Excerpt:
"Conservative media figures like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are raising fears that liberals could use the Tucson, Ariz., shootings as an excuse to clamp down on their voices, even as two prominent liberals made public statements urging that the Federal Communications Commission and Fox News do just that.
Limbaugh and Beck, along with other conservative voices like Sarah Palin and Bill O’Reilly, had come under fire in the hours after the shooting from liberals such as Keith Olbermann and Paul Krugman, who accused them of using violent rhetoric that could push an unhinged person over the edge. But no link has been found between suspected shooter Jared Lee Loughner and any of these media figures or Palin.
Limbaugh railed against the left’s attempts to “massage” the shooting “for their political benefit,” saying Democrats were just waiting for an excuse to “regulate out of business their political opponents.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody in the Obama administration or some FCC bureaucrat or some Democrat congressman has it already written up, such legislation, sitting in a desk drawer somewhere just waiting for the right event for a clampdown,” Limbaugh said. “They have been trying this ever since the Oklahoma City bombing.”
In fact, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the third-ranking Democrat in Congress and one of the more outspoken voices in the wake of the shooting, blamed vitriol in the public discourse for the events and told the Charleston Post and Courier on Monday he wants to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, a defunct policy requiring media to cover both sides of controversial issues that many in the industry expect would mean the death of conservative talk radio.
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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).
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