The View From Here . . .
By Bob Morgan, Jr.

The recent heated debate on immigration and other issues has given rise to thoughts of reviving the so-called Fairness Doctrine. This is an idea that should be resisted.

On its face, the Fairness Doctrine sounds reasonable. First promulgated in 1949 by the Federal Communications Commission, the doctrine requires that broadcasters "afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance." The United States Supreme Court upheld the doctrine in the Red Lion case in 1969. The Court in Red Lion deemed it appropriate for the FCC to regulate broadcast content in light of the limited amount of spectrum available to radio and television.

However, the Fairness Doctrine was ended by the Federal Communications Commission under Ronald Reagan in 1987 and President Reagan then successfully vetoed a Congressional attempt to reinstate the doctrine. The effect has been that radio and television outlets are free to present whatever points of view they choose, regardless of whether the programming is deemed "unbalanced" and skewing to one ideological pole.

Of course, once the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, many "talk radio" stations have in fact become outlets of right wing opinion, featuring such hosts as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingrahm, Michael Savage, and a host of others, and have called for reimposition of the doctrine. Liberal attempts to establish a beachhead in talk radio, such as Air America, have been much less successful.

This rise of conservative talk radio has led to attempts to revive the Fairness Doctrine,. A liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress , while not explicitly proposing reinstatement, has recently weighed in with a study purporting to show that 91% of weekday talk show fare is conservative. Meanwhile Congressman (and longshot Democratic presidential hopeful) Dennis Kucinich has actually introduced plans in Congress to revive the Fairness Doctrine. Perhaps more meaningfully, in an interview last week, a respected figure in the Democratic party, California Senator Diane Feinstein, said that she was "looking at" reviving the Fairness Doctrine.

Reviving the Fairness Doctrine is wrongheaded on a number of counts. When the doctrine was first announced, the number of broadcast outlets was relatively limited, especially on television. Indeed, in most markets there were two or three VHF channels available as late as the 1960s (plus the occasional fuzzy UHF channel) , and even New York, the largest market had only seven channels. Now, however, there are many, many more sources of information, including cable television stations, satellite radio outlets, more broadcast radio stations, plus the advent of internet-based information sources. Accordingly, a key underpinning of the doctrine, and the Supreme Court's Red Lion ruling, has disappeared.

Second, even the most evenhanded regulator will have problem determining what type of balance is needed. For example, if there is a scientific program is aired that assumes the existence of evolution, must a creationist be given time to express a contrary view? As a practical matter, many broadcasters would do what they did prior to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine - err on the side of caution, and avoid all controversial programming.

Finally, and most fundamentally, government should not be in the position of determining which political speech is permitted and which is not. In truth, much of the media is dominated by liberals, and no one believes that there a balance requirement should be imposed on, say, The New York Times. Even if Rush Limbaugh and his imitators on the right do not always get it right, speech should be countered by more speech, not by governmental regulation.