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Is this Censorhip? The “Fairness Doctrine”

I’ve recently heard about this in the newspaper. It is a right of the FCC’s to impose a rule that all broadcasters, whether public or private, must devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. This doctrine is also called by critics the “Media Control Doctrine”. In June, representatives of Obama’s campaign said that he was against this, but recently, they have begun to refuse to confrim or deny whether they support it. It has become a hot issue since a few Democratic congressmen have begun to push for the Doctrine to be reinstated. I understand the idea that fairness is an important value for our media, but to me this just seems like too much. If you force a talk show host to report on things that he doesn’t care about or want on his show, isn’t that against our freedom of speech?

The Republican criticism on this is that the most media today is largely Democratic. The only media source in which Republican speakers dominate are the radio talk shows. With this doctrine, Democrats would have the dominant control over almost all forms of media. I can see how this is very frightening to Republicans who see this as censorship. With both the executive and legislative branches Democratic, their political powe has been greatly reduced. Now if the talk shows were forced to discuss issues they don’t want to on their talk shows, i can imagine how many listeners would end up not listening to them at all. If no one’s listening, these shows would not be able to economically survive, they would shut down, and thus the Republicans would lose their last foothold in the media.

Though I’m not Republican or a conservative, this still seems a little wrong to me. What if they applied this rule to television shows? Wouldn’t it completely ruin many democratic shows (Democracy Now, for example), if they were forced to discuss issues from a Republican point of view? However, this doctrine only applies to radio talk shows. And i highly doubt a Democratic congress would impose something like this on the tv stations. or the internet.

even if they did, and all stations, whether democratic or republican, were forced to discuss issues from both sides of view, isn’t that too much? how is that freedom of speech if the government decides how much time you are allowed to spend talking about what you want to talk about? isn’t that taking political correctness a little too far? if its not obscene, and its not hurting people, why should the media be controlled by the government?

i know this site is majorly democratic and liberal, and i want to know what you think about this. does this sound ok with you?

sources:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/...
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/h...
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billt...
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill....
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content...
http://www.humanevents.com/article.ph...