The little known history of the Fairness Doctrine, and how it changed America

[Beet]

Original Link: http://www.americanvoice2004.org/askdave/08askdave.html
Archive Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20041213064102/http://www.americanvoice2004.org/askdave/08askdave.html

Q. 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.

[snip]

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 1980 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…"

[Beet]

None of this explains why there aren't left-wing talk radio stations.

To figure out why left-wing talk doesn't work well on commericial radio, you need to consider the close to 800 NPR affiliates out there.  Granted, not all of them carry the various public radio talk shows.  Granted,  NPR is not as extreme as most commercial talk radio, as it is generally center-left as opoosed to the far right one associates with commercial talk radio.  However, the existence of NPR seriously degrades the commercial viability of left-wing talk because a large portion of the potential audience is already listening elsewhere.  NPR doesn't explain by itself the preminence of the right in commercial talk radio, but it does help to explain it in part.

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Good point, Ernest. The nature of the imbalance in talk radio is an entirely different question than the conditions that allowed bias in the broadcast media. Why did almost exclusively conservatives enter the talk radio market after 1987, especially after the early 1990s when it became apparent that it was a highly successful medium?

The only reason NPR has captured a lot of the liberal market is because they are the only major show out there that is not conservative. Yes they lean more to the liberal side than conservative. However, they generally do not see themselves as primarily a political commentary or a political station, or primarily out to spread the liberal viewpoint, which is what differentiates most of the syndicated talk radio shows ont he right.

So were liberals just not interested? Did the owners of the bandwidth licences or the distributors of the licences have some ideological bent themselves? I have no idea.

In addition, not mentioned by the article, another thing that made possible the growth of talk radio was the migration of former music channels to FM freeding up AM bands for talk.

I have two or three questions however:

1 Why did Clinton not appoint FCC commissioners who would reinstate the fairness doctrine? In fact, why did he appoint Michael Powell, who has some rather extreme deregulationary policies opposed by most of Congress?

2 Why did Congress not pass fairness doctrine legislation in 1993 after Bush Sr.'s veto threat had been removed?

Anyone who can answer these two questions is a genius.

[Beet]

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Powell does not seem to be a centrist. The new regulations he tried to push through (the 3 R commissioners supported, 2 D commissioners opposed) in 2003 were opposed by 80% of Congress or more, as well as groups as diverse as the NRA and NOW.

Anyways, if someone has the answer, please post. I did some research on this myself but all I could find was something about how Hollings co-authorized a fairness doctrine bill in 1993 but it did not pass.

Regarding your point about the nature of liberals, it may be true, but seems to be mostly a recent "generation x" phenomenom. The liberals of the past often rallied around charismatic leaders and showed ability to organize themselves. And certainly they have no monopoly on individualism... in fact the one who argues that conservatives are more individualistic by nature due to ideology might have the upper hand.

Another thing--  you seem to oppose the fairness doctrine (I'm undecided on it) yet also deride the consequences of its reppeal (one-sided talk radio).

Without a fairness doctrine, you will get these guys up there with their shows, which you consider "telling people how to think, vote etc". In that case, wouldn't it be better to have it coming from both sides rather than just one? On the other hand, if the entire medium is somehow inherently flawed because it's biased from the single host, the only way to correct that would be the reimpose the fairness doctrine. So it's kind of a catch-22.

[Beet]

Well, I did post. I don't think they would have gotten away with it. I think the Supreme Court would have struck it down.

I'm not sure they had any way of knowing that, especially since Clinton appointed 2 justices in his first two years. Also, one source mentioned that an attempt to revive the bill in 1991 failed in the senate because of Bush Sr.'s veto threat, when the makeup of the court was almost the same as it would have been in 1993.

Also, the Court held up the regulation in the Red Lion case, even when there was no Congressional bill supporting it.

[Beet]

Since we're really just talking about one guy here, how many listeners did Rush have after his first four years?

Do not know. But by 1993 he was definitely pretty big.