Samizdata

This is some talk of bringing back the ‘fairness doctrine’ in the United States. This, before President Reagan got rid of it, allowed the powers-that-be to force broadcasters to have when was deemed to be ‘balanced’ news and current affairs coverage.

In reality, of course, ‘balanced’ means either leftist opinions (the establishment, produced by the universities, do not see their opinions as opinions, they see them as ‘objective’ or even ‘scientific’ journalism – even when they formally do not believe that there is any such thing as objective truth), or a pointless mess of people shouting debating points at each other.

In reality it takes several minutes to explain a point of view, and the reasons for it, about most political matters – exchanges of debating points do not achieve much. The destruction of such things as talk radio (by demanding a “right of reply”) would leave the leftist shows, both serious and comic, untouched. Who wants to bet that the “fairness doctrine” would be applied in some God like “fair” way to them? As for “hard news” as opposed to “comment” (not that I fully accept this distinction).

The left often attack “Fox News” for claiming to be “Fair and Balanced” and (whilst a lot of FNC is not conservative at all) it is perfectly clear where, for example, Brit Hume’s political loyalties are, which one can tell by his choice of words, tone of voice, body language and in other ways, but the left fail to see, or pretend to fail to see, that their own people (i.e. all the other news networks) are also not “fair and balanced” – because this is not in the nature of man (sorry “humanity”), and that all that the ‘fairness doctrine’ would do is to give their side a monopoly of news presentation.

Still, the whole thing is far from confined to the United States.

For example, in Britain we have a version of the ‘fairness doctrine’ – which means, in practice, that broadcasters (government owned or private) represent the ‘liberal’ (i.e illiberal) left. Indeed it is almost universal outside the United States. The most recent example I have came upon concerns India:

A couple weeks ago I watched a brief report on NDTV about the new ‘content code’. According to this compulsory code stories that were against the Indian “national interest” would be spiked, and broadcasters would not be allowed to “highlight” (i.e. favour) certain opinions. In practice it is a safe guess that the opinions that broadcasters would not be allowed to highlight would be opinions opposed to the Congress party and to the various leftist parties who support in government. However, the NDTV report did not say that broadcasters should be allowed to favour any opinion they wished and that people should be allowed to choose between them.

No – the line was that “self regulation” should be supported. The Indian newspapers, the report said, practice this via the “Press Council of India” and broadcasters should be allowed to the same. The government will force its line into regulations – because no one is really opposing this “fairness” line as a matter of principle.

Sadly it appears that no one really stands for anything like the US First Amendment, or for freedom in general, in India. On the one side we have Congress and the various leftist parties (trying to gradually introduce more welfare spending), and on the other side we have the religious nationalist BJP (i.e the saffron fascists). The old days when the Independence party stood for freedom (yes it lost every election – but it was there) are long over.

The above is not meant as attack on India – things are much the same in Britain. No major political party really stands for freedom here either. Not only not in a strict libertarian sense – not even in a general sense.

With the 60th anniversary of the end of British rule in the sub continent, there is the normal talk of whether the vast numbers of rapes and murders during partition could have been prevented. The British will, perhaps quite rightly, get the blame for not delaying independence and for not using enough force to try and prevent the violence on partition.

However, it is almost forgotten that Nehru (the leader of the Congress party and first Prime Minister of India) was demanding that the British leave (every day we stayed was a day too many for Nehru), and even claimed that it was mainly where the British were that violence took place.

This was the exact opposite of the truth (and Nehru knew it) – as it was where British forces went in (sadly much too rarely) that the mass rapes and killings were prevented. Nehru had “form” in letting his “get the British out of India” obsession cloud his judgement.

For example, in 1942 he had gone along (whatever doubts he must have had) with the demented “Quit India” campaign. Had the British actually “quit India” the Japanese would have come in (they were at the gates of India) and the Congress party would have found out what “slavery to an Imperial power” really was.

As Prime Minister of India Nehru followed a policy of armed aggression (so much for “non violence”) against such places as Portuguese Goa. But also did not bother to prepare against real threats to national security.

The classic example is relations with Red China. Nehru ordered a policy of confronting China in the border area – but did not send a decent level of troops or equipment (the Indian troops did not even axes to cut down trees and where forced into trying to use spades for the task – much to amusement of the watching People’s Liberation Army). Nehru also refused to approach the United States for aid – he could handle matters.

When the Chinese invaded in 1962 the Indian force fought bravely, but was hopelessly out-numbered and out-equipped – their defeat was inevitable. The Chinese captured the entire disputed area (which they had no legal right to) and Nehru was left begging the United States for aid – in case the Chinese decided to take any more of India.

But the worst aspect of Nehru was his domestic policy:

Nehru loved talking of “five year plans” and an industrial revolution for India. However, his policies condemned the population of India to poverty, often extreme poverty. Not only was overseas competition virtually banned (for almost all goods and services), but the “permit Raj” meant that almost all domestic competition was crippled as well.

The “freedom” that the Congress party promised India turned out to be so many rules and regulations that it made the British Raj look almost libertarian by comparison (although the British Raj was bad in many ways).

I doubt that most of the above will be mentioned in many places, but people deserve to know.