By Selwyn Duke

If you’re old enough to remember
the days when freak shows were in carnivals and not daytime television, you may
know about the barker and the shill. These were carnival employees who both
worked to entice customers into entering the mysterious realm of the sideshow,
only, their methods were very different. The barker – the correct terminology
is the “talker” – was a P.T. Barnum-like character, a bold salesman who sang
the praises of the exhibits. Although he was given to the hyperbole of
marketing, he made no bones about his agenda: He wanted your business.

The shill was a very different
animal. His job was to stand amidst the crowd and pose as one of their number;
he would then feign awe as he claimed to have seen the show and that it was
truly a jaw-dropping experience. He was trading on his illusion of
impartiality, knowing it lent him a capacity to convince that eluded the talker
with his obvious agenda.

This occurs to me when I ponder the
attempt to resurrect the “Fairness Doctrine” by politicians such as Congressman
Dennis Kucinich and avowedly socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. For those of you
not acquainted with this proposal, it harks back to a federal regulation in
place from 1949 to 1987. Ostensibly it was designed to ensure “fairness” in
broadcasting, mandating that if radio and TV stations air controversial
viewpoints, they must provide equal time for the “other side.”

Now, as many have pointed out, this
effort is motivated by a desire to stifle conservative commentary. After all,
it isn’t lost on the radical left that the dumping of this doctrine in 1987
directly coincided with the rise of conservative talk radio. Freed from the
threat of hefty government fines, stations were finally able to formulate
programs based on market forces and not government regulation. Thus did Michael Savage, Rush
Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and many others give
voice to the usually silent majority.

Of course, many may wonder why I’d
take issue with fairness. Shouldn’t we give the “other side” its day in court,
one may ask?

The problem is that this regulation
would be applied to talk radio but not arenas dominated by liberal thought, a
perfect example of which is the ever-present mainstream media (which presents
the “other side”). This is because talk show hosts trade in red-meat
commentary, whereas the mainstream press is more subtle in its opinion-making.

Fine then, say the critics, that’s
as it should be. We don’t have to worry about “responsible journalists”; it’s
those acid-tongued firebrands who pollute discourse with their pyro-polemics
who bedevil us. And on the surface this sounds convincing, which is why I tell
you of the talker and the shill.

The dirty little secret behind the
Fairness Doctrine is that it punishes the honest. Think about it: Radio hosts
are the talkers; they wear their banners openly as they proclaim who and what
they are. Sure, they may be brash and hyperbolic, loud and oft-sardonic, but
there is no pretense, little guile, and you know what they want you to believe.
You know what they’re sellin’ and if you’re buyin’.

The mainstream media, however, is a
shill. Oh, not shills working with talk radio, of course, as their talkers are
entities such as MoveOn.org and Media Matters, but they are shills nonetheless.
They masquerade as impartial purveyors of information, almost-automatons who,
like Joe Friday, are just interested in the facts, ma’am. They flutter their
eyes and read their Teleprompters, and we are to believe God graced them with a
singular ability to render facts uncolored by personal perspective.

In reality, though, the Shill Media
are about as impartial as an Imam in a comparative religion class. Let’s not
forget that they used to call Republican reductions in the rate of spending
growth “budget cuts,” have a habit of referring to pro-lifers as “anti-abortion
groups” (they don’t call pro-choice groups “pro-abortion”) and to terrorists as
insurgents or even “freedom fighters,” and only seem to perceive hate crime
when the victim’s group has victim status. And while I can’t comprehensively
document news bias here, suffice it to say the Shill Media are at least as
ideologically monolithic as talk radio. Why, in 1992, 89 percent of Washington journalists
voted for Bill Clinton; in 1996 the figure was 92 percent. Even outside the
Beltway liberal bias reigns, with scribes so situated favoring Democrats by
about a three to one margin.

But the point here isn’t the nature
or pervasiveness of the bias, but its insidiousness. The Shill Media are the
truly dangerous ones because of their illusion of impartiality. There’s a
reason why we trust what Consumer Reports says about Buick a lot more
than what Buick says about Buick. And if we discovered that Buick’s marketing
arm was masquerading as a consumer advocacy magazine, we’d want the subterfuge
revealed. Remember, brainwashing is only effective if you’re not aware
it’s occurring.

This is why the Fairness Doctrine
is an insult to the intelligence of anyone possessing more than a modicum of
that quality. Its message is, hey, hide your bias well, be a slick propagandist
and you’ll proceed unmolested. But dare not tell the truth or be so bold as to
bare your soul. Like an ostentatious literary critic, we appreciate subtlety
and abhor straightness. Lying lips trump truthful tongues, don’t you know?

Thus, far better than a fairness
doctrine would be a “Truth in Media Doctrine.” And here’s its mandate: When a
correspondent is shown on the nightly news, there must be a caption to the
effect of, “Dan Rather, Clinton-Gore-Kerry voter” or “Katie Couric, lifelong
Democrat.”

Hey, why not? Let’s strip the masks
off the shills. Otherwise, it’s a bit like letting Mullah Omar sing the praises
of Islam while dressed as a Catholic priest. And shouldn’t these “responsible
journalists” be at least as honest as those troglodytes in talk radio?

I wax satirical but, in reality,
ensuring disclosure is far easier than securing fairness. In fact, how could
the latter possibly be achieved? After all, media bias lies not just in how
news is reported but also in what they choose to report on in the first place.
Why do they decide to focus on sex-discrimination in the construction industry
instead of transgressions by abortionists? Why Abu Ghraib instead of the
oil-for-food scandal? Why that which helps or harms one cause but not another?

The fact is that the media choose
the social battlefields and decide which way salvos will be fired. Human
judgement is in play when they decide whether to broadcast or bury, how often a
story will run, what terminology will describe it and what imagery will attend
it.

Then, the idea that fairness is
ensured by disseminating the “other side” presupposes that there are only two
sides, but an issue isn’t a coin. There are often a multitude of sides,
therefore, a dictate to present both sides simply means government input in the
process of discrimination. And that’s what it is, since only two sides will be
chosen from among many. What about the libertarians, Greens, Vermont
Progressives, Constitutionalists, Christian Freedom Party members and
communists? Oh, silly me, I forgot. The communists are giving us the Fairness
Doctrine.

Now, some will say the other side
is simply a refutation of the talkers’ controversial positions. But here I note
that much of talk radio commentary is in fact a refutation of Shill Media
positions. Thus, insofar as this goes, talk radio doesn't need to be balanced
by the other side.

It is the other side.

So, affirmative-action and quotas
in commentary? Please. Should I think Big Brother capable of factoring millions
of different elements into a media formula and developing a paradigm for
fairness? Sure, let’s have the Post Office run the press.

Of course, the dirty little secret
is that the Fairness Doctrine is about everything but. Its proponents are
political shills, bristling at the fact that their talk radio test balloon,
Airhead America, only succeeded in talking its way into Chapter 11. Their
spirit is the same one that gives us speech codes in colleges and corporations,
the effort to stifle grassroots lobbying and hate speech laws. Perhaps it’s
that those who can teach, do, and those who can’t, legislate.

You know, there’s an image conjured
up by this scheme, that of a sullen, pouty little child complaining, “That’s
not fair!” and stamping his foot with arms akimbo. But as John F. Kennedy
observed, “Life’s not fair.”

No, it certainly isn’t. Some people are born
with intelligence, others aren’t. Some people possess logic, reason, sound
ideas, philosophical depth and powers of persuasion, others don’t. I guess the
less gifted’s recourse to this ploy is a tacit admission that they bring no
ammunition to the battlefield of debate. And now it seems they fancy big
government a substitute for big ideas.

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