The U.S. Senate today scored a major victory for broadcaster freedom.  As we’ve been reporting to you, Sen. DeMint had introduced an amendment stating that the FCC shall not have the authority to prescribe any rule, regulation, policy, doctrine, standard, guideline, or other requirement that has the purpose or effect of reinstating or repromulgating (in whole or part) the Fairness Doctrine or any similar requirement that broadcasters meet programming quotas or guidelines for issues of public importance.  Simply put, Sen. Demint’s Amendment prohibits the FCC from requiring broadcasters to always air both sides of a controversial issue.

During debate, Sen. Durbin was able to secure slightly wider latitude for the FCC in terms of mandatory local programming such as news and weather, but the central components of the DeMint Amendment remained in tact.  In the end, the DeMint Amendment passed by an overwhelming 87-11 majority in the Senate.  This is a tremendous victory and we're grateful to you for standing with us and for Sen. DeMint's outstanding leadership through this process.

Our attention now focuses on ensuring that the DeMint language remains intact through the legislative process.  The House of Representatives will get its turn at the bill, after which a House/Senate conference committee will be responsible for ironing out the differences in the two bills.  After this is complete, President Obama will sign it into law.

Finally, even after this language becomes law, we must remain vigilant to ensure that the FCC does not use its authority to encourage diversity of ownership as a back-door means of censoring speech over the airwaves.  This will be an equally important and difficult battle.  For today, however, we're very pleased with this positive development.
]/QUOTE]

http://www.aclj.org/LegislativeAlert/Read.aspx?GUID=12ddf59a-d2ef-48a4-9528-1f3dd03a98eb