Before he died, The Rev. Richard John Neuhas contributed a dozen pages of observations for ?The Public Square? section of the magazine he founded, First Things. Most interesting is the last item, in which Neuhas writes a matter-of-fact account of his ?contending with a cancer,? explaining that he neither feared death nor refused to live.
But another item attracted my attention because of its link to topics we?ve discussed in this forum. In a brief review of the new book A Manifesto for Media Freedom, Neuhas takes aim at the Fairness Doctrine.
[T]he argument over reimposing the Fairness Doctrine and inventing new forms of government regulation is not about moral improvement ? although some may claim it is ? but about control and, more specifically, control by those who presume to know what is best for ordinary folk who cannot be trusted to make their own decisions. And ? it is about the First Amendment. It is an unremarked oddity that advocates of government control readily exempt newspapers from their proposals. It is as though, on this question, they are the champions of ?originalism? rather than ?the living constitution? in their legal interpretation. Since the founders knew only about newspapers when they forbade ?abridging the freedom of speech or of the press,? the First Amendment, they seem to be suggesting, does not apply to other forms of communication. I am not as sure as some that today?s ?media cornucopia? is an unmitigated good, but it seems clear enough that the proponents of government control, in the name of ensuring fairness and neutrality, are engaged in a partisan power grab that is distinctly unfriendly to freedom, which is among the greatest of social goods.
Click here to read a recent Carolina Journal Online exclusive about the Fairness Doctrine, and click play below for a snippet from Donna Martinez?s interview with Jon Ham on the topic from Carolina Journal Radio program No. 292.
