brutal and total suppression of any thought but Chavez-thought in Venezuela.

As I wondered this morning: NanPo and Kookcinich, are you tracking this? Is it making you feel better than ever about your efforts to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine on America?

Venezulea has been rocked with demonstrations against the despotic regime of Hugo Chavez, with the “people’s president” using tanks and water cannons against his people.

Free speech and freedom of the press are the triggering issues of the demonstrations, which started when the nation’s oldest broadcast outlet, RCTV, was forced to close after Chavez refused to renew its broadcast licence. (Dem supporters of the Fairness Doctrine, are you tracking this?)

BBC reports:

Within seconds of screens going blank, the insignia of a new state-sponsored broadcaster, TVES, appeared.

Mr Chavez said RCTV had tried to undermine his government.

The president says the new channel that took RCTV’s place at midnight on Sunday (0400 GMT Monday) will better reflect the socialist revolution he has pledged to lead.

(Nancy Pelosi and Dennis Kucinich, are you finding this interesting?)

The blog The Devil’s Excrement (hat-tip, Gateway Pundit, which has several more good links) gives a blow-by-blow of the day’s events, including:

Then the Minister of Defense going into a military parade comes in and says that “minority groups can not go against the majority feeling of the Venezuelan people to create uncertainty with the closure of RCTV, as if there was a majority support to the decision, which is in any case a legal decision and not one to be decided by popularity,["] but in any case, all indications are the illegal and political decision is highly unpopular, contradicting the Minister’s words.

Meanwhile, as people begin checking the newssites on the Internet, Noticiero Digital, Megaresistencia and RCTV websites are taken down by denial of service attacks, the effects of which are still being felt hours later. This is compounded by problems with the CANTV network which take down some other news sites in what may be unrelated to the denial of serivce attacks, since all the others are hosted abroad.

Then the autocrat/dictator himself shows up at the military parade, the main focus of which is the new Russian planes. I had little tie to listen (or interest) to the speech, but what little I heard may have been Chavez at his nuttiest . While I will wait to have the transcript, the intimidation was there, dressed in military garb (which is illegal since he is not active), the President told his supporters not to worry that “his” new planes (on the right above) are flown by experts and carry bombs which these experts can drop with pinpoint accuracy on their targets. (Us?).

And then, as if this were not enough evidence and proof of how we have lost our rights and freedom in this country, the Constitutional Hall of the Supreme Court decides to “protect” the diffuse rights of the “people”, the same rights that it refused to protect in allowing the shutdown of RCTV, and essentially allows the Government not only to shutdown the network, but to take over the equipment rightfully owned by the owners of RCTV, all in the name of the “Law”. Gimme a f… break! This is a simple and direct confiscation of the enemy’s property, which goes beyond anything ever seen so far in the Chavez Dictatorship, as usual under the guise of “legality”.

Let’s see, a regime that’s hungry for power and frightfully afraid of any opposition on public airwaves revokes broadcast licenses of outlets that aren’t “fair.” One more time: that sounds just like the thinking behind the Fairness Doctrine, doesn’t it?

hat-tip: Memeorandum

The Left does have one point I’ll buy — there’s too much consolidation in the media. Of course, they propose all the wrong actions and draw all the wrong conclusions from that point.

I’m a free market guy, so laisse faire on this, but the fact is, the liberal media extends its reach through its holdings, polluting the national discourse in the process. A case in point, from Galley Cat:

The New York Sun’s Gary Shapiro reports that former President Jimmy Carter’s most recent book, PALESTINE: PEACE NOT APARTHEID has riled up CBS stockholders in a big way. That’s because the book was published by Simon & Schuster - a subsidiary of CBS - and so Carol Greenwald, the treasurer of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (and a CBS shareholder) plans to criticize the publisher at the meeting.

According to a statement shown to The New York Sun, Greenwald, who calls Carter’s book “error-filled,” plans to ask that a fact-checking system be set up to prevent material errors in books Simon & Schuster publishes and that a code of ethics be adopted for its publishing division.

CBS, which is quite good at sticking microphones in faces and intimidatingly demanding comment, declined to comment.

Of course, while I agree with the left concerning the problem, I don’t agree with their solution: resurrecting, Zombie-like, the Fairness Doctrine. All that will accomplish is a chilling of the national discourse.

If we could just chill Carter’s discourse …

The American Spectator shook things up today with its report that Ren & Stimpy … er, Nan and Steny … had gotten so high on power-doobies that they decided to “aggressively pursue” reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

Such an act is not unexpected, and the airwaves today (what I heard of them anyway) were abuzz with condemnation and speculation, which is also not unexpected. But let’s take all the posturing and harumphing with a grain of salt.

Just check out this passage from the Spectator piece:

The decision to press for re-establishment of the Fairness Doctrine now seems to have developed for two reasons. “First, [Democrats] failed on the radio airwaves with Air America, no one wanted to listen,” says a senior adviser to Pelosi. “Conservative radio is a huge threat and political advantage for Republicans and we have had to find a way to limit it. Second, it looks like the Republicans are going to have someone in the presidential race who has access to media in ways our folks don’t want [Oh, just say it! Fred Thompson!], so we want to make sure the GOP has no advantages going into 2008.”

Yeah, I suppose the source could be a NanPo staffer on a suicide trip; that would explain tossing out enough talk-fodder to keep the right side of the radio dial lit up for a week.

“Conservative radio is a huge threat and political advantage for Republicans and we have had to find a way to limit it?!” Oh, please! This is the Fairness Doctrine you’re talking about — you might just want to look up the word. The quote is just too perfect.

A little too, too perfect, don’t you think? A dollar to a donut what we’re seeing here is a lead trial balloon with “Dennis Kucinich” painted on the side. Dennis the Menace must have whined and cajoled so loudly about the leadership not moving on his Fairness Doctrine effort that they decided to do him a little favor and float something out there to see how it played.

And it played DOA, handily emasculating Kucinich, who’s a pest to the real Dem candidates.

“I believe we need to re-regulate the media,” Howard Dean blurted recently. He’s probably really thinking it this morning when he unfolded his liberally biased Washingon Post to read of Rupert Murdoch’s $5 billion bid to acquire Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Barrons and a number of other financial pubs.

I prefer to quote from the DJ publication, the WSJ:

Rupert Murdoch’s surprise $5 billion bid for Dow Jones & Co. could put into play one of the nation’s last family-controlled newspaper companies, raising the possibility of other bidders, from media companies to financial buyers to Internet giants.

News Corp.’s bid of $60 a share in cash, or a combination of cash and stock, is pitched at a price roughly 67% above the recent market value of Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal and a number of financial-information businesses. The offer puts a large premium on the publisher at a time when most newspaper companies are losing readers and advertisers to the Internet.

It’s easy to see why Murdoch would want Dow Jones. He’s launching a Fox Business channel to compete against MSNBC and Bloomberg and owning the DJ’s many business publishing properties would give him the instantly superior content. He likes business and DJ’s all business. And he likes the WSJ editorial line.

A marriage made in heaven … unless you’re a Dem.

Already stressing about the ability of Fox and conservative talk radio to reach intelligent high-propensity voters at a scale far greater than their drop in the media bucket size, Dean, Kucinich and company will get the heebie jeebies all over when they think of Murdoch adding the nation’s premier business powerhouse, with the best conservative editorial page going, to his collection.

Murdoch’s’ timing couldn’t be worse. The Dems have already submitted bills to repeal the Fairness Doctrine, which so graciously dumped by Ronald Reagan, and now all they’ll have to do is shout “Fox News!” as a punctuation to their rants about Rush and the rest, and the Left will rally to a new cause. So what if the cause represses the free speech and freedom they supposedly hold dear?

The Bancroft family, which own most of the DJ shares and can turn out over 50% of the vote with it’s super-voting super-shares, is reportedly not interested in selling — so Murdoch is likely to create a Fairness Doctrine tempest and leave the table with an empty teapot.

Does anyone remember life under the Fairness Doctrine any more? Just think, “Jane, you ignorant slut.” The Ackroyd/Curtain SNL skit was based on TV editorializing at the time, when the station owner’s guy would opine the “legit” opinion and some counter-thinking hack would come back with 20 or 30 seconds on the other side.

It was appalling and useless.

That wasn’t even fine for the time, when there were no options to the three networks, PBS and a few local market independents. Now there are options aplenty and opinions overflowing, so the public has no need for Congress to mandate how they’ll get their opposing view.

Besides, when was the last time you heard a network news station give an editorial opinion in editorial opinion dressing? They don’t do it anymore; rather it permiates their broadcasts with shades of bias and slant. Liberal Congress will look at them and say there’s no editorializing going on, so no counter-position is necessary.

But they’ll look at Fox and holler foul, and they’ll look at conservative talk radio and want to kill it with a thousand Allan Colmes’.

Murdoch’s bid — while interesting, especially in light of the relative lack of interest in the Chicago Trib and LAT — couldn’t have worse timing. Let’s hope the Bancrofts quickly kill it, removing fodder from the liberal unfairness machine.