A coalition of business leaders in Ohio started a petition campaign to recall Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner. The business groups claim the mayor has created a hostile business environment by wasting tax dollars and for other alleged misgivings.
A report in The Toledo Journal details the feud and the mayor’s reaction:
Mayor Finkbeiner blasted a third leader of the recall drive, Andy Stuart, who is general manager for Clear Channel Toledo. Among the radio stations he oversees is WSPD, whose talk-show hosts criticize the mayor on a daily basis.
"This man, again, lives outside of Toledo, and does not have a vote in Toledo," the mayor said. "But this master of negative news about Toledo wants Toledo voters to turn Toledo over to him, Mr. McMahon and Mr. Schlachter."
The mayor claimed that WSPD is in violation of "the Fairness Doctrine principle" because it will not give him airtime to reply to its "vicious, one-sided diatribes." He said he will ask U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to hold hearings on radio station abuses. He said he wants the House committee "to investigate all tapes of WSPD during the past three years."
It’s telling that the mayor’s reaction to critical information of him is to call for the return of a law censoring speech that hasn’t been in place since 1987. If the Federal Communications Commission enacts local control regulations of radio stations, expect this sort of political pressure to effectively replace what was once known as the ‘fairness doctrine.’ For the record, Mayor Finkbeiner, there’s no such thing as "the Fairness Doctrine principle." It’s called censorship.
