Posted by
aurorawatcher on Tuesday, September 01, 2009 2:31:35 AM
Let me preface this by saying that I hold a degree in Print Journalism and worked as a reporter for a small newspaper for a number of years, so while this is outside of my usual realm of discussion, it is not outside of my fields of expertise. Aurora
First the good news: The fairness doctrine still has a stake in its heart. The doctrine, which until its demise 21 years ago was a rule that gave government the power to punish broadcasters for being "insufficiently balanced", is not likely to return, despite persistent rumors that the regulator's rotting corpse will crawl from its coffin and desanguinate Rush Limbaugh.
That's good news for talk radio fans and those of us who watch Fox, who worry that no salt has been sown around this demon. When the Federal Communications Commission enforced the doctrine (1949 to 1987) it was a convenient club for politicians and interest groups itching to silence their critics. I was a local news reporter in the 1980s and my friends in broadcast from that time tell me that they weighed, judged and usually rejected every political comment that came along for fear that someone would demand equal time. The early 1980s was the time of D2 lands and consideration of Alaskan cessation due to federal abuse of authority, but local broadcast stations hardly touched the topic hat most of the voting population of the state were discussing. There are some who believe that the Alaska Independence Party's original platform might have won out if it had had a truly public hearing. Instead, the topic was confined to bar rooms and the Borough Assembly chambers (that's like a county seat). That doesn't seem fair to many given that we are still dealing with D2 issues 25 years later.
During the last couple of years, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats have publicly pined for a return of the Fairness Doctrine. It's a change that would effectively require any outlet that transmits, for example, Sean Hannity's show to either devote a chunk of its schedule to rebutting him or, more likely, dial back its political programs altogether. We'd go back to the days of self-help programming instead of political discussions. Pelosi's party hasn't come close to restoring the rule, but they've handed a powerful political weapon to the opposition: Every time the Dems raise the subject, right-wing radio shows and blogs broadcast the news to an increasingly-frustrated conservative base. In the midst of last year's presidential election, the conservative weekly Human Events warned that "liberals are chafing at the bit, waiting for regime change in Washington to give them the ability to reinstate the ‘fairness doctrine.' " Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media—an organization that never shied from wielding the fairness doctrine against the left—fretted that "if Obama captures the White House and gets the opportunity to appoint the FCC chairman, liberals would then have a 3-2 majority capable of bringing back the Fairness Doctrine through administrative action, without the need for congressional approval."
Obama "promised" during the election that it wouldn't happen, stating that he did not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters. That's good news if you believe him, but now for the bad news. There's a host of other broadcast regulations that Obama has not foresworn. In the worst-case scenario, they suggest a world where the FCC creates intrusive new rules by fiat, meddles more with the content of stations' programs, and uses the pending extensions of broadband access as an opportunity to put its paws on the Internet. At a time of increasingly diverse and participatory new media, we would essentially turn the clock back to the days when the broadcast media were a centralized and cozy public-private partnership.
Perhaps because of its more widespread nature, threats such as the above don't seem to rile the conservative base the way the fairness doctrine does. That may be because it's not altogether clear if the GOP would be any less intrusive in these areas. Republican Kevin Martin as chair of the FCC was no friend to either free enterprise or free speech, in the opinion of many (particularly Libertarian conservatives) and sharply increased federal restrictions on the media, targetting "indecent" broadcasting; new regulations for satellite radio, wireless phones, and other communications industries; and an attempt to assert unprecedented powers over cable TV. "Martin is the most regulatory Republican FCC chairman in decades," said Adam Thierer, director of the anti-censorship Center for Digital Media Freedom. "He wants to control speech and will use whatever tools he has to get there."
An Obama FCC may seem like a relative reprieve to some, following Martin's commission, because any appointee of his is more likely to ignore cultural clashes like pornography on media. On the other hand, a lot depends on the interest groups that have acquired the most influence in his administration.
That will be the subject of my next post.