30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging

Cutie Pi writes "In a recent Rasmussen poll looking at the public's attitudes toward a possible revival of the fairness doctrine by the Democrats, a surprisingly large percentage of those polled seek fairness doctrine mandates (originally intended for public airwaves) to cover the Internet as well. It is encouraging that a minority of people feel that way, but Democrats say 'hands-off the Internet ... by a far smaller margin than Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Democrats oppose government-mandated balance on the Internet by a 48% to 37% margin. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans reject government involvement in Internet content along with 67% of unaffiliated voters.'"

So does this mean?

If /. were fair and balanced would each posting as an AC be treated as +1 subscriber?????

Re:So does this mean?

Yes, the moderation system is clearly yet another manifestation of the oppression of the underclass by the elite bourgeois ruling classes. Who gets to say what is "good" and "bad" anyway? The suppression of alternate points of view is nothing less than the suppression of alternate non-mainstream modes of knowledge. All points of view are equally valid, therefore all posts should automatically be +5, always (including this one, *cough cough*).

70% of Americans

Aren't complete blithering idiots.

Hey, I'm just being "balanced"... if we're talking about 30% we have to talk about the other 70% too in order to be fair, right?

All blogs are editorials

Editorials are opinion, not legitimate reporting of facts.

So?

Editorials are opinion, not legitimate reporting of facts.

So? Opinion isn't exempt in the Fairness Doctrine. In fact most of the application of the doctrine on the airwaves has traditionally been against editorial content. The argument goes that there's only so much broadcast bandwidth out there, and so since the government licenses the airwaves, they have a responsibility to see that all viewpoints get a fair shot.

Never mind that with the huge selection of opinion avenues... radio, TV, satellite, print, the Internet... the idea of bandwidth scarcity is essentially obsolete, especially for the Internet. But that hasn't stopped the doctrine's backers from trying to bring it back from the dead anyway, and worse, they want to apply it to non-broadcast media.

The Fairness Doctrine isn't. All throughout it's history, it's been used by whoever was in power at the time to silence their enemies, or at least quiet them down some. The doctrine is nothing but government nannyism, and its death was too long in coming. For those of you that are so eager to bring it back, think long and hard about that. Sooner or later, someone you don't like is going to get elected, and use it against you.

This is a great idea and very important

Because with only three blogs in the blog-o-sphere, the millions of Americans these blogs serve really deserve government-mandated balance.

Oh, what's that, there's more than three? How many, then? Five?

The truth is simple.

Balanced is not equal to fair.

"Balanced" in this case means that only the democratic party and the republican party will have their voices heard.

Re:The truth is simple.

Exactly, we need to stop thinking that there are only 2 of everything, 2 political ideologies, 2 OSes, 2 news stations, etc. There are more than 2 sides to everything, think of the RIAA debates, the RIAA has one side, the general public has another and the musicians have another side too.

Re:The truth is simple.

We also have to stop thinking that there must be 2 sides to every issue and that both sides are equally valid. That sort of thinking is where you get things like the media treating Intelligent Design as a valid scientific theory, because they're convinced that every issue must have two equally valid sides, even when only one side is actually supported by any kind of scientific evidence.

I would say...

...that there's no way something this asinine could possibly pass 1st Amendment muster. Especially since political speech is exactly the epicenter of that amendment. I would say that, but I also witnessed all three branches of the federal government fail us spectacularly on McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.

Already was the law from 1949-1984ish

If I remember right the fairness doctrine was the law from 1949 until sometime into Reagan's second term. Its repeal lead to the rise of talk radio and helped cable news. Probably indirectly led to the lack of regulation by the FCC of the internet.

All it takes...

...that there's no way something this asinine could possibly pass 1st Amendment muster. Especially since political speech is exactly the epicenter of that amendment. I would say that, but I also witnessed all three branches of the federal government fail us spectacularly on McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.

All it takes is enough sympathetic judges, and viola, it's Constitutional... even if it isn't Constitutional.

One thing both political sides seem to increasingly agree on these days is that the judicial branch may be the weak link in the design of our Constitutional guarantee of rights. If a judge says so, it's so, even the the Constitution directly contridicts it. All you need is a majority of SCOTUS opinions, and what's done is done. Once SCOTUS rules, unlike a Congressional Bill or an Executive Order, there's no way to appeal it. It's done. Final. You'd have to get a Constitutional Amendment passed to change that ruling, and if the issue came back before SCOTUS, they could simply void the meaning and spirt of the amendment with a stroke of their pens.

Increasingly, the written opinions of the Supreme Court is our real constitution, not the 200+ year old document itself.

Will this include issues such as

Holocaust denial? Must both sides be given a equal voice by mandate? How about flat-earth theory? Or moon hoax hypothesis? Or is this where the government suddenly decides what is "mainstream" and what is kooky. If they decide that, where will the boundary be for other, much more legitimate ideas that Government may not like. Will it be that they suddenly decide what the bounds of fair discourse is by controlling the parameters?

Why is it that so many people think that the government, a large force with its own agenda, will do a much better job than many individuals not geared around a singular goal/entity? The Patriot Act was not patriotic, and the Fairness doctrine will not be fair.

Easy to circumvent

Given the multi-national congregation that is the net, I can't really see how this could be enforced anyhow. It could be easily circumvented by simply hosting your blog in Britain, or Congo, or anywhere else in the world without this rule. There's no law saying you can't blog about American politcs from abroad (and many people already do).

OTOH

a) Less than 1/3 of all Americans support the censorship of political blogs.

b) 70% of Americans do not support regulation of political blogging.

Same data, different spin.

Illiberal liberals

but Democrats say 'hands-off the Internet ... by a far smaller margin than Republicans and unaffiliated voters.

Why are so many supposedly liberal-minded people so ... illiberal? Is it because they think a fairness doctrine would only be used against Republicans?

It's like they want to attack their enemies by removing the oxygen out of the air, without considering how they themselves will breath.

Re:republicans favoring less government involvemen

Conservative politicians want a smaller government. The previous Republican majority was not conservative.

Re:republicans favoring less government involvemen

Go by the term Classical Liberal then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism [wikipedia.org]

Those want a limited government (which itself is a more correct term, a smaller government is the natural effect byproduct of a limited government but a smaller government isn't always more limited - i.e. outsourcing everything)

"Conservative" means nothing anymore, it's been so diluted. The biggest "conservatives" are nothing more but against taxes (passing staggering debt onto future generations while still paying for massive entitlements/porkbarrel is not more conservative than tax and spend), embrace war against drugs/crime/poverty/nations (war is the health of the state, thus anti-conservative) and lastly, wear their religion on their sleeve yet none of it in their hearts except when convenient.

Plus the term liberal drives many of the unreasonable ones on edge. People like Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh types that want to pidgeonhole everyone in their arguments.

Re:republicans favoring less government involvemen

"Conservative" means nothing anymore ... . ... "conservatives" are nothing more but against taxes ... embrace war against drugs/crime/poverty/nations ... and lastly, wear their religion on their sleeve yet none of it in their hearts except when convenient.

Not to (borrowing your term) pidgeonhole anyone or anything...

wear their religion on their sleeve yet none of it in their hearts except when convenient.

You know, that's how I feel whenever I see people with bumper stickers slathered all over their cars (who are, imho, 99% of the time liberal). Why is it so important that other people know that you're a vegan, are pro-abortion, etc, or, my personal favorite, are mad that the US was "One pretzel away from getting rid of Bush." ~shrug~

"Jigsaw elections"? You mean Electoral Eollege?

If the United States didn't have jigsaw puzzle elections, more moderate voices would gain prominence and the extremists would be pushed to the outskirts.

(I presume you're talking either about the Electoral College system or something else related to election by states rather than general popular vote.)

If the US didn't have "jigsaw puzzle elections" a corrupt political machine in a major urban area would be able to swing enough bogus votes to control the national government.

The election of the congress critters by district, senators by state, and president by state electors is one of the firewalls against tyranny.

(It's also part of the deal by which states with small populations were persuaded to federate with more crowded ones, which could totally swamp their interests if federal elections were by polling the whole mass rather than the jigsaw pieces. Change that and you might see another secessionist movement.)

Re:republicans favoring less government involvemen

But most republican politicians seem to like bigger government! I'm so confused...

Don't worry, so are they! How I long for the days when the Repulicans were for a government that took less of your money, and the Democrats were for a government that took less of your freedoms. Now both are pro-censorship, and both are for more government spending, and both are for more government power to combat scary things.

How would a "balanced internet" work in the first place? Can you not find a blog aready to cater to any political belief no matter how bizzare? Now I'm the one confused.

Re:republicans favoring less government involvemen

Democrats are socialists who admire the old Soviet state.

What rubbish. I'd imagine that most Democrats are socialists who look towards the Nordic welfare states.

Re:republicans favoring less government involvemen

As a citizen of one of said Nordic welfare states, I think most of us (including those who agree with their ideologies) consider both your major parties to be right-wing.
Accusing the Democratic party of being communist is like accusing Hugo Chavez of being a libertarian anarchist.

Re:republicans favoring less government involvemen

Republicans are fascists who want a few large corporations to take power, so they can claim people have freedom (even though they don't, because they're being oppressed by the corporations).

The difference is that government power has the force of law, and you cannot escape. With "corporate power", it's entirely voluntary to be under it. And if you don't like it, you can always start your own entity. Example: The Democrats decide to ban "hate" music because it hurts people's feelings. You can go to jail and there is no escape. On the other hand, don't like the policies of the oh-so-corporate RIAA? Listen to independent music. Or create your music.

You have a much better chance of competing against an evil corporation than you do against an evil government.

Re:Voluntary? Really?

With sufficiently predatory lending practices and things of that nature, it becomes far less than "voluntary" too.

Good example! "Predatory"? Who held a gun to the head of these idiots who got loans they couldn't afford? As I said, being exploited by a corporation is entirely *voluntary*.

On the other hand, try opting out of various laws that you don't like. I'm sure I don't need to make a list of various laws that are stupid, yet you have no choice to suffer them.