Special Report Roundtable - June 27

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you revive the fairness doctrine?

SEN DIANNE FEINSTEIN, (D) CALIFORNIA: Well, I'm looking at it, as a matter of fact, Chris, because I think there ought to be an opportunity to present the other side. And unfortunately, talk radio is overwhelmingly one-way.

REP MIKE PENCE, (R) INDIANA: For liberal think thanks and elected officials in both political parties in Congress are contemplating it. They're bringing back of the fairness doctrine would amount to nothing more than government control over political views expressed on the public airwaves, and it must not be allowed to occur.

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HUME: Some thoughts now from our Fred Barnes, executive editor, "Weekly Standard." Mara Liasson, National Public Radio national correspondent, and the syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, Fox News contributors all.

So, what was the fairness doctrine? Well, it wasn't a law, it was a rule adopted by the Federal Communications Commission back in the days when the public airwaves were--as a result of the fact that they were publicly owned-- was deemed that it was necessary to regulate political speech on public airwaves so that all sides would be fairly presented. There were many fewer broadcast outlets in those days than there are now.

What about this issue, Fred? It does seem, after all, conservatives have done much better on talk radio than liberals have, and there is an abundance of conservatives voices on talk radio and a relative scarcity of liberals voices.

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EIDTOR, WEEKLY STANDARD: Well, there is a simple reason for that, and it is conservatives listen to talk radio. They like it. The shows have great ratings. Whether it's Rush Limbaugh, or Bill Bennett, or Laura Ingraham, any number of them.

HUME: Sean Hannity.

BARNES: Hugh Hewitt, Sean Hannity. They all have great ratings. When the liberals come on, nobody listens.

I mean, liberals listen to other things, and liberals ought to be happy since they dominate the media, the academic and the entertainment establishments in America, and the only thing they do have is AM radio.

So they are complaining about that? I mean, the notion that--look, the original argument was based, as I think you suggested, on scarcity, that there weren't that many radio stations or television stations, and you really needed to regulate them so there would be diverse opinions. Now we have diverse opinions everywhere when, I think, there are twice as many radio stations now in America as there were, say, 30, 35 years ago.

We have a 500 channel television spectrum of stations. We have the internet. We have many more magazine. And I mean, there is diversity everywhere. I mean, discussion is robust.

And the Orwellian thing about the fairness doctrine, which is supposed to produce more robust decision, it would produce less discussion.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know the interesting thing about this is there hasn't actually been anything introduced yet, but what Mike Pence is trying to do is kind of a preemptive strikes, because Democrats, as your heard Diane Feinstein say, are thinking about reviving the fairness doctrine.

They can write it into law, forcing the FCC to enforce it. Of course, it would probably be vetoed. That was tried once before, actually, and Ronald Reagan vetoed it. But what is interesting is--

HUME: But, Mara, it is true that this president isn't going to be here forever, and there is certainly a good possibility there will be a Democratic president--this could happen, right?

LIASSON: No, very possible that a democratic FCC could reintroduce this. Then--

HUME: Or a Democratic Congress could pass it, and a Democratic president could sign it.

LIASSON: Yes, yes.

But what is interesting about this move, at least on the part of Republicans to kind of head this off, is it comes as a time when conservative talk radio is in open revolt against Republicans in Congress and President over the Immigration Bill. I mean, never has conservative talk radio been less in lock step with its supposed partisan allies in Washington than right now. Although, on the other hand, there is nothing to get conservative talk radio back into the fold than to threaten them with reinstating the fairness doctrine.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: This is really quite amazing, the Democrats are thinking actually of doing this. This is the Democrats turning into Hugo Chavez territory, where you shut down the opposition.

As Fred indicated, this was, originally, if it had a rational, was a function of scarcity. Now we have all kinds of voices. And the idea that you would isolate one sector, which is obviously conservative talk radio, and ignore all the others is illogical and hypocritical.

It's illogical, A, because these sectors compete against each other. The reason why network television and newspapers are losing patrons and money is because the new media are challenging them, and people are turning to the internet and other places.

So, they are interchangeable, and they are actively in competition. If you are going to go after a single sector, and you do talk radio, then you have to go after public television and radio, with all due respect to my colleague on the right here, which are obviously overwhelmingly liberal. You have to go after the major networks, the major newspapers.

So the idea of doing this in each sector is absurd. And, in the end, I think if Democrats end up straying into this territory, which is obviously a way to muzzle the right, and nobody even pretends that the reason that talk radio is conservative is because there is a vast right wing conspiracy suppressing liberals--Air America is on the air and nobody listens--it would redound against Democrats.

It would mobilize the Republican base, which is now dispirited, and it would energize a lot of independent and people who are neutral against democrats.

HUME: So your guess is that this current effort will fail?

KRAUTHAMMER: It is so idiotic.

HUME: What do you think, Maura, any effort to revive it will fail?

LIASSON: I don't know if it will even be launched.

BARNES: They are close. They need one democratic president, which they may well get next year, they need about nine more democratic senators so they can shut off a filibuster, and they got it.

KRAUTHAMMER: It would be a catastrophic error.

BARNES:: I agree, it would be. But catastrophic errors have been made before.

HUME: Just to review, it would only affect AM radio, which still uses the public airwaves, it wouldn't effect satellite radio, and it wouldn't affect cable television.

BARNES: Conservative talk radio, Brit, is an AM radio phenomenon.

HUME: I understand that.

All right, next up with the panel, President Bush reaches out to Muslims. Can they help in the war on terror? Will they? Will this do any good? Stay tuned.

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GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We must encourage more Muslim leaders to add to their voices, to speak out against radical extremists who infiltrate mosques, to denounce organizations that use the veneer of Islamic belief to support and fund acts of violence, and to reach out to young Muslims, even in our own country, and elsewhere in the free world who believe suicide bombing may someday be justified.

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HUME: The president also said that he used the heart of his presidency to reach out to Muslims in the world. This message is not out of faze with others that he has given, but it comes at an interesting moment.

Fred, your thoughts on what the president said today, and what difference it might make?

BARNES: None. Approximately none.

You know, when you have a problem, name a special envoy. And that's what he did at this Muslim conference.

Was I supposed to have heard of it before? No, I haven't. Maybe Charles is familiar with it, or Maura, but I wasn't familiar with it.

And I think the president gets in trouble when he says, you know, we want to rescue Islam from these extremists, and so on. That's really not the job of the American president. His job is to fight people who are threatening the national security of the United States, but not straighten out Islam.

He has to--and he had to kind of walk on egg shells in this speech, where he talked about how America stood with Muslims so they could freely practice their religion in Burma and in China. Think what he couldn't say. He couldn't say Muslims stood with America when we tried to get Christians and Jews to be able to practice their religion freely in Saudi Arabia and Iran and Egypt and many, many other countries.

HUME: Because they didn't.

BARNES: Because they didn't, that's right.

And then he said it's the Muslims who all being all killed by the terrorist. And yet when do we see the demonstrations when Muslims are out in the street? They are out in the street protesting the knighthood of Salman Rushdie by the queen, or something the pope said, or some Danish cartoons.

HUME: Good luck.

BARNES: Yes.

LIASSON: I agree with Fred that, at especially this point in his presidency the president is not going to change things in the Muslim world by his speech. However, this has been one of the great missing links in the war against terror that there hasn't been the kind of moderate Muslim counterweight to Islamic radicalism.

And I thought the purpose of the diplomatic half of the war on terror was going to be to shore up all sorts of moderate Muslim all over the Muslim world. It hasn't happened, I don't think Bush has done enough of this kind of thing. It doesn't necessarily mean he has to give a lot of these same speeches, but the effort to do that has not born fruit.

KRAUTHAMMER: Actually, I had heard of the IOC. It's famous because a few years ago the president of Malaysia addressed it and said, I think I have this exactly right, "The Jews control the world by proxy," and was applauded for that and other gems, which he had in his speech.

But look, I thought the president's speech was good. He was pretty tough in the parts in which he talked about what's happening in the Muslim world. He spoke unashamedly about the tyranny being in the Arab world, it being immune, in many respects, to democracy--defending American efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere to bring democracy.

He named Syria and Iran by name as people who are actively working against democracy and freedom. The one gesture he made was this envoy, and, Fred is right, it's hopeless, it's useless, but it's probably harmless.

The hand of Karen Hughes is here, of course, outreach. It's not going to make a difference. It isn't as if the Islamic nations are going to applaud us, or welcome us, because another envoy is named.

But, overall, it was a good speech. I think the main statement was he was in a mosque, he showed respect. He took off his shoes. He showed the way he did after 9/11, when he spoke out against prejudice against the Muslims, which would not have happened in Saudi Arabia had the tables been reversed on 9/11.