For partisans of a free and robust public discourse, these are the best of times – but they could turn into the worst of times in a mere matter of months, especially if the Democrats control two branches of government. That’s the thrust of Brian Anderson’s and Adam Thierer’s slim election-year call to arms, “A Manifesto for Media Freedom.”
“America’s Golden Age of media could come to an end,” they warn.
Anderson and Thierer want to pin all the blame for threats to free speech on “liberals” (and maybe a few stray Republicans). But there’s really no way for them to get around the fact that the Republican standard-bearer in this year’s election, John McCain, was the driving force behind the most egregious assault on the First Amendment since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 – that is, the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance regulation bill on 2002.
Let’s start with what they get right. As Anderson has discussed elsewhere (see his 2005 book, “South Park Conservatives”), we live in an age of unprecedented media abundance. Despite whining from some quarters about the hegemony of outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, practically every person in America has access to a ludicrous multiplicity of news an entertainment sources – unimaginable even a generation ago. Anderson and Thierer posit a hypothetical “lesbian feminist African American who likes to hunt on weekends and has a passion for country music.” Not too many outlets served her needs 25 years ago. Today, her TiVo could pack in hours of programming a day just on cable TV that would pique her interest – not to mention that there’s probably a blog out there somewhere called lesbianfeministAfricanAmerican.blogspot.com (and if there wasn’t, she could start it herself in an evening at no cost).
Sure, there are some who consider this a bad thing – generally left-leaning academics who think Americans (read: Republicans) are too prone to sorting themselves into ideological silos where no dissent can be heard. But, as regards the fastest-growing information medium, the Internet, there are no serious proposals for government action that would even disrupt the current moveable feast. Anderson and Thierer are right to oppose such silly schemes as exist – including liberal legal scholar Cass Sunstein’s suggestion that partisan Web sites be required to have “electronic sidewalks,” forcing them to link to opposing views. But arguing against such obscure foolishness does little but elevate it unnecessarily to the realm of respectability.
Likewise, Anderson and Thierer are right to argue against the return of the Fairness Doctrine (which, until Reagan got rid of it, inhibited broadcast TV and radio networks from running much opinion content, lest the FCC decide they hadn’t given enough airtime to the opposite point of view). But they simply don’t make a credible case that Americans should fear the doctrine’s return. Certainly, there are left-wing think tanks and even prominent Democratic politicians such as John Kerry and Al Gore who have expressed the view that the Fairness Doctrine ought to return. But Barack Obama has been very clear that he does not support it.
And what if Obama’s lying, and secretly plans to bring it back? As Anderson and Thierer write themselves, “even if you believed in regulating the radio dial, the Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t be effective in an age of information abundance. Citizens could just ‘turn the dial’ to satellite radio, Internet radio stations, their iPod’s menu of podcasts and so on.”
Meanwhile, the most potent threat to the First Amendment, as Anderson and Thierer get around to telling us in their final chapter, is campaign-finance regulation, which they call “one of the biggest dangers to media freedom.” As they detail, it’s this phony “reform” that has tried to ban ads mentioning candidates’ names on TV and radio ahead of elections; it’s this phony reform that has been used to go after independent political groups that want to speak out on public-policy issues; and it’s this phony reform that has posed the biggest threat to speech on the Internet, as the Federal Election Commission struggles to figure out what to do when political blogs and Web sites dance too close to the edge of “electioneering.”
Last I checked, McCain-Feingold was written by a Republican senator and signed by a Republican president. Liberals may want to restrict our freedom of speech, it seems, but Republicans actually get the job done.
A Manifesto for Media Freedom
by Brian C. Anderson & Adam D. Thierer
Encounter Books