The "Fairness Doctrine" should be rejected

First of all I said Pro's opinion was right-winged; not the history lesson off Wikipedia. Pro might want to study some more history. I'm glad he was up to another round, though I wish Pro knew what he was talking about. 1. Pro said that by virtue of ownership the government has no right to determine the content of news papers shipped on the highway. That alone is acceptable, but what is wrong is comparing the highway; a public transit system to a privately owned channel. If you were to compare the two accurately, which you didn't, you would have to make up information that isn't true. Here is were Pro failed to make sense. When a company like Air America buys air space from the government they agree to the rights and conditions, but they control that space. No company from the private sector is allowed to buy a portion of the highway. They can drive on it, but they can't buy it and restrict access to who they want or don't want to let use the highway. On something traveling on a road the government owns is different then buying the road. Now that that is clear lets go ahead and revisit Pro's argument. Pro says that he argued that the fairness doctrine is a "hypocritical attempt to suppress free speech." Pro says this because it supposedly could be applied to other forms of media, but isn't. Because his argument against my logic was wrong I will restate the fact that it is not hypocritical because of the following reasons: first of all, allowing an opposing viewpoint is not a suppression of free speech and second, is it "hypocritical" to make a law saying that a person no matter their race, gender, or religious belief can enter any restaurant of their choice just because there is no rule saying girl scouts have to be allowed to be part of boy scouts if they wanted to? Again with Air America. Lets say it did go ahead and succeed and ended up doing so well it bought all frequencies. That would mean every station would be liberal. Having the Fairness Doctrine means that even though the conservatives didn't have any channels they would still be allowed to give their point of view. Considering that the media is mostly liberal Pro might want to forfeit or change his political beliefs. 2. Pro thinks there is no need for the Fairness Doctrine if there are fairness in media organizations, when in actuality there would need to be a Fairness Doctrine or the the fairness in media organizations wouldn't have a job because there would be no fairness doctrine to watch. 3. Here is the date of your article: 3/19/2007 7:06:00 PM MT (source: http://www.multichannel.com...) Here is the date of my source: June 2008 (source: http://www.ncta.com...) Here is today's date: February 9th, 2009. Your source is older and therefore is deemed unreliable. I also want to note that Pro's source is a news article. Pro stated that news is biased, thus Pro's article is bias. My source is a data agency that didn't write a story, but presented factual numbers. This is important to note because Pro needs to get down from his high horse and understand that not everyone can afford or has access to other alternative sources. Radio is the only free one, which does have a limited availability. 4. Pro asked me to "state explicitly how he thinks the Fairness Doctrine will be enforced. How will watchdog groups *require* that liberals get time to respond to conservative viewpoints, and that all-Caribbean-music stations meet their quota of public affairs programming?" Watchdog groups are a lot like private interest groups in the sense that if there is a P.I.G. that is pro-guns then there will be another P.I.G. that is anti-guns. If there is a watchdog group observing one side there is another watchdog group observing the other side. Pro then says that I believe that Air America was not allowed to give their viewpoint. I never said this and yet again Pro is making up things. I said, "By you saying that liberals should not be allowed to give opposing viewpoints means that YOU are banning free speech." I wrote this because Pro said that "liberals" are forcing their viewpoints on radio stations. The very stations that ban others from giving their view points. Which means that the stations that you seem to be supporting are banning free speech. It is the government job to allow free speech on their air waves and that is why the Fairness Doctrine needs to be approved. About Pro's idea of the government choosing to take away licenses, I will explain how the system works so he can better understand the real world. Lets take a look at a case study: the Super bowl XXXVIII in where Janet Jackson had that wardrobe malfunction. The FCC fined NBC $555k not because they deemed it inappropriate, but because the media watchdog group "Parents Television Council" filed an indecency complaint with the FCC. The P.T.C. declared what happened during the halftime show was a violation, not the FCC. The only thing the FCC did was fine CBS, not determine was was inappropriate. Just like how they don't determine was is or is not fair. 5. It looks like Pro just called everyone dumb because he thinks that the public thinks the bias is the truth. Pro also goes to say that, " the news media reported a severe problem with homelessness under Bush41, but the day that Clinton took office, reporting ceased." It is actually a common occurrence to not address the doings of a previous president when a new president takes office. It is always about what the new president will do. The New York Times is liberal, while the Wall Street Journal is conservative. So when someone reads the New York Times they already expect it to be full of liberal bias reporting, such as the wonders of Obama or the scandals of Conservatives. This just justifies allowing the Fairness Doctrine because it is allowing an opposing side on a biased radio station reporting biased news. Pro did NOT assert that "the sole purpose of the Fairness Doctrine is to suppress dissenting Conservative opinion." I am arguing the reason the Fairness Doctrine should be accepted, not if it is or isn't suppressing Conservative opinion. Even if you want to argue that the Fairness Doctrine is suppressing the conservative opinion, you would be wrong. It is wrong because liberals control the majority of the media at a ratio of 7:2. The fairness doctrine would allow conservatives to give their point of view to over 3 times they are doing now, while the liberals expand their access by only 28%. Liberals 28% or Conservatives 350%? That sounds so unfair... Not. I just disproved your last paragraph and first paragraph by a simple mathematical calculation based on ratios.