Radio Free America
EDITORIAL Radio Free America When Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, talks about fairness, it's a good idea to count the silverware. "It's time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine," says...
...It's time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine," says the assistant majority leader...
...This has been a forlorn cause of the left since the Fairness Doctrine was repealed 20 years ago...
...As often happens, this particular initiative had exactly the opposite effect from what the FCC intended...
...It is not a question to be settled by enactment of an ill-advised law, or revival of an arbitrary regulation, designed to suppress the First Amendment rights of political opponents...
...Over the years station owners grew so wary of attracting the scrutiny of federal regulators that they largely banned discussion of political issues on the air, and mandatory public service programming was deliberately anodyne...
...Philip Terzian, for the Editors...
...Well, to be fair, it's a little more complicated than that...
...What could be fairer than that...
...By just about any measure, the Fairness Doctrine was an unfair impediment to free speech, and a public disservice in an open democracy...
...Or Congress could act...
...All that changed once the FCC dropped the Fairness Doctrine in 1987...
...Never mind the wisdom of the marketplace, or freedom of choice for radio listeners: Revival of the Fairness Doctrine is not intended to facilitate "both sides of the story" but to shut down conservative talk radio...
...John Kerry has endorsed the Fairness Doctrine, as has Sen...
...Rush Limbaugh became a household name, paving the way for other entrepreneurs of the air, and radio went from being almost devoid of substantive content to a new, and unpredictable, factor in American politics...
...And because Democrats, especially congressional Democrats, are in thrall to extremist elements within their party, senior members of Congress have been quick to embrace what amounts to official suppression of speech...
...That is why Democrats have been seeking (in Dick Durbin's word) to "rein-stitute" the Fairness Doctrine: It would require any station that carries Limbaugh to offer equal time to his critics...
...Because efforts to invent a successful left-wing Limbaugh have consistently failed, and what Jim Hightower, Mario Cuomo, and Al Franken's Air America cannot manage on the air might be accomplished by congressional action...
...Sounds attractive, we admit...
...and with respect to Dick Durbin, there's another side to his story...
...But it was something else as well: It was a federal regulation that had kept Rush Lim-baugh—and Laura Ingraham and William Bennett and Sean Hannity and others—off the air...
...but now that Democrats control Congress, new life has been breathed into the effort...
...A half-century of pent-up free speech was suddenly liberated, and talk radio came into its own...
...That is why the "netroots" are so agitated on this issue...
...To begin with, for five decades, there was a Fairness Doctrine—a Federal Communications Commission regulation, not an act of Congress...
...Call it the Fairness Doctrine...
...And therein lies a tale...
...A Democratic president could appoint enough compliant commissioners to the FCC to accomplish the mission...
...Americans like to hear both sides of every story, and before making any decision, they like to hear the two fellows on either side of the fence make their pitch...
...And now that the Democrats are back in charge of Congress, maybe the government ought to pass a bill making fairness the law of the land...
...in 1949, the commission expanded the Doctrine, mandating stations to provide a specified amount of public-issue discussion in order to retain their license...
...But in due course it came to be regarded as a relic of its time (1934) and, more important, an impediment to broadcasting as a public service...
...Left-wing activists are not especially enamored of free speech—especially when the open marketplace of ideas puts them at a political disadvantage...
...Dianne Feinstein, who welcomes a federal mandate "to present the other side" since (as she bluntly puts it) "unfortunately, talk radio is overwhelmingly one-way...
...The Fairness Doctrine was repealed during the Reagan administration (1987...
...I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they're in a better position to make a decision...
...The problem, of course, is that the failure of liberal talk radio to compete successfully with conservative talk radio is an issue for liberals to ponder and solve...
...the courts have since upheld the repeal...
...What could be more American than fairness...
...When the FCC was established early in the New Deal, there was concern that the size limitations of the broadcasting band, and public ownership of the airwaves, would discourage discussion of public issues on the radio...
...The threat is not idle...
...So the FCC instituted the Fairness Doctrine, requiring stations to air both sides in debates...
Vol. 12 • August 2007 • No. 44
