Posted by
aurorawatcher on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 1:27:21 AM
For those of us who have actually studied the Fairness Doctrine, it is manifestly clear that it was anything but fair. Like a lot of really high-sounding legislation and regulation, it had consequences. While obstensibly suggesting that it protected the rights of all opinion holders to state their opinion, it actually resulted in a silencing of opinion because broadcasters were afraid of being deemed "unfair and imbalanced" and therefore, simply avoided public opinion of all kinds. Unfortunately, the news itself is often biased. Today, we have a plethora of media to balance one another out, but under the Fairness Doctrine those who recognized that the network news was biased were not afforded a voice to state their evidence and evaluation. For example, Walter Cronkite (who was, and still is, a personal hero of mine for the fine reporting of his early career) did not like the Vietnam War and reported it in such a way that public opinion was swayed against it, up to and including convincing the American public that we were losing the "police action" when in fact, as we later were told by the Vietnamese government, we were within weeks of winning the conflict when we began to withdraw our troops and left our allies without backup, assuring the enemy victory. There were American observers who at least suspected this, but the network broadcasters and most local outlets would not give them air time because of the chilling effect of the Fairness Doctrine.
There are those who assert today that this would not be the case; they often claim "right-wing" power brokers have a stranglehold on the US media. For conservatives, however, we often find that we tune into MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC to find extremely liberal points of view and unbalanced news coverage. Fox News is the only major news network that presents anything close to the conservative view of today's events. I do know that liberals want to believe that Fox News and talk radio tell conservatives what to believe rather than covering news that the other news outlets ignore, but that's exactly the reason why I have difficulty talking to most liberals. They automatically assume that conservatives aren't very bright, based only on the evidence that our opinion differs from theirs. They seem never to ask themselves if perhaps their opinion is based upon false or prejudiciously-presented information and they are quite unwilling to challenge their own prejudices and actually watch, read, listen to, or entertain any information or opinion that disagrees with their established thinking.
I understand this mindset. I was trained to ask "what's the other side of the story" and often under the Fairness Doctrine, I would suspect that information was wanting, but it was only a suspicion. Surely other journalists were as ethical in presenting the news as I was. Well, not so much. My first real taste of this came during the Alaska D2 lands controversy. It absolutely amazed me how the networks presented only part of the story. By the time I got my degree, I knew that somehow the major outlets really didn't understand Alaskan politics and it seemed like they just needed to get the full story. Then I started hearing from friends who had taken jobs in the Lower 48. It was not for want of information that the media portrayed a land grab as an environmental issue. The regulators were actually gigging Alaskan miners for being environomentally conscience prior to the regulations being in place. Reporters knew this and refused to report it. When reporters like myself tried to bring the other side to light, we were shut out as giving an opinion rather than presenting the full news. The Fairness Doctrine was the duct tape our opponents used to keep the full truth from getting out.
Having done my homework, I know that there are interest groups who seek the re-establishment of the Fairness Doctrine for whom fairness for all is anything but the goal. The broad spectrum of these groups appear to be at odds with one another, but their ultimate goal seems aimed at the same target -- control of the media and the message. A loose coalition of liberals bills itself the "media reform movement." Deceptively influential, its members are rarely the most powerful people in the room, but they inevitably shout the loudest, casting themselves as beleaguered populists fighting the major media corporations, which they accuse of centralizing power and shutting out dissident perspectives. In their more libertarian moments, they'll call for opening up more spectrum, loosening copyright controls, and rolling back culturally conservative restrictions on speech. Then they'll turn around and support a host of new economic regulations and speech controls. Some claim to prefer broad and simple rules aimed at encouraging innovation, not dictates meant to force a specific outcome, but you can find out what they really want by digging into their testimonies before regulatory boards and their own publications.
President Obama was a 20-year member of Trinity Church, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, which has been heavily involved in the media reform movement, including a reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine to assure that "minority" points of view will not be overwhelmed by larger voices.
It's also worth noting, that while these reformers claim to be champions against the media industry, their goals are not always at odds. In fact, there have been a number of back-door deals over recent years that have allowed media industry expansion while also giving concessions to the reformers. The FCC is often controlled by party politics. While obstensibly an independent agency, the chairman and commissioners are selected and nominated by the president and, though they may vote however they please, they owe back-scratching services to the guy who buttered their bread.
So, while I've said I believe the Fairness Doctrine is unlikely to return from the grave in Obama's first term (let's hope, pray, implore heaven that he doesn't have a second one), I think many people succumb to looking at the shiny illusion when we really ought to be wondering what else the magician has up his sleeve. Although those of us who value balanced and open debate should not want to see a resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine, that's not the ace card. There are far more wide-ranging and insidious media controls on the horizon.