"Discovered" POD: Congressional pay raise as contributing to growth of rightwing radio circa 1989?

When Extremism Goes Mainstream

The Atlantic, Norm Orstein, July 23, 2014

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/when-extremism-goes-mainstream/374955/

" . . . by the new force of political talk radio, which had been activated by the disastrous federal pay raise in 1989-90, . . . "
Really? Offhand, I wouldn't guess this pay raise was responsible for even 20% of the rise of rightwing talk radio.

But perhaps it was.

This proposed pay raise is something relatively unknown, at least from today's perspective. Let's dive into it a little.
 
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Deeper historical forces are at play imo. Baby boomers were raised with 1) lilly white suburbs 2) lots of schooling teaching them that capitalism and christianity(and not say new deal programs) were why America ws great.

Really, to avert the boomer consie era and related things like dittohead talk radio you'd probably need to avoid watergate or vietnam. Watergate is key bc it'd mean no destruction of the old coalition which is imo what allowed Reagan and go in.
 
Do not forget the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the fracturing of the American media landscape toward the end of the 20th century.
 
My take: the Fairness Doctrine was put into law after WW2 to assure broadcasters gave equal time to controversial political issues. It was repealed around 1988 because cable TV, not being broadcast, did not have to observe it and broadcasters wanted to remain competitive. Music radio abandoned the AM band for its lack of fidelity, so talk radio stepped in. The USSR broke up, dissolving the traditional right wing enemy. The new found enemy was the Clintons and "Democrat is the new communist." IMO, Watergate and Vietnam had nothing to do with it, nor did the generational differences. Right wing radio comes from the money generated through the sensational use of fully-amortized transmission facilities.
 
Deeper historical forces are at play imo. Baby boomers were raised with 1) lilly white suburbs 2) lots of schooling teaching them that capitalism and christianity(and not say new deal programs) were why America ws great. . .
I agree with deeper historical forces. And yes, a fair amount of resentment about civil rights and against African-American persons, and damn I wish it was different

And then, it's something my 10th grade world history teacher said: It is not usually people who are most oppressed rising up in rebellion, rather it's people at various levels of middle class who are having something taken away from them. So, with the U.S. middle class starting to erode slowly in the early 1970s, by '89 we had had almost a generation. And then, what eroded even more was the expectation and the dream that you could continue to have upward progression, that you faced a largely just world in which hard (steady) work was rewarded.
 
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Do not forget the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the fracturing of the American media landscape toward the end of the 20th century.
Fairness Doctrine is our go-to explanation too often. There's an article to this effect which I'll try to pull.
https://fair.org/home/getting-the-fairness-doctrine-wrong-again/


. . . The new found enemy was the Clintons and "Democrat is the new communist." . .
But the rise of rightwing anger was a couple of years before.
 
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https://fair.org/home/getting-the-fairness-doctrine-wrong-again/

" . . . By taking callers with contrasting views, talk radio was actually seen as comporting with the Fairness Doctrine. . . "

" . . . In reality, talk radio owed its rapid growth to the emergence of two new technologies: satellite transmission, which made it possible for local shows to go national; and 1-800 telephone numbers, which permitted shows to take callers from all over the country (Extra!, 1–2/07). That’s why talk radio was growing just as fast or faster before the Fairness Doctrine was jettisoned as it was afterwards."
FAIR is a media watchdog group on the left.
 
I read the OP reference article from The Atlantic. It accurately describes the progress of political polarization over the last century. It makes only the one-line brief mention of the federal pay raise around 1989 and does not present a good cause and effect between it and right wing radio. Sure, the call-in nature of talk radio could push the fairness doctrine to limits, but repeal of the doctrine opened the floodgates for Rush Limbaugh and his contemporaries.

When a phone caller is aired with poor grammar: “you was, I seen, he don’t,” the opinions get evaluated with less credibility than those of an educated announcer.
 
I read the OP reference article from The Atlantic. It accurately describes the progress of political polarization over the last century. It makes only the one-line brief mention of the federal pay raise around 1989 and does not present a good cause and effect between it and right wing radio. . .
The Atlantic article merely makes the claim. The article in FAIR at least makes a testable claim:
https://fair.org/home/getting-the-fairness-doctrine-wrong-again/

“ . . . That’s why talk radio was growing just as fast or faster before the Fairness Doctrine was jettisoned as it was afterwards.”
But they don’t actually run the numbers and test it.
 
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The Atlantic article merely makes the claim. The article in FAIR at least makes a testable claim:

But they don’t actually run the numbers and test it.

The claim may be testable but no quantified evidence is given. Had right wing talk gotten out of hand with the fairness doctrine in place, critics would have made themselves equal time by calling in and taking biased claims to task. The fact that there was no move to do so says the problem on broadcast media was small. Cable TV, though, operated outside the doctrine, so professionally organized right wing bias would have been there.

Cable in 1986 would have been seen as unregulated. If radio wanted to give three hours to talk, Rush Limbaugh would not have had the whole session. He would get half the time and somebody like Al Franken would get the other half. It would have shortened commentary to Paul Harvey levels. Radio and TV could claim a greater level of credibility through regulation.
 
Advertisers like eyeballs, so they would have forced the end of the fairness doctrine sometime. The wonder is that it lasted as long as it did OTL imo.
 
. . . Had right wing talk gotten out of hand with the fairness doctrine in place, critics would have made themselves equal time by calling in and taking biased claims to task. . .
^ this
Advertisers like eyeballs, so they would have forced the end of the fairness doctrine sometime. The wonder is that it lasted as long as it did OTL imo.
I’m personally more inclined to the first view.

Which is why I find this topic intriguing, for we have several sources which are at least asserting that the fairness doctrine had considerably less effect than people think it did.
 
https://books.google.com/books?id=m...grams both in 1987 and again in 1989”&f=false

‘ . . . Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, a group lobbying for congressional reform, successfully worked with talk radio programs both in 1987 and again in 1989 to scuttle the proposed congressional pay raise. Because of group founder Ralph Nader’s role as a celebrity, talk show hosts were anxious to book him . . . ’

‘ . . . Public Citizen placed particular emphasis on scheduling Nader in congressional districts of party leaders. . . ’
So, somewhat of a left-right coalition on the issue of pay raises.

And on this one, I’d say the right ended up playing the left, much more so than vice versa! :openedeyewink:
 
Advertisers like eyeballs, so they would have forced the end of the fairness doctrine sometime. The wonder is that it lasted as long as it did OTL imo.
We shouldn't forget how the FCC had some pretty hard iron clad rules. Not until 1984 were broadcast stations allowed to sell info-mercials in 30-minute time slots. The change in advertising opened the doors for more stations, starting with the FOX network in 1986. Soon there were WB, UPN, CW, etc.

Now for radio, talk shows were around in the sixties. But right wing leaning usually centered on patriotism and conventional conduct, look at the topics addressed by Joe Pyne. IMO, the problem became an issue when the break-up of the USSR encouraged right-wingers to re-direct their fear and hate to Americans who were Democrats.
 
. . . IMO, the problem became an issue when the break-up of the USSR encouraged right-wingers to re-direct their fear and hate to Americans who were Democrats.
and/or environmentalists and/or "liberals"

And really, I think about 30% of people look at the world, where they're at least very prone to see conspiracy theory. I mean, look at the Declaration of Independence for crying at loud, the King is intentionally doing these things. Rather than Parliament clumsily trying to pay for the French and Indian War [Seven Years War]

And then, there's the thing . . . if there's rustling in the tall grass, we're more likely to perceive tiger than just some random cause. We as humans impose narrative on a messy reality. There's probably even evolutionary value for us to do so.
 
If it hadn't been the pay raise, it would have been the House banking scandal...
Where the House bank allowed members to write bad checks and then pay it back in a very casual way.

And members didn't fully understand the public anger since most all paid back the money, just way late. Well, the public anger was that it was a double standard that they were oh-so casual about.
 
Call-in debate on C-SPAN on proposed Congressional pay raise.

Nov. 22, 1989

https://www.c-span.org/video/?10024-1/congressional-pay-raise

23:56 is where the phone calls begins.

74-year-old veteran active in his local VFW: " . . . I take the guys to the hospital, make arrangements for them. We have nothing in south Jersey, Nothing. We've got a place up in the mountain 90-some miles away that was built in 1921. I have to take them, the closest place is Philadelphia, but they don't take our guys. I have to take them through Philadelphia, down through Wilmington, to Elsmere, New Jersey [Delaware]. And yet we have money that these guys are spending right and left. And they have nothing for a guy who put his life on the line for this country. That's all I have to say."

* I think this man means the Veteran's Administration hospital in Elsmere, Delaware.

Nader: "I think that illustrates a feeling of a lot of people that they, they oppose these high, towering increases and always in comparative terms. In terms of what the needs of the people are, how much the government wastes, fraud, cost overruns, bailing out billions of dollars in crooked S&Ls that the Congress should have caught earlier in the 1980s. . . "
 
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