Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine might not be possible, or wise. People seem to want card-stacking news. Not just FOX News, but other channels like CNN and MSNBC take advantage of it. Do we need it to reinvigorate cable news?

Since FOX News has burned out after its moment in the sun the past few years, the man who was on the opinion scene since the beginning has moved once more to the forefront of controversy. Rush Limbaugh, the original iron man of conservative radio, rode the first wave of punditry in the late 1980’s and never let go.

In 1987, Limbaugh’s father’s buddies in the Reagan Administration repealed the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine had always required that radio stations give free air-time for responses to any controversial opinions they broadcast. Repealing it opened the floodgates for editorial commentary where jowl shakers like Limbaugh were free to denounce anybody as a communist or a cross-dresser and get paid for it.

In a Wall Street Journal editorial Daniel Henninger wrote, “Ronald Reagan tore down this wall (the Fairness Doctrine) in 1987…and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination.”

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