Marin Cogan/TNR's massive Fairness Doctrine strawman

Marin Cogan of the New Republic offers "Bum Rush/Obama's secret plan to muzzle talk radio. Very, very secret." (tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=68d07041-7dbc-451d-a18a-752567145610). The supposed "reporter-researcher" looks for evidence that the Democrats want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and can't find it. She therefore concludes that the Democrats don't want to try to muzzle rightwing talk radio.

What she fails to mention is that some Democrat-linked groups like the NCLR aren't that opposed to bringing back the Doctrine.

But, more importantly, the Democrats have a nifty way to bring back the Fairness Doctrine in spirit through opposition to "media consolidation" and through "localism" (related article here: reason.com/news/show/129228.html). Some of those Democrats who were completely "puzzled" about being asked whether they want to bring back the Doctrine are simply playing a game, and Cogan is helping.

Her article mentions opposition to "media consolidation" in passing, but without noting that bills against that could be used to get some shows off the air. And, her article mentions the Center for American Progress and mentions a study they did of rightwing talk radio in which they advocated for localism. Apparently she didn't read enough of it, or she simply has no clue what she's discussing, or she's just an intellectually dishonest hack. With TNR you never know, but it's probably a combination of all three.

Note: the TNR article was approvingly linked from this CAP blog: yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/11/the_fairness_scare.php

UPDATE: Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post links to the Cogen article and misleads in the same way she does:
huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/20/the-fake-firestorm-of-the_n_145334.html

Politics · Thu, 11/20/2008 - 14:06 · · Importance: 9