http://www.americanvoice2004.org/askdave/08askdave.htmlQ. Radio, or at least talk radio has turned into all-conservative-all-the-time radio. Don't election laws require radio and TV stations to offer a balance?
A.No, they don't. And therein lies an instructive and cautionary tale.
In the earliest days of radio anybody with an antenna could send a radio signal on any frequency. Chaos resulted. The most important was poor reception from transmissions on overlapping frequencies. To allow the infant industry to mature into an important mass communication vehicle Congress passed The Radio Act of 1927. That Act declared that the airwaves belonged to the public and required that in return for an exclusive license to use a specific frequency a broadcaster had to serve the "public interest". The key public interest identified was to provide the public balanced information about issues of the day.
When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was established in 1934 it treated a broadcast licensee as a "public trustee". It imposed upon broadcasters a duty that came to be known as the "fairness doctrine". Licensees were obliged "to cover vitally important controversial issues of interest in their communities" and "to provide a reasonable opportunity for the presentation of contrasting viewpoints."
Michael C. Dorf, Professor at Columbia University's School of Law explains Congress and the FCC's reasoning, "In exchange for the economically and politically valuable right to monopolize the conversation on its particular bandwidth, each radio license holder was required to comply with FCC rules designed to implement the agency's understanding of what Congress called ‘the public interest'".
Professor Val E. Limburg of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University adds, "The doctrine grew out of concern that because of the large number of applications for radio stations being submitted and the limited number of frequencies available, broadcasters should make sure they did not use their stations simply as advocates with a singular perspective. Rather they must allow all points of view."
In 1969 the United States Supreme Court upheld the FCC's write to enforce the fairness doctrine.<1> The case involved a company, Red Lion Broadcasting that aired a "Christian Crusade" program on a Pennsylvania station. The show attacked a liberal author, Fred J. Cook. When Cook requested time to reply the station refused. He appealed to the FCC. The sided with Cook. The Supreme Court ruled that the FCC had the authority to enforce the fairness doctrine. The Court ruled "
here is no sanctuary in the First Amendment for unlimited private censorship operating in a medium not open to all."
In 1974 the FCC described the Fairness Doctrine as "…the single most important requirement of operation in the public interest—the sine qua non for grant of a renewable of license".
A decade later, under the leadership of Mark Fowler, a former broadcaster appointed Chairman of the FCC in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, the FCC began to dismantle its "public interest" requirements. It lifted restrictions on the maximum number of commercials TV stations could air and eliminated minimum requirement for time that must be devoted to news and public affairs.
In l985 the FCC declared, "We no longer believe that the Fairness Doctrine, as a matter of policy, serves the public interests…We believe that the interest of the public in viewpoint diversity is fully served by the multiplicity of voices in the marketplace today…"
The FCC did not immediately abrogate the doctrine. It was concerned that the 1959 amendments to the Communications Act might have made the fairness doctrine a statutory requirement, subject to repeal only by Congress. But in 1986 the court held that the fairness doctrine derived from the FCC's mandate to serve the public interest and was not compelled by statute.<2>
In the spring of 1987, reacting to the Court's decision and fearful of its consequences, Congress passed a bill that incorporated the fairness doctrine into the law. It passed with significant bipartisan support, 3 to 1 in the House and nearly 2 to 1 in the Senate. Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms were among the law's supporters. President Reagan vetoed the legislation. There were insufficient votes in Congress to override his veto.
In August of 1987 the FCC dissolved the fairness doctrine. It argued that the doctrine was obsolete, no longer served the public interest and imposed substantial burdens on broadcasters without generating countervailing benefits.
In 1988, Rush Limbaugh's syndicated program went on the air for the first time.
In l989 the House of Representatives again easily passed a law incorporating the fairness doctrine into legislation. When President George Bush threatened a veto the bill died in the Senate.
The impact of the elimination of the fairness doctrine was immediate and significant. In l980 there were 75 talk radio stations in the country. By 1999 there were more than 1300. The conservative Weekly Standard recently summed up the landscape, "… 1300 talk stations, nearly all born since the repeal of the fairness doctrine and nearly all right-leaning…"
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