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blue bits. red rocks.
Wednesday 31 December 2008

Reinstate something like the Fairness Doctrine of the airwaves. It doesn’t have to be the old one. But something! My reason is deadly serious and has nothing to do with party politics. Today, you can drive across many parts of the country — and it is no coincidence that these sections are “red” — without hearing any breadth of opinion, news, fact or commentary. Radio, in these regions, features only the most bile-drenched and horrific hate fests. We need to remember what happened in the years that led up to the first American Civil War. Before the breakout of hostilities in 1861, there was a similar absolute uniformity of rabble-roused opinion, all across the South, where even a slight effort to widen the debate led to the mob-torching of newspapers and the smashing ot their presses. (In contrast, there were “copperhead” or Democratic Party newspapers and broadsheets available in most Northern areas.) Remember, also, that Timothy McVeigh lived immersed in such uniformity. If we want to end this phase of the Civil War, instead of seeing it burst into conflagration, the best tool is to encourage diversity of input and a spirit of peaceful argument. David Brin

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