Question of the Day

How do you all feel about the Fairness Doctrine? 

I ask because on the Right there's a lot of fretting about how the Left will revive the fairness doctrine in order to destroy Talk Radio and critics on the Right in the "alternative media".  Now it's worth saying that the Fairness Doctrine if revived would certainly affect the fortunes of Right Wing talk radio (the rise of RW radio corresponds with the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine by the FCC)... but the question still remains... would reviving it be a good thing? Does it infringe on Free Speech? Does that matter?

Comments

[Guy Yedwab]

Not having been alive when the Fairness Doctrine was in full swing, I can't judge what impact it has had on television. I also can't get a satisfactory explanation of exactly what it was and how it was enforced. Groups of its supporters say that all it was was a method of splitting airwave space between people who had limited access to the airwaves thanks to the "limited spectrum"--that's how it was defended when the Supreme Court affirmed it (and they said if it ever was used to enforce speech it would be reevaluated constitutionally), but what with XM and Satellite Radio (not to mention the Internet and the broad proliferation of Cable TV) I don't know if that argument would hold anymore.

Its detractors say that it was used to enforce the political content of shows, but its supporters say that it's factually untrue. I'm nervous about the whole thing because I'm not happy with the FCC coming up with a standard of regulating content without an open, clear, and democratically-voted yardstick.

Now, if Congress was to draw up and codify a law, that would be interesting, and I think my support would be highly influenced based on how the law is crafted. I can think of many ways that a "fairness doctrine" would be worded that would be an illegal infringement, but I have a hard time imagining a "fairness doctrine" that would be legal and effective. "Network Neutrality" seems to me a better model, but it only makes sense if the distributor is someone different than the content creator.