In view of Al Gore’s recent criticsm of Talk Radio, this topic may be timely. Of course, a Republican FCC isn’t going to re-institute the Fairness Doctrine, but a subsequent Democratic Administration might consider it. This site includes arguments pro and con:
Amusingly enough, the last phrase in the CON argument is also central to the PRO argument.
I’m pretty much a free-speech absolutist, and I also like Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura (in moderate doses), so I would oppose the Fairness Doctrine.
I think the Fairness Doctrine is outdated, and I think conservatives need to get over the idea that “the media” are overwhelmingly liberal.
Oh, that certainly WAS true once upon a time, when there were only 3 TV networks and a mere handful of publications (Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times and the Boston Globe) providing most news coverage. In those days, conservatives who railed against “the media” had a point.
But today? There are a host of news outlets with a conservative slant.
There’s no network that pushes a liberal agenda as blatantly as Fox pushes conservatism.
The Right has turned radio into a powerful force (there’s no liberal radio commentator with the audience or power of Sean Hannity, let alone Rush Limbaugh).
Even among the “big 3” networks, there’s only one news anchor who pushes a liberal agenda: Peter Jennings. Despite conservative hostility, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw are fairly moderate guys!
Look, I understand why conservatives griped about bias in the media once upon a time. I made many such gripes myself. But today, the griping sounds more like whining.
You’ll notice there hasn’t been a giant conservative movement to re-institute it, either. Is there a point to your semi-rant? You seem to diect it against… nothing.
One key point overlooked by both sides of the debate is that all television and radio speech is government-sponsored speech. The government owns the airwaves and licenses the use of particular portions of those airwaves to television and radio stations well below market rates.
So the real question is, “Where government at least partially pays for the speech, does it have a right to regulate that speech?”
The GOP has taken the position that the government does have such a right. One example is prohibitions at various times on doctors who receive federal funds from even mentioning the option of abortion to pregnant women. (Bush pere imposed this rule; I don’t know if Bush fils has reimposed it.)
It is very arguable that this is not a free speech issue, but instead an issue of contract. The government has much more leeway when it is acting a part of the marketplace than in its policing role.
That being said, I favor the government staying out of decisions concerning speech, even when the government is acting in a market role. 'Course, the rational result should also be that the government stop subsidizing radio and television and charge market rates for licenses.
Sua
How does the government “own” the airwaves? Do they also “own” the streets, the air, etc.? They regulate all of these. If you start saying that public spaces are owned by the government, you can say goodby to all free speech that is not on private property.
My point (and I did have one) was merely this: twenty-five yeras ago, it was conservatives who were constantly whining about “bias” in the media, and they were the ones who championed the Fairness Doctrine.
In reality, the Fairness Doctrine wasn’t the answer for conservatives. The REAL answer was, “If you don’t like what you’re seeing and hearing in the media, If you think Walter Cronkite is using his position to espouse liberal views, you’re right. But the solution isn’t to silence Cronkite. It’s not even to make CBS include “balancing” conservative arguments. The answer is to fight back, to creat your own media outlets, and COUNTER the liberals. Either do that, or shut up and quit whining.”
At the time, of course, liberals DID control all of “the media,” such as they were. And, not surprisingly, liberals looked upon whining conservatives with some amusement. They’re not quite so amused now, are they, now that Fox News and talk radio are real players.
NOW, the tables are turned (as always seems to happen, eventually). NOW we see liberals whining about bias and unfairness in the media. NOW, it’s liberals who see some merit in the Fairness Doctrine.
And I tell whining liberals today the same thing I told whining conservatives twenty-five years ago: if you don’t like what you’re hearing, counter it with something better! If you want to beat Rush Limbaugh, come up with some talented radio hosts of your own, and find an audience. If you don’t like the blatant conservatism of Fox News, counter it with a blatantly left-oriented network.
We’re not limited to a few media outlets any more. There are a host of them, and there can be still more. There are ways to get your message out there. DO it, and don’t look to the Fairness Doctrine to protect your tender feelings.
How does the government “own” the airwaves? By owning the airwaves. That’s all there is to it. The electromagnetic spectrum suitable for communication is owned by the federal government, which licenses out use of specified portions of it to radio and television stations, wireless telephony companies, etc.
If the government didn’t own the airwaves, how do you think the government would have the authority to reserve certain bands for military/police use?
The government also owns the streets and public spaces. It doesn’t own the air per se, but it does own the “flyover,” which is why an private landowner cannot forbid an airline from flying over the landowner’s property.
But this self-evidently does not mean the free speech on public property is dead. Public property (with delimited exceptions such as military bases) is open to all to exercise their free speech, limited only by time, place and manner restrictions.
Radio and television are different because they can’t be made open to all. Twenty stations cannot all broadcast at 90.3 MHz, for example - only one can in a given area. So government ends up giving an advantage to the limited number of people who can broadcast. So license payments (to pay for that advantage) or rules about what may be said are appropriate to make up for the fact that others cannot use the airwaves to broadcast their message.
Personally I’m in favor of license payments. But the Fairness Doctrine advocate do have a point.
Sua
Even Saint Rush himself says there’s no such thing as the “liberal media” anymore.
Fox News’ talking heads would all explode on-air if forced to comply with the doctrine.
This controversial point demonstrates one problem with the Fairness Doctrine. We disagree with what’s fair. A FD regulator will act from her or his own POV. be definition, we each believe we’re right. We don’t see ourselves as one side of a debate.
E.g., a Republican regulator might thing that a “fair” broadcast would focus on the Republican POV, but have it balanced with the Democrats on one side and the Far Right on the other side. I would say NPR does that right now, with the labels reversed.
So, a Fairness Doctrine would effectively give govrnment regulators the power and obligation to define how news is presented. Ugh!
Sounds circular to me. My view is that the government does not own the airwaves. They merely regulate it, as they regulate all sorts of other areas where competing interests need a referee.
The gov can regulate as they see fit. The government’s authority to regulate things does not derive from ownership.
Even private planes can fly over private property. I would understand the flyover thing as being some sort of easement.
OK, I may have overstated my case here. It does not follow that if the government owns things there cannot be free speech guarantees. But I still maintain that there is a fundamental difference between government giving you some cash and government allowing you to use a public space - the latter is not a government subsidy. And relevant here - giving you something with a designated purpose is not censorship; allowing you to use public spaces for a designated purpose is (if distinguished by idea).
Damn liberal media…stealing my precious bodily fluids.
Neither liberals nor conservatives have shown much interest in re-instituting the Fairness Doctrine.
Ideologues tend not to be concerned about having a truly informed public. Thus we see activists across the political spectrum who think it’s fine that we have competing major sources of biased news, rather than outlets that make a real effort to present balanced opinion. The end result is a cacophony of shrill voices and an electorate that tunes out.
Ronald Reagan’s killing of the Fairness Doctrine may have helped spur the development of talk radio, but it certainly hasn’t encouraged broadcast editorializing, which has shrunk to virtual nonexistence.
For Izzy and others - one key fact behind federal regulation of the airwaves is that frequencies are limited. Virtually anyone can print a broadsheet or set up a website. There’s still a hell of a lot of people for whom broadcast news is a primary source, and none of us can legally take to the airwaves to counter opinions with which we disagree.
The Fairness Doctrine is only one example of the doormat role assumed by the FCC in response to pressure on behalf of business interests (ownership rules are another example). Both major parties share blame for this state of affairs.
Um, IzzyR, what’s the problem here? Your “view” is that the federal government doesn’t own the airwaves? What does your “view” have to do with it? It’s a statement of fact – the federal government owns the airwaves. Period.
If you really, really want me to, I will provide the case law and citations. It will be a pain in the ass, however - governmental ownership of the airwaves was established about 80 years ago.
I mean, c’mon. I have provided you with a piece of information that you didn’t know before. The normal response is, “Really? I didn’t know that. Thanks.” The normal response is not “well, I don’t know jack about this, but in my ‘view’ that’s not correct, so I reject your statement of fact.”
:rolleyes:
Sua
I don’t know, Sua. General policy around here is not to expect others to simply accept your assertions, but to back them up yourself. Simply declaring your position to be a “a statement of fact” does not cut it. Even if you end off your paragraph with the word “Period”.
Actually I do. I think you may be referring to the Radio Act of 1927. (And what I’d like is a backup to the notion that it is owned by the government as opposed to being public space.)
Please, Izzy, that is all common knowledge. Demanding that others provide detailed cites of it is simple petulance.
I believe the problem is the word “own”. Since the airwaves are not really “tangible”, it can be difficult to envision someone owning a frequency band as compared to someone owning a car, road, land, or stand of trees.
Enough of that, let’s play the hot new game, stooooopid analogy! Your task, as evidenced by the mandate of the faaaaabulous Great Debates forum, is to deal with the stooooopid analogy that I’m about to present! Ready? Go!
{ahem}
As a newspaper editor, I was concerned when the government shut off my presses. Then they explained to me, my newsprint was logged from a federally owned forest, as is all newsprint, therefore they are exercising their governmental prerogative, to reclaim their property. After all, the medium is not the message.
-AmbushBug
Sua, I am fairly certain that if you check the “public interest doctrine,” instituted in the 1920s when the airwaves, as a vehicle for broadcasting, first came into being, you will discover that–to be precise–the public owns the airwaves, not the government. Although it’s possible to make the case that the people own the government I believe there’s a distinction in the way that there’s a distinction between a public library, say, and the Pentagon. (And I’m not even sure if that analogy is sufficient to explain the distinction since the airwaves existed prior to any government intervention, whereas a government-sponsored institution such as a public library or public university did not.)
The public interest doctrine–which if my memory serves–stipulates that licensees use the airwaves to serve the “needs and interests” of the people, was the foundation for various kinds of government regulation: e.g., limits on commercials, specified numbers of hours for educational programming, limits on ownership to prevent monopoly/oligopoly, and the fairness doctrine itself. Although the
US’s commercial system was always far from perfect–and nothing remotely comparable to Britain’s BBC was able to develop in the realm of public broadcasting–the existing regulation was (IMO) good for the public. That changed dramatically first in 1986 under Reagan and then again in 1996 under Clinton. Deregulation under these two acts has resulted in numerous evils: the worst of which, IMO, is the fact that something like six companies owns something like 97% of everything we hear, read and watch. (Ever-increasing mergers within the industry make this a hard factoid to pin down.)
It’s too soon to say, IMO, what the impact of the removed fairness doctrine will be. It was only let go a few years ago. I don’t buy the argument that it chilled free speech: I don’t see how it could when the stipulation was providing time for both sides. That sounds to me like more speech, not less.
In any case, so many rules have been repealed, and so many of those that still exist have been so routinely ignored that shows like “Oprah” now get to count as educational programming. In other words Big Media has been running the show for the longest time already. It’s not as though Rush and Laura came about because of the suspension of the fairness doctrine: they were around years before. I regretted its lapse; but not nearly as much as I regret neverending corporate concentration and–along with it–the ever more commercially saturated, boring, repetitive, dumbed-down infotainment-schock-shlock-fake news we have a result.
Turning off the tube has never looked better!
General policy around here is to expect someone to back up their assertion when you have a cognizable reason to doubt the assertion. All you apparently have is a false belief that there is such a thing as “public space” that is not owned by the government, and a “view.” As Elvis noted, it is common knowledge that the federal government owns the airwaves.
You apparently didn’t know this common knowledge. But instead of recognizing the merest possibility that there is something you don’t know, you instead assume that I am incorrect, without any basis.
That’s asinine behavior.
For your first objection, “public space” is government-owned space. Do you think that parks, streets and the like are unowned? They aren’t. They are owned by the government. Well, actually, some parks are privately owned by a trust – but the point is that they are owned. Everything is owned, except for the air we breathe.
As for your “view,” there is nothing I can do about that.
This has turned out to be a royal pain in the ass. I’m having trouble finding free cites that go back the necessary 80-odd years. I have resolved one other issue raised - the feds own the airways. See 66 S.Ct. 1062 and 49 U.S.C.A. 40103.
Sua
Mandelstam, do you think the government doesn’t own the public libraries? Go down to the county registrar and look up the deed for a public library. Either the government owns it or a private foundation owns it ('cause in some places “public” libraries are owned by a charity and are open to the public.)
Admittedly, there is no deed for airwaves (though they are licenses), but that doesn’t change anything.
Interesting aside - slogging my way through these cases, I note that broadcast licenses are often referred to by the courts as “leaseholds.” Hmmm, a leasehold is a right to the use of property owned by another. We’re getting there.
Sua
Actually, I recognized the merest possiblity. But, as with many things that are merely possible, I’d like a real source. You, by contrast, seem offended at the notion that your word is not being accepted at face value.
I looked around a bit, and found mostly stuff about the airwaves belonging to the people.
Such as this
Similar sentiments from Ralph Nadar here
FWIW, here’s the Radio Act of 1927 And the Communications Act of 1934
Well it may be that these things have “ownership” based on the system we live in under which - as you note - everything has to have some sort of owner. But I would not consider someone walking on a public street as being subsidized by the government as would be someone who got a government grant. Would you?
So, getting back to this thread, I would say that the government can give a person a grant explicitly limited to - say - anti-smoking campaigning without violating that person’s freedom of expression. But the government cannot ban a person from advocating smoking while standing in the street without violating the freedom of expression. Do you disagree with this distinction?