Schumer on Fox: Fairness Doctrine ‘fair and balanced’

Sen. Charles
Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday defended the so-called Fairness Doctrine in an
interview on Fox News, saying, “I think we should all be fair and balanced,
don’t you?”

Schumer’s
comments echo other Democrats’ views on reviving the Fairness Doctrine, which
would require radio stations to balance conservative hosts with liberal ones.

{mosads}Asked if he is a
supporter of telling radio stations what content they should have, Schumer used
the fair and balanced line, claiming that critics of the Fairness Doctrine are
being inconsistent.

“The very same
people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC [Federal
Communications Commission] to limit pornography on the air. I am for that… But
you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but
you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.”

In 2007, Senate
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a close ally of Democratic presidential
nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told The Hill, “It’s time to reinstitute the
Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear
both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”

Senate Rules
Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last year said, “I believe
very strongly that the airwaves are public and people use these airwaves for
profit. But there is a responsibility to see that both sides and not just one
side of the big public questions of debate of the day are aired and are aired with
some modicum of fairness.”

Conservatives
fear that forcing stations to make equal time for liberal talk radio would cut
into profits so significantly that radio executives would opt to scale back on
conservative radio programming to avoid escalating costs and interference from
the FCC.

They also note
that conservative radio shows has been far more successful than liberal ones.

In his Fox
interview, Schumer, who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee,
also weighed in on the election, predicting that Democrats will end up with
between 56 and 58 seats in the Senate.

He also defended
“card check” legislation, claiming there is a strong need to allow workers to cast a
public ballot on whether they support the formation of a union.

Schumer said “there has to be some counter” to the leverage businesses have,
claiming “employers have every leg up on people who want to organize and that’s
why union workers have gone down from about 25 percent to 6 percent [in the
private sector].”

Business groups
adamantly oppose the card check bill, which passed the House and fell short of
the necessary votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.