"Sid Schweiger" wrote in message
...
But Nixon didn't invent the tactic. It was first used in the Kennedy
administration.

1) Kennedy was killed in 1963.

Maybe so, but your statement...

2) There was no Fairness Doctrine until 1969.

....is quite incorrect. Quoting
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/...rnessdoct.htm: The FCC
fairness policy was given great credence by the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case of /Red
Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc/. v. FCC. In that case, a station in Pennsylvania,
licensed by Red Lion Co., had aired a "Christian Crusade" program wherein an author,
Fred J. Cook, was attacked. When Cook requested time to reply in keeping with the
fairness doctrine, the station refused. Upon appeal to the FCC, the Commission
declared that there was personal attack and the station had failed to meet its
obligation. The station appealed and the case wended its way through the courts and
eventually to the Supreme Court. The court ruled for the FCC, giving sanction to the
fairness doctrine.

Point being that the Fairness Doctrine had been in place for quite some time...at
least long enough that the challenge to it (which, as the article notes, failed)
culminated in 1969. Another article (http://www.twf.org/News/Y1997/Fairness.html)
asserts that the policy was in place in 1947 (and enforced since 1949) when the
"Mayflower Doctrine", which prohibited all editorialising by broadcasters, was
abandoned.

Want to try that again?

Indeed.
--
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If there's nothing that offends you in your community, then you know you're not
living in a free society.
Kim Campbell - ex-Prime Minister of Canada - 2004
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