HINCHEY: Any particular point of view that you have, if somebody has an alternative point of view, then there is a responsibility to give that point of view an opportunity to be heard.

But don't call him an anti-semite, right?

You almost could have titled this article "Tucker Carlson (temporarily) grows a spine."

(I guess it is pretty safe to say that I am not exactly a charter member of the Tucker Carlson Fan Club).

I will have to give Tucker credit, though, as it appears he actually gets it on this issue.

Help Fred defeat everybody.

There's one thing we can learn from this Democrat's words -- it's all in the ownership. If "the public" owns the electromagnetic spectrum, we'll continue with the socialism and have an expensive "tragedy of the commons." If spectrum is sold to the highest bidder, we can have free markets and unthreatened free speech. Why people are against this is beyond me. As a member of the public, I don't feel any ownership at all over spectrum, anyway. If I owned a particular segment of spectrum, though, I'd act like any property owner acts and try to make my property more valuable by upsetting the political left & the right at the same time, because doing that is what I value.
JMR

A Congressman believes that any view being presented on television and
radio should offer those with an alternate opinion the opportunity to
be heard regardless of how absurd or baseless.

OK, in the same league as the holocaust deniers, bring on the AGW skeptics!! Yeah, right.

I'm for a slightly different version of the Fairness act: For every minute of covering some worthless piece of crap (Paris, Twitney, Lindsay) they must also broadcast one minute of serious, true news.

Mother nature is a bitch - Ninth Corollary of Murphy's Law

The Fairness Doctrine is where it all starts: You will be required to broadcast what we tell you to put on the air.

1984 is where it ends up: You will be required to listen to what we put on the air.

In either case, this Hinchey chap revealed his true colors with the statement: "The consequences of that illicit, illegal invasion of Iraq and the subsequent disastrous occupation is just one example of what can happen if you have a government, such as this administration, which completely dominated the media on that particular subject." The more these people say things like this, the more I love it -- the Democrats are exposing themselves, every day and in every way, as a complete morally-bankrupt organisation, and I think they are going to go down, very hard, very soon.

If these clowns weren't serious, this debate would be hilarious in the way it stands reality on its head. The people who THINK they're getting an even treatment of the issues, and aren't, are the sheeple who depend on network news for their information. Anyone with an anti-Bush viewpoint, even demonstrable idiots like Cindy Sheehan, has had nearly open access to the broadcast networks. Forcing them to broadcast opposing (i.e. conservative or libertarian -- HT sarcasmo) viewpoints would raise an outcry from the left and sweep Hinchey and his crew out of office.

They're obviously aiming at conservative talk radio, where of course the opinions tilt to the right -- but they don't claim otherwise. The people who listen to Limbaugh, Levin, Hannity, et al., generally KNOW that they're listening to commentary partial to one side, and if they want the opposing view NPR is always available right down the dial.

I won't watch "Hannity and Colmes" because I don't like Hannity enough to endure Colmes. That's the same effect the "Fairness" guys hope to have on the radio.

You say we should have a Fairness Doctrine. I say we don't. You have your opinion and I have mine. We've both broadcast our opinions on the airwaves. So where's the problem here? Wait, I know! It isn't good enough that any one media outlet is fair and balanced. Your premise is that every outlet must broadcast every opinion. Why? That works on several absurd premises. Besides the obvious ones (government bureaucracy, who decides?, why don't we apply the same rules to TV?, etc.), here are some that are also ridiculous:

1. The public has a need to hear adversarial opinions. (Like I'm gasping unless I hear what a liberal thinks, and a liberal can't sleep unless he hears what I have to say!)
2. There might be someone out there who gets their news from a single source, and we need to make rules for the entire industry to account for that guy with only a transistor radio.  
3. The public must make decisions on public issues based on the opinions they hear over the broadcast media. (Apparently, private individuals can't make up their minds without the broadcast media.)
4. Every opinion deserves to be heard, and government has a duty to make sure they're heard. (So, the fact that I have an opinion means that the government must provide me a forum to express it? You're required to listen to me? Great! Tell that to my wife ...)
5. A media outlet is not allowed to analyze an opinion, because that itself is an opinion, and would also need to be counterbalanced by an opposing view. (We'd be caught in an endless loop!)

There are plenty of others. But the absolutely stupidest premise ...

• News is a public service that government must manage (and must provide if its lacking). But the whole point of an independent press is that we have a critic of government. If government wants to manage what news outlets put out, then it defeats the purpose of having a press in the first place.

Noel:  ". . . All forms of opinions, so that people can make decisions for themselves, not have those decisions rammed on them by anyone else."  Anybody notice a flaw in the Congressman's position? As Carlson asked about television, not radio, the Congressman was actually suggesting that television viewers - not cable viewers - don't have "an opportunity to get all forms of ideas and various opinions."

Re-read what Hinchey asserts.  He's stating, in no uncertain words, that broadcast media (And we know he's referring to talk radio) makes decisions for people and "rams them" on an audience that -- lacking alternative information -- has no choice but to accept them.   Hinchey's inference, of course, is that the talk radio audience is sheep-like and not intelligent enough to make its own decisions, let alone know where to find other sources of information and opinion.  His position is one of typical liberal arrogance.

I believe Tucker missed an easy one Noel. Let's take this point of Hinchey's:

HINCHEY: No, I think that all opinions need to be counterbalanced by other opinions. Take for example, the way in which this administration fabricated the intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

First of all, I don't think that there is a heck of a lot of empirical evidence that this [Bush] administration "fabricated the intelligence," but let's think about what the presentation by the media, and thte majority of it's guests, and 'expert witnesses" has been for the past 5 years on he issue of WMD's.  There may be plenty of evidence, after the fact, that two administrations had it wrong. My view is that the second of these two inherited the view from the 1st of these two, and presented the same general picture.

By and large, the record does show that the presentation of the Bush administration on the existence of WMD's in Iraq, the ability of Iraq to reconstitute WMD's the threat to it's neighbors, and the fear of the risk of those WMD's to end up in the hands of rogue states and/or terrorists was the same as that presented by the Clinton administration; both during it's occupation of the White House and repeated, often enough, after it left the White House. Let me state that the Clinton Administration (this includes Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Sec's Albright and Cohen, etc.), both after they left office and during the run up to war (the presentation of the intelligence) were quite clear in supporting the general view being offered by the Bush administration. They may have differed on the issue of actually going to war, but not on the issue of WMD's. Indeed the country deserved to have a debate on the first of these two issue, not on the latter.

This record is easily obtainable - these statements by those named Clinton administration officials. But they are difficult to come by if one is searching the MSM for them. In fact, even Fox News was lacking in covering this support of the common thread between the Bush and Clinton administrations. While there seemed to be some interest in hearing the Bush administration and it's supporters defend itself, there was little interest in letting the public hear the actual views from those that would have simply ended the debate.

What was missing in the media was a willingness to offer to the viewer, the reader and the listener theses very same top brass views which were available to the media to offer. These views would have put to bed the constant unified effort by the media to generally present only the view of those trying to prove that only one administration fabricated the WMD claims. 

There was no rush to fairness. In fact, on this issue if WMD's, I wonder if any single MSM outlet has ever made one single effort to actually show the public these very consistent views. And did a single anchor, or reporter when conducting one of the thousands of interviews in which the guest claimed that "this Bush administration misrepresented, or lied, about WMD's," in which interviewer shot back, "so do you think that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Sec. Albright, Sec. Cohen are lying also?" I think that the best we ever got was something generic catch all phrase like, "Well, there were many who believed Iraq still possessed these capabilities."

This also holds true on the "16 word's" in the STOTU" address - the resulting Wilson/Plame/Libby event. Bill Clinton defended Bush on it. David Boies attacked Fitzgerald on it. Plenty of other experts on the matter defended Bush on the issue. The media did not present these other views to the public. There was no rush to fairness, here. In the past, in the Swift Boat story, and in comparison the Bush National Guard story; the vast majority of the MSM coverage (and the number of it's witnesses) supported John Kerry view and opposed Bush's view, respectively. There was no rush to fairness. 

Hinchey may actually be onto something. Maybe we do need some guidelines in getting the factual news out to the public. 

For the record, I've posted in my comments many times the evidence of which I speak and I'm just skipping it today.

Let me get this straight. Are the same people that will decide what is fair on the public airwaves the same ones that knew instinctively what to do about illegal immigration reform? They need to come clean right now and rename this to the "Shut up you stupid conservatives" Doctrine.