Political Communication to the Population

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V . Butler

Instructor 's Name

Course Title

27 October 2006

Talk Radio

How The Conservative Movement Disseminates Political

Communication To The Population

As a democratic republic , the government belongs to the people for whom elected officials will be accountable . In to survive in the cutthroat world of re-elections , politicians must win the support of the public in gain a successful re-election bid . Some politicians such as John F . Kennedy and Franklin D . Roosevelt have been highly effective at communicating their political ideologies and legislative initiatives

br while others such as Bob Dole and John Kerry simply could not effectively communicate what they stood for and they paid a heavy price for their deficiencies

In the realm of deficiency , conservative politicians were at a loss in terms of being able to effectively communicate what they stood for , what constituency they represented , what their goals were and how they planned to implement their agenda . While during presidential elections conservatives were able to get their message across quite well . However in general Senate , Congressional , State Legislatures , conservative candidates did quite poorly from 1932 - 1994 . In 1994 , the revitalization of the Butler 2 conservative movement was the direct result of the expansion of new media such as the burgeoning new world of re-invented talk radio and without the support of this new conservative media outlet providing political communication to the population , the conservative revolution ' in1994 that saw the Republican 's win a takeover ' of the House and Senate and set in motion a radical change in United States domestic and international policy would never have happened . This notion becomes fairly obvious upon a close examination of the political and media landscape in the short few years prior to November 1994

While there had been a number of conservative leaning magazines newsletters and authors , the news media had been , for years , leaned decidedly left of center and remained a solid liberal institution that presented political discourse to the population from that perspective Conservative ideology , however , did not have the conduit of significant mass media to present its ideology (This is not an endorsement of any particular view , but an observation ) However , this would all change when the means in which political communication would be presented to the public was altered in a radical manner in 1987

The Fairness Doctrine ' was a rule of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC ) that required a balance of political opinion . That is in mass media communications is was a mandatory requirement where on air political editorials must provide equal time must be provided to an opposing political viewpoint . In 1987 , however , the Fairness Doctrine was repealed

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The FCC discarded the rule because , contrary to its purpose , it failed to

encourage the discussion of more controversial issues . There were also

concerns that it was in violation of First Amendment free speech principles

The legislation now before Congress would enshrine the fairness doctrine into law (Theier

In other words , times had changed and in a world of...