It's history:
The US went from approximately 75 stations, nationwide, that could be considered "talk radio" & the very death of of AM radio to over 1300 stations today. The liberals are on the brink of going public with a talk format geared towards those of similar ilk. The conservatives have Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Reagan & a few others.
THIS WILL ALL END if the current house & senate liberals as well as a few ignorant republicans, including Trent Lott, have their way.
Hate conservative radio? Fine. Let the market be the bearer of politics & opinion on radio & TV. If a liberal starts a show, listen. I certainly will. Don't allow the feds to kill a medium because it causes them discomfort.
Write your Congressman/woman and your Senators.
You may dislike what the people say but don't regulate their right to say it.
FAIRNESS DOCTRINE
U.S. Broadcasting Policy
The policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission that became known as the "Fairness Doctrine" is an attempt to ensure that all coverage of controversial issues by a broadcast station be balanced and fair. The FCC took the view, in 1949, that station licensees were "public trustees," and as such had an obligation to afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of contrasting points of view on controversial issues of public importance. The Commission later held that stations were also obligated to actively seek out issues of importance to their community and air programming that addressed those issues. With the deregulation sweep of the Reagan Administration during the 1980s, the Commission dissolved the fairness doctrine.
This doctrine grew out of concern that because of the large number of applications for radio station 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. That requirement was to be enforced by FCC mandate.
From the early 1940s, the FCC had established the "Mayflower Doctrine," which prohibited editorializing by stations. But that absolute ban softened somewhat by the end of the decade, allowing editorializing only if other points of view were aired, balancing that of the station's. During these years, the FCC had established dicta and case law guiding the operation of the doctrine.
In ensuing years the FCC ensured that the doctrine was operational by laying out rules defining such matters as personal attack and political editorializing (1967). In 1971 the Commission set requirements for the stations to report, with their license renewal, efforts to seek out and address issues of concern to the community. This process became known as "Ascertainment of Community Needs," and was to be done systematically and by the station management.
The fairness doctrine ran parallel to Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1937 which required stations to offer "equal opportunity" to all legally qualified political candidates for any office if they had allowed any person running in that office to use the station. The attempt was to balance--to force an even handedness. Section 315 exempted news programs, interviews and documentaries. But the doctrine would include such efforts. Another major difference should be noted here: Section 315 was federal law, passed by Congress. The fairness doctrine was simply FCC policy.
The FCC fairness policy was given great credence by the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case of Red Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc. v. FCC. In that case, a station in Pennsylvania, licensed by Red Lion Co., had aired a "Christian Crusade" program wherein an author, Fred J. Cook, was attacked. When Cook requested time to reply in keeping with the fairness doctrine, the station refused. Upon appeal to the FCC, the Commission declared that there was personal attack and the station had failed to meet its obligation. The station appealed and the case wended its way through the courts and eventually to the Supreme Court. The court ruled for the FCC, giving sanction to the fairness doctrine.
The doctrine, nevertheless, disturbed many journalists, who considered it a violation of First Amendment rights of free speech/free press which should allow reporters to make their own decisions about balancing stories. Fairness, in this view, should not be forced by the FCC. In order to avoid the requirement to go out and find contrasting viewpoints on every issue raised in a story, some journalists simply avoided any coverage of some controversial issues. This "chilling effect" was just the opposite of what the FCC intended.
By the 1980s, many things had changed. The "scarcity" argument which dictated the "public trustee" philosophy of the Commission, was disappearing with the abundant number of channels available on cable TV. Without scarcity, or with many other voices in the marketplace of ideas, there were perhaps fewer compelling reasons to keep the fairness doctrine. This was also the era of deregulation when the FCC took on a different attitude about its many rules, seen as an unnecessary burden by most stations. The new Chairman of the FCC, Mark Fowler, appointed by President Reagan, publicly avowed to kill to fairness doctrine.
By 1985, the FCC issued its Fairness Report, asserting that the doctrine was no longer having its intended effect, might actually have a "chilling effect" and might be in violation of the First Amendment. In a 1987 case, Meredith Corp. v. FCC, the courts declared that the doctrine was not mandated by Congress and the FCC did not have to continue to enforce it. The FCC dissolved the doctrine in August of that year.
However, before the Commission's action, in the spring of 1987, both houses of Congress voted to put the fairness doctrine into law--a statutory fairness doctrine which the FCC would have to enforce, like it or not. But President Reagan, in keeping with his deregulatory efforts and his long-standing favor of keeping government out of the affairs of business, vetoed the legislation. There were insufficient votes to override the veto. Congressional efforts to make the doctrine into law surfaced again during the Bush administration. As before, the legislation was vetoed, this time by Bush.
The fairness doctrine remains just beneath the surface of concerns over broadcasting and cablecasting, and some members of congress continue to threaten to pass it into legislation. Currently, however, there is no required balance of controversial issues as mandated by the fairness doctrine. The public relies instead on the judgment of broadcast journalists and its own reasoning ability to sort out one-sided or distorted coverage of an issue. Indeed, experience over the past several years since the demise of the doctrine shows that broadcasters can and do provide substantial coverage of controversial issues of public importance in their communities, including contrasting viewpoints, through news, public affairs, public service, interactive and special programming.
-Val E. Limburg
The US went from approximately 75 stations, nationwide, that could be considered "talk radio" & the very death of of AM radio to over 1300 stations today. The liberals are on the brink of going public with a talk format geared towards those of similar ilk. The conservatives have Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Reagan & a few others.
THIS WILL ALL END if the current house & senate liberals as well as a few ignorant republicans, including Trent Lott, have their way.
WSJ said:The Wall Street Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK- September 12, 2003
The Stop Rush Campaign
Republicans love to complain that they don't get a fair shake from the elites running the nation's airwaves and newspapers. Which has us wondering why they're helping their political opponents muzzle the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
Ever since the Federal Communications Commission's June decision to allow broadcast TV owners to own a few more stations, liberals have been channeling George Orwell -- claiming Big Brother broadcasters are a "threat to democracy" that will stifle "diversity of view." With the aid of many Republicans, they've already blocked the new rules in the House and may pass a resolution on Monday to do the same in the Senate.
We've addressed the substance of this issue several times, but the truth is that this crusade has little to do with the merits. Anyone who channel surfs or roams the Internet knows America isn't suffering from any lack of news sources. What's really driving the politicians is the desire for revenge against their media enemies.
On the left, this means returning to the days before deregulation opened the airwaves to the populist political right. Liberals know what has happened since the FCC abandoned the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987. That rule required radio and TV stations to provide "balanced" news coverage. In practice, it discouraged stations from touching controversial subjects, so that in 1980 there were a mere 75 talk radio stations.
Today, thanks to the end of that doctrine, there are 1,300 talk radio stations. But to the horror of the political left, the hosts who have prospered on radio are the likes of Don Imus, Laura Schlessinger and Sean Hannity. The most popular of them all is Rush Limbaugh , no doubt because of his humor and optimism, with 20 million listeners a week.
Meanwhile, because cable and satellite aren't over-regulated the way broadcasters are, we've seen successes like Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. The cable channel has blown past CNN in the ratings in just seven years, and its different take on the news drives liberals up the wall. So obsessed are they with Fox that Al Gore and friends are trying to finance their own liberal cable network.
The only reason these new media voices have succeeded is because people want to hear them. There's no public clamor for the top-down regulation Congress wants, beyond the crowd that donates during National Public Radio pledge week. Americans like their media choices and would rather not go back to the days when Walter Cronkite was their main, scintillating news source.
Liberals, on the other hand, are almost transparent in their aim to do precisely that. During July's House floor debate, Michigan Democrat John Dingell explained that once they roll back the FCC ownership expansion liberals can then move to reverse another recent FCC decision to allow companies to own TV stations and newspapers in the same market. They may then go to town on New York Representative Maurice Hinchey's proposal to revive the Fairness Doctrine and complicate life for both Fox and Rush.
What's amazing is how oblivious Republicans are to this stop-Rush game. So eager are Senators Trent Lott and Kay Bailey Hutchison to paste a defeat on their local media enemies that they're willing to punish all media companies. For their part, House Republicans have fallen for the lobbying of local TV and newspapers that want Congressional protection from takeover bids; Members are too frightened by what kind of coverage they'll get next election to just say no.
At least the White House seems to understand the stakes, and President Bush has suggested he'll veto any bill that rolls back the FCC rules. But House Republicans are said to be about 40 votes short of the 146 or so needed to sustain a veto. If Republicans can't rally behind their President on something so clearly in their own interest, they deserve to suffer the bias of Dan Rather and Katie Couric.
And, hopeless as this point might be, they might also consider that standing up for free-market principles and deregulation is one reason they came to Washington in the first place.
Hate conservative radio? Fine. Let the market be the bearer of politics & opinion on radio & TV. If a liberal starts a show, listen. I certainly will. Don't allow the feds to kill a medium because it causes them discomfort.
Write your Congressman/woman and your Senators.
You may dislike what the people say but don't regulate their right to say it.
Gonz NEEDS his Rush....