Censorship gone wild!!!

I think Keith Olberman needs to stick to football. In another interview with Scott Mclellan, Keith Olberman came to this startling conclusion, “Fox News is biased”. I won't necessarily disagree here, it is hard for Fox News or any News channel to be unbiased but this seems like a case of the pot calling the kettle black, only the pot is "blacker" than the kettle. Numerous liberal pundits are complaining that shows like The O'Reilly Factor and Sean Hannity are parroting the White house talking points. To be more specific the problem apparently is that these shows mention the White house talking points at all. Somehow by acknowledging the existence of these talking points and, God forbid, agreeing with some of them Fox News is guilty of being biased. The definition of biased here seems to be "agreeing or disagreeing with any point not previously 'agreed upon' by the liberal media." If this is the definition then yah, Fox is biased.

It got more interesting when another pundit began to explain that it was unconstitutional for Fox to parrot these talking points. Let me first ask that, if this is true, then do we get to ban MSNBC, CNN, New York Times and Air America if and when Obama wins? No? Then your problem isn't that Fox is repeating, or more accurately reporting, white house talking points but that those points are not your talking points. Hypocrisy like this is rampant throughout the media. To address the constitutionality of this we must consider the argument itself. I cannot find a link to this so I am going to have to do this from memory. (Let me ask my very small audience at this time to please send any sources you have. I would like any of them.)

From Bennett in the morning sometime at 4 AM (I know, quite an ungodly hour, so forgive me if I screw this up.) a female pundit stated that it is unconstitutional for Fox to, and I quote, "Be a mouthpiece for the government" Even ignoring the obvious problem involving their complacency toward being a mouth piece for the Clintons during their stay, this argument does not fly. The only thing in the constitution that could possibly be misconstrued as making it unconstitutional to "be the mouthpiece of the government" is the freedom of speech and press part of amendment I. This fails to address anything regarding this as the government is not directly or even indirectly prohibiting them from speaking. However, it would be unconstitutional for liberals to prohibit Fox from speaking by forbidding them to tell their side of the story.

If you are at all surprised by this then you are not aware of the Fairness Doctrine. It is an attempt to bring back rules and regulations that more or less shutdown talk radio which is completely dominated by conservatives. All this is done in the name of being equitable to both sides. Unfortunately not everyone wants to have another viewpoint shoved down their throats. Although I do think people should look at both sides, I do not believe in mandating it. If you want to see me switch sides on an issue, add the word mandate. Most everything could be accomplished without mandates.

If you still are not convinced that we shouldn't allow this then all you need to do is ask yourself what if when the republicans got back into office they decide to use these rules against you. Censorship is censorship, it doesn't matter who does the censoring.