The Fairness Doctrine

I'm about a week late to the party, but Fox News aired this gem on May 30:

Normally, I am not someone that thinks that efforts to restore the "Fairness Doctrine" are worth the Herculean lift that would be necessary to overcome all the conspiracy-mongering and ill will it would generate among the masses.If FNC viewers weren't tuning in to this stuff, they'd be getting it from Rush. If someone made Rush provide equal time for opposing views, they'd tune him out in favor of pirate radio like the kind I used to listen while driving through rural Indiana on the way to Valparaiso. If we managed to get all the pirates, if that were even a good thing, people would simply get their news from chain emails.

The point is that in a country that respects free speech, there is no option but to respect the right to be grossly misinformed or propagandized to in a decidedly unidirectional manner. People have a right to their epistemic closure. My objection here is that there is no question that the above segment is for all practical purposes an in kind contribution to the Romney campaign, a four minute advertisement for which the campaign did not have to spend ad dollars, either for the airtime or for the production.

The absence of a fairness doctrine, combined with a willingness on the part of any sufficiently funded individuals to masquerade as journalists while in reality working as de facto campaign operatives creates a loophole in any kind of campaign finance law that you could push a battleship through. If this sort of thing is permissible, we might as well pare down the role of the FEC to merely rubber stamping attempts to disenfranchise minorities.