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After Barack Obama won the 2008 election, conservatives started up a drumbeat of conspiracy theorizing about a secret liberal plan to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. The idea, apparently, was that this would put Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talkers out of business and thus ensure both the perpetual domination of the Democratic Party in Congress as well as Obama’s plan to become president-for-life. Don’t believe me? The cartoon on the right is typical of the time. Click here for further pictorial proof.

This particular paranoid fantasy didn’t get a lot of attention because there were so many other better ones flying around, but I had a loyal reader who kept emailing me about this, so I wrote a few posts about it. Today, I’m happy to report, Obama’s FCC, responding to an Obama executive order, has finally nailed the coffin shut on the Fairness Doctrine:

The FCC gave the coup de grace to the fairness doctrine Monday as the commission axed more than 80 media industry rules.

Earlier this summer FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski agreed to erase the post WWII-era rule, but the action Monday puts the last nail into the coffin for the regulation that sought to ensure discussion over the airwaves of controversial issues did not exclude any particular point of view. A broadcaster that violated the rule risked losing its license.

….Monday’s move is part of the commission’s response to a White House executive order directing a “government-wide review of regulations already on the books” designed to eliminate unnecessary regulations.

Will this persuade anyone? Probably not. They’ll just insist that Obama really did plan to bring back the Doctrine, and it was only their relentless opposition that forced him to back down. What’s more, this is all just a feint. Obama may have lost a battle, but behind the scenes the war still goes on.

For the rest of us, though, this is the final chapter in the story of the Fairness Doctrine. Adios.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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