RIP: The Fairness Doctrine
Born 1949
Died 1987
The "Fairness Doctrine" was an FCC policy framed in 1949 (connected to legislation dating back to 1937) that required broadcast licensees to be, to use an unfortunate phrase, "fair and balanced" in their coverage of public interest issues. Persons attacked were also to be given a chance to respond to their critics. The reasoning was simple--the airwaves were public, and licensees were public trustees rather than partisan advocates.
Reagan-era deregulation killed the Fairness Doctrine, and as a result, we have the meeting of the "public trustees" pictured below. The concerns remain valid today, as broadcasting is unlike other businesses. If I want to start a newspaper, I can, I just need machines and paper and ink and writers (I don't know where to find any of those though). Radio? Not a chance. Broadcast frequencies are scarce, rationed and more and more held by a very small group of corporate license holders. Rotsa ruck.
5 comments:
I think you've identified the wrong solution to the problem. The "fairness doctrine" belongs on the scrap heap where it rests...too subjective, and just because we don't like the message, that doesn't give us the right to change it. I am a raving, absolutionist, willing-to-die for the 1st Amendment guy here, and you are in fact talking about gummint regulation of speech. The limited availability of the medium does not sway me at all. I'll have none of it.
The real problem was the deregulation that allowed the corporate hegemon to own all the radio/TV frequencies and control the message through monopolization. That cartel is the one to be busted up; those are the bad laws.
Typo above: "absolutionist" -> "absolutist"
Boy am I glad that you corrected yourself. Here I was thinking that you were aligning yourself with the serial diddlers...
But don't we in effect embrace the government regulation of speech through the licensing system? Not necessarily WHAT is said but who can say it? Even if ownership was scattered among many entities, a politically influenced commission still controls who gets access to the airwaves.
Anonymous - yes, but it's the lesser of two evils. Due to the inherent problems in the technology, someone has to regulate the use of the frequency spectra. The FCC has been doing that successfully for a long time in a non-partisan fashion. Where the FCC gets into trouble is when they get uppity about content.
If I were king for a day, all FCC rules about "decency" and content regulation go out the window 100%, and the FCC exists only to decide who gets what frequency/power level/transmitter location. Their criteria would be based only on the basic anti-monopoly protections that existed pre-Reagan, essentially regulating ownership in a way that ensures some diversity for a given geographical area.
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