Democratic congressmen Maurice Hinchey and Dennis Kucinich and socialist senator Bernie Sanders are trying to combat the pernicious influence of conservative media by reviving the Fairness Doctrine.

Democratic congressmen Maurice Hinchey and Dennis Kucinich and socialist senator Bernie Sanders are trying to combat the pernicious influence of conservative media by reviving the Fairness Doctrine. For those who don't remember, the Fairness Doctrine was a Federal Communications Commission policy that required news programs broadcast over the public airwaves to present controversial issues in a balanced way. (The meaning of "balance" of course depended on the whims of the FCC.) The Reagan administration scrapped the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, and the subsequent popularity of conservative talk radio has so bedeviled liberals that they are begging the government to step back in. According to them, the dearth of liberal radio hosts doesn't reflect their unpopularity, but rather the unwillingness of media corporations to give liberals a chance. Leave aside for now the general nuttiness of this proposition, as well as its empirical falsity (corporations own the liberal New York Times and MSNBC, and Air America went broke because it had no listeners). The more important point is that no free society should tolerate a government agency's having the power to decide what constitutes "balanced" coverage.