Pelosi Backs Senate Amendment to Censor Talk Radio

Infowars
March 6, 2009

Over the last week, the corporate media has subjected us to an incessant propaganda salvo directed against the Oxycontin-addled talk radio host Rush Limbaugh. Obviously, Limbaugh is an easy target, especially for Democrats brainwashed by the false left-right paradigm. However, the point of the orchestrated attack against Limbaugh is not the alleged unfairness of “conservative” talk radio or even Limbaugh’s rhetoric critical of Barack Obama, but rather it is a coordinated attack designed to set the stage for the “regulation” of free speech.

“Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told CNSNews.com on Thursday that she supports an amendment to a Senate bill that would force the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ‘take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest.’”

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNSNews she supports an amendment to a Senate bill that would force the Federal Communications Commission to “take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest.”

House Conference Chairman Mike Pence, who is a former radio broadcaster, told CNSNews the amendment is a Trojan horse designed to restore the Fairness Doctrine, an FCC regulation dumped in 1987 that forced broadcasters to grant equal time to opposing points of view.

“Its clear to me that Democrats, having failed in their frontal assault on talk radio in America through the Fairness Doctrine, are now shifting strategy to a form of regulation that is essentially the Fairness Doctrine by stealth,” said Pence. The Senate amendment was attached to a bill granting Washington, D.C., a vote in the House of Representatives by Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin. It was passed last Thursday in a vote along party lines.

“I support Mr. Durbin in most things,” averred Pelosi. “Diversity in media ownership is very, very, important.”

In response to the attachment of the “Durbin amendment,” Sen. Jim DeMint inserted an amendment banning the Fairness Doctrine to the same bill. It passed by a vote of 87-11 and will go to the House. Minority Leader John Boehner said he believes Republicans may be able to raise the votes to stop it.

Not surprisingly, the so-called Durbin amendment is nearly identical to a policy position put out by Obama’s White House, which reads: “Encourage Diversity in Media Ownership: Encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum.”
Obama’s policy position reflects that of his transition leader John Podesta. Podesta’s Center for American Progress, described as a “liberal think-tank,” released a policy paper in 2007 entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio. “Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration,” writes Edwin Chen for Bloomberg. Apparently, Obama and his adopted “progressive” policy proposals are at odds with the First Amendment.

Of course, Rush Limbaugh’s EIB, Clear Channel, and Fox News will either pay to play or will hire a handful of token “progressives” in order to get around the new Fairness Doctrine, that is if it becomes law and the Supreme Court allows it to stand.

If the bill becomes law and stands, it will be the small guys forced out of business, not the large communications and entertainment corporations. But then it is the small guys posing a real threat to the establishment, not Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, or Michael “Savage” Weiner, who represent the fake opposition.