HORACE COOPER COMMENTARY: Fake Right, Thrust Left

The law professor and conservative Republican writes about liberal efforts to have the government intervene against conservative talk radio: "It is axiomatic that under the First Amendment the federal government should not make assessments of the political content of talk radio or of any news program and they clearly shouldn’t link keeping your license to those assessments. Setting aside questions about indecency, obscenity or hate speech, the type of programming criticized in the CAP study is exactly the type of activity that the First Amendment exists to protect. In the view of CAP, the federal government should legitimately be concerned because 'too much time' is being spent discussing tax relief, school prayer, or gun owner rights? As an aside, on the same day that the CAP report was issued, MSNBC released a news story covering the political contributions of the mainstream media. It was no surprise that the news report indicated that editors, producers and news anchor lean to the left and give accordingly – almost 9 to 1 according to the report.....The irony is that notwithstanding this overwhelming bias in political contributions, no centrists or people on the right advocated legislation to restrict the political contributions of the news media. Americans recognized that our Bill of Rights explicitly provides a wide zone of freedom for this type of conduct even if it is overwhelmingly biased to the left."

Professor Cooper adds: "On the other hand, the CAP study not only identifies the talk radio programming which discusses current events and public policy disputes from a conservative perspective as a problem, it then goes forward and offers solutions that are even more troubling. What kind of solutions? First it conceives of the rehabilitation or creation of so called citizen councils which would operate apparently in lieu of arbitron ratings. These citizen groups would assess the usefulness and benefits of a given talk radio broadcasters programming to the locality. We’re not told how these individuals would be selected and fundamentally we’re given no explanation for why they are even needed. In the free market, a radio broadcaster has every incentive to make sure that the programming that is provided is welcomed because if he fails to do so, he’ll be out of business. Unfortunately in a bow to a government regulatory scheme more consistent with Hugo Chavez than the free market, the Center for the American Progress rejects viewer and listener decision-makers as the drivers of radio programming. Secondly the study recommends issuing assessments – also known as fines – to radio station owners that fail to provide 'balanced programming.' And interestingly, they recommend handing this bounty over to National Public Radio – the very same programming entity that the study itself doesn’t even acknowledge exists.....Finally the study determined that since women and minorities were more likely to support Democrats and 'progressive' politics, women and minorities should have greater ownership of radio stations. But since the stations in question already have owners, CAP would use the pretext of corporation ownership concentration as a rationale for divestiture."

Professor Cooper concludes: "Ironically, the study fails to acknowledge the overwhelming hostility among radio audiences to the hard left programming format that they advocate. The abysmal collapse of Air America is a case study in the futility of the so-called 'progressive' format. With all of the financial support, publicity and promotion given this network, its staggering failure nationwide is clear evidence that there is neither need nor interest in this type of programming. At the end of the day, the CAP report fakes rights and thrusts left. It doesn’t identify right leaning programming properly, fails to properly identify right leaning programming, and pushes a dangerously anti-free speech and anti-free market leftist agenda."