Obama yelps, "don't taze me bro!"
"Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters," press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to B&C late Wednesday."He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible," Ortiz added. "That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets."
There are two ways of looking at this. Dan Riehl has one of them
That makes him look like quite the moderate. But the actual doctrine was always a stretch. Get back to me in 3-6 months after we see what his FCC does in terms of "localism."
The other way is to consider that this is a headache Obama doesn't need. The backlash would be enormous with no clear benefit to the Democrats agenda. Remember, Air America was supposed to fix everything, and well--that didn't happen.
I think you have to take Democrats at their word--they really do want to silence any dissenting voices and why should we be surprised? They've been doing it for years with speech codes. They don't make arguments, they make shibboleths. I keep hearing about the terrible Bush years and I always want to ask, "can you be specific about what was so terrible?"
But I digress.
I suspect they'll look for whatever openings they can find, but the reality that a lot of people are very hawkeyed on this subject, and aren't going to give them much room to maneuver. Every hint that someone is contemplating anything remotely resembling the fairness doctrine is going to generate a whole new round of media controversy and force Obama to make further denials. I'd be surprised if they kept pushing it, but then again, the Crats haven't really demonstrated a lot of canniness in the pursuit of their legislative agenda.
