Air America Founder Agrees With Rush Limbaugh On Fairness Doctrine
Jon Sinton, the founder of liberal radio network Air America, has a column in today’s Wall Street Journal agreeing with Rush Limbaugh on the fairness doctrine:
Conservative talk radio has worked itself into a tizzy lately over the rumored revival of the Fairness Doctrine—the FCC policy that sought to enforce balanced discussion on the nation’s airwaves.
As the founding president of Air America Radio, I believe that for the last eight years Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have been cheerleaders for everything wrong with our economic, foreign and domestic policies. But when it comes to the Fairness Doctrine, I couldn’t agree with them more. The Fairness Doctrine is an anachronistic policy that, with the abundance of choices on radio today, is entirely unnecessary.
Good on Sinton for taking a principled stand on a policy that he could clearly benefit from personally if it passed. The sub-headline of his piece is “Liberals don’t need equal-time rules to compete.” I think anyone familiar with Air America and its lack of success would note that liberals do, in fact, need equal-time rules to compete in talk radio. But at least Sinton is willing to admit that liberal radio should succeed only if people actually want to listen to liberal talk radio.
