Feinstein is no "liberal" as she's always been one of the more conservative California Democrats. It's quite clear that the mainstream media, including newsprint, which much TV news relies upon, has deteriorated away from objective factual reporting and into opinionizing and reporting on opinionizing. The piece blithely ignores that Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine (1949-87), which catapulted faux news coverage a la Fox into the mainstream. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views. It merely prevented a station from day after day presenting a single view without airing opposing views. Sounds like common sense.

A typical “puff piece” advancing the approved ultra conservative dogma about talk radio—sounds like someone feels threatened by things like the Imus firing over his outrageous remarks. Whatever happened to the original concept that the airwaves belong to the American people and should be used for the public good? (You know, giving equal treatment to all sides of the issue?) This puffery concludes with the astonishing line: “What Feinstein really wants is for federal bureaucrats to decide what political opinion programming we should hear. She presumes to know better than listeners what is “fair.” Hasn’t this been the official Bush administration doctrine for the past six years?

Why are we allowing our tralk radio to be treated inthis manner. i have lost too many freedoms under the guise of fear of terrorism. Please let us live our lives enjoy what we enjoy listening to and let us decide whether we turn the knob to the on or off position.

This is typical of biased, superficial treatment of a critically important issue. At a time when American democracy itself suffers unprecidented attack by deep-pocket idologues, oligarchs and corporatists, our citizens are scarcely aware of the scarcity of factual, wide-ranging information available on our airwaves. Further, we're being minipulated to a state of apathy and cynicism about critical, "root cause" issues such as media consolidation and the sacking of our Public Commons by monied, special interest thieves of every stripe. This article is just one more example of how it's done.

Although the source is not stated, it appears to be an interview of both Democrat Feinstein and Republican Trent Lott on FOX news last Sunday (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,286442,00.html) that was mostly about immigration; the issue of media fairness came up when the host asked about a comment that Lott (not Feinstein) had made that was critical of talk radio. This article thus fails on a very basic level - it has not a single mention of Trent Lott's leading role.

I shudder when any politician wants to get his or her hands on the airwaves...

While this is just an opinion piece, it would have been nice if the author had bothered to put any substance into his arguments. I think this is an important topic and deserves a reasoned opinion from the right side of the dial, but unfortunately this article is no more interesting than just saying that it isn't fair that there are 91% conservative talkers to 9% "liberal" talkers. It would be nice to hear a variety of well reasoned opinions on the topic.

My level of agreement or disagreement with the author aside, this is a moderate to poor posting. The history lesson regarding Fred Friendly is interesting, but without cites or links it's a mere assertion. The point about increasing amounts of political expression is valid, but cries out for a response to the "extremes" allegation being posited by the Fairness Doctrine's advocates.

Good opinion piece on what's wrong with the revival of the un-"fairness doctrine".

The loss of the Fairness Doctrine has been a major loss to our democracy, making this an important topic. It's unfortunate that there is no sourcing and essentially no historical context for this piece.

Ironically, the "fairness" aspect of communication is ignored in this piece. The Fairness Doctrine and other efforts to allow for a broad and diverse discussion of issues are based on small d democracy. An informed populace does not rise up from "market-based" doctrines. This nation has been dumbed down and anyone who peeks at TV can attest to that. The Internet is great but not available to all, and the radio stations have been bought up by the big guys. To understand what is possible and what once was, go back and take a listen to some of the TV talk shows that were on thirty, forty years ago: Dick Cavett, even Mike Douglas, had content that truly reflected diversity of opinions. Notice the caliber of the vocabulary used by ... More »

Site fails to come up, says errors on page. I'm not sure if that is a technical statement, or an editorial admission. ;-)

This opinion piece deliberately ignores that the Fairness Doctrine was an issue of public interest. Primarily, it made up for the fact that airwaves are limited to the people who can afford to purchase them. It is in our democracy's best interest to inform the public rather than having a public only receiving one-sided and either ill-informed or deliberately incomplete information such as this op-ed piece delivers.

Political discourse "has been liberated"? No, it has not. Note: Ann Coulter. Discourse has been dumped in the trash.

The airways belong to the American people not the multinational corporations that finance sell out right wing ideologues. The article is not only ill informed, it doesn't even recognize difference between recreational bloggiing and professional journalism.

A very good opinion piece. Since the Link to the full text of the item is not working, I'll reproduce a key paragraph from the paper: What Feinstein really wants is for federal bureaucrats to decide what political opinion programming we should hear. She presumes to know better than listeners what is “fair.” . . . What is especially revealing about these trial balloons for renewed regulation of political speech is that America already has an incredible diversity of media giving vent to opinion and commentary on every conceivable issue in public policy. Thanks to the Internet, America is in the midst of an unprecedented political news and commentary explosion. Anybody with an opinion can start a blog that can be read by anyone ... More »

As a media junkie for years, I found this to be fairly ahistorical, there is little context or evidence for these not fully-informed opinions, cites Senator James Inhofe who has major credibility problems as a source and is essentially an opinion piece disguised as a news story. There are arguments against the Fairness Doctrine coming back, but this story doesn't even present the strongest arguments. Poor job all the way around.