Fairly Horrifying

A couple of weeks back, I was flipping the channels and came across the second half of The Communicators, an on-going interview series on C-SPAN that focuses on media issues. This episode (from June 2, 2007 - link goes to MP3, a video feed is available from the C-SPAN web site) discussed the Fairness Doctrine, an FCC-enforced set of regulations that were taken out of effect in the late 1980's. The end of the Fairness Doctrine is largely credited as allowing the rise of conservative talk radio, in the form of Rush Limbaugh and his followers, and thus eventually extending to cable news channels and blogs and such. The revival of Democratic control of Congress, along with the not-unlikely prospects for a Democratic President in 2008, has led to speculation that the Fairness Doctrine might be put back in effect, long desired by the left as a way of both extending the government's control over the national media and as a way of potentially silencing (or at least cramping the style of) the Rush Limbaughs of the world.

I missed the first half of the show, which presented the "anti" side of the Fairness Doctrine, but caught the second half, which featured Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the Media Access Project, who is a proponent of reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. Frankly, what I heard from him was truly scary - one of the scarier concepts to come along in a while. I had not understood what the true scope of the Fairness Doctrine encompassed, and if it goes forward and is implemented as Mr. Schwartzman and his ilk desire, we will see a vast change in the way television and radio operate.

I had thought the Fairness Doctrine would just include "balance" - that is, in exchange for broadcasting three hours of Rush Limbaugh, a station would be required to broadcast three hours of "liberal" talk. Now, this would have only minimal effect on Rush - he is the most profitable show everywhere he is broadcast. I had believed that Rush would largely go on as before, and simply rely on the stations to "balance" him out on their own. This they would do by taking time from their less profitable shows - the second-and-lower-tier talk shows (Neal Boortz, Michael Savage, Glen Beck, etc.). The beneficiaries would be the Air Americas of the world - those liberal shows that would now receive in effect station sponsorships, so that they can demonstrate enough balance to hold onto their licenses. But as I heard Schwartzman's ideas about what would be included under a revived Fairness Doctrine, I realized that I didn't understand just how broad the effect would be on both stations as a whole and individual shows.

Among his proposals and claims:

1. Every broadcaster must carry "controversial" programming - some discussion of community information and issues. This means your all-classical radio station - it must have public affairs discussions. That rap station? Same thing. Classic rock station? Them, too. What counts as "controversial"? Well, he claims it must affect large numbers of people in some "legislative or governmental sense", but then he goes on to say it could be something as simple as a discussion on "who is the best center fielder"? Does anybody think this makes sense? Does anybody this having a classical music station discussing baseball really increases the value to the public of the station license?


2. He claims this is not having the government guide content. He justifies this by saying the government would not proscribe what issues must be covered, or how (but more on that later). Of course, he is exactly guiding content. Do you think a station could claim to have covered its public affairs quotient by playing (for example) Coldplay, as it wishes to? No? Then the station is not guiding the content - the government is.


3. Attacks on persons - or groups - get a "brief right of reply". What defines an "attack"? More importantly, what defines a "group"? Is "the Democratic Party" a group? Are "women" a group? Are "blacks" a group? If so, then who gets to respond? And when does the response happen? If Rush "attacks" a person, does that response occur during his show? Or just sometime on all stations that carry his show? Or just on some stations? What about all of the recent Paris Hilton coverage - wall-to-wall, every channel out there. Does she get to issue a reply to all of those shows? Note that this doesn't appear to depend on the truthfulness of the attack - if a person is attacked untruthfully, there are already remedies in the courts. What a hornet's nest this provision is by itself.


4. Shows that cover only one point-of-view would have to include content on other points-of-view as well - and this would appear to be directly in the show, as an example provided by Schwartzman was that the show would have to take callers representing the "other" side. And he goes on to suggest that a host in the habit of cutting off callers with a particular viewpoint might need to "be a little less quick on the dump button". So here, the government is not only specifying what issues are to be covered, but now they are specifying what specific callers a show must take on the air and how long that caller would be allowed to stay on the air. Again, this wouldn't affect Rush Limbaugh much - he already takes liberal callers, mainly because they are easy to humiliate. But for most shows, this proposal would be death. What if a show doesn't get any callers with an opposing viewpoint - would the producers have to prove they didn't receive any calls with the "other" viewpoint?


5. He claims that only a "half a dozen" cases a year involved challenges to the Fairness Doctrine back in the 70's and 80's. I don't doubt it - there were much fewer stations and much fewer watchdog groups monitoring them. Does he truly think that now, in this current political environment, with the constant monitoring of every outlet by political groups of all bents, that there would only be a few complaints issued about content under a new Fairness Doctrine? Common sense denies this.


6. He repeated described this as having "great bi-partisan" support. However, when directly asked what Republicans had expressed support for its revival, he could only stutter - he couldn't name one.


7. Note that political campaign coverage is handled under different rules, not by the Fairness Doctrine. We know that the news media's coverage of campaigns is slanted towards the left - that won't be changed by this reinstatement. How convenient.

I'll tell this guy exactly what this would accomplish - a further dumbing down of radio and broadcast television, as more content providers and more content consumers leave to markets that do not have these lame controls - cable television, satellite radio, the internet. It wasn't until these controls were removed that we got the content explosion that we have today - an endless number of content providers giving an endless amount of viewpoints on any topic. The proponents might claim that the public is being ill-served by this situation - I won't argue that the public is being ill-served by the Big Three television news organizations. But putting the Fairness Doctrine back in place will do nothing to fix that situation, it will remove one of the counterbalances to the Big Three, and it will reinstate a giant governmental control over what we see and hear about. And all just to put a bee under Rush's bonnet.

Not just no - HELL NO!