Rush: Fairness Doctrine Spells Doom for Talk Radio

A push to re-institute the fairness doctrine represents a bid to "shut down" talk radio, top-rated host Rush Limbaugh warned on Friday.

"Liberals can't beat us in the arena of ideas ... so what they want to do is shut us down," he told his audience, in comments reported Monday by the New York Post's John Mainelli.

Unlike the equal time rule for political candidates, the fairness doctrine required radio and TV stations to represent both sides of controversial opinions.

New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey is pushing to bring it back.

"We need to undo all the previous damage that's been done over the last several years [and] re-establish the public's control of the airwaves, which has been eroded" since the doctrine was abandoned in 1987, Hinchey said three months ago.

But those who say broadcasting has somehow been hurt without the fairness doctrine ignore the fact that talk radio is flourishing like never before.

During the days of the fairness doctrine, there were just 125 talk-radio stations up and down the dial nationwide. After 16 years without the regulation, the number of stations has grown more than tenfold.

But that will all change, warned Limbaugh, if Hinchey and other opponents of talk radio get their wish.

"At some point, management says it's not worth it: 'I'm just not going to put on anything that's controversial,' " Rush predicted. "They know ... they're not going to get anywhere near the kind of audiences we have."

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