Say Anything Blog

Normally I wouldn’t make a big deal out of a spokesperson refusing to rule something out.  After all, if the spokesperson hasn’t been specifically briefed to answer questions on a specific issue they’ll usually issue these sort of non-committal statements until they have been briefed.  But Obama has made definitive statements about the fairness doctrine before, so this shouldn’t have been something Axelrod couldn’t answer.

Unless Obama really is planning to join fellow Democrats like Debbie Stabenow, Tom Harkin and Maurice Hinchey in getting behind a resurrection of the fairness doctrine.

Toward the end of David Axelrod’s interview on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace jumped into a lightning round of hot-button issues.

There, Wallace asked the top adviser about an issue making the rounds on both conservative and liberal radio shows, where Democratic Congressional leaders (and even Bill Clinton) have recently weighed in.

“Will you rule out reimposing the Fairness Doctrine?” asked Wallace.

“I’m going to leave that issue to Julius Genachowski, our new head of the FCC, to, and the president, to discuss,” Axelrod said. “So I don’t have an answer for you now.”

In June, press secretary Michael Ortiz told Broadcasting & Cable that “Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters.”

That’s clear enough. But since becoming president, it’s been difficult to get such a definitive statement.

Here’s the video:

Just another post-inauguration flip-flop for Obama.

It’s worth noting that the Obama administration has pretty close ties to liberal talk radio.  Blow hards like Ed Schultz and others were reliable sycophants throughout the campaign for Obama (and in Senator Stabenow’s case, her husband actually works for Air America), so I wonder if a new fairness doctrine wouldn’t be a way for Obama to pay these folks back.  Because the fairness doctrine would pretty much be welfare for liberal talk radio.

Again and again these liberal talk radio hosts fail because, to be frank, nobody wants to listen to them.  But with the fairness doctrine station managers who want to keep popular, money-making shows like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck would be forced to bring on liberal talkers.  Not because those liberal shows would add to their listening audiences and make money, but rather to comply with the arbitrary “fairness” of some government regulation.