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Edited on Wed Aug-24-11 03:34 PM by dairydog91
The Fairness Doctrine was/is overrated and and a very dubious idea from a standpoint of free speech. The Doctrine was upheld by SCOTUS in Red Lion, but that decision made clear that the government may only engage in such regulatory activity in certain areas of media activity. The decision did not uphold the idea that the government has a general right to enforce fairness on all forms of media, and just 5 years after that decision, SCOTUS held in Miami Herald v. Tornillo that the state of Florida was Constitutionally prohibited from enforcing a fairness standard on newspapers (Their editorials, to be specific). The main difference between newspapers and radio waves, in the court's logic, was that radio waves are inherently limited and are owned by the public. Other, less limited forms of media are not subject to the same level of control.
I'm befuddled by all the wailing about how Fox should be subject to the Doctrine; their content is shite, but they're a cable/satellite channel which transmits all their content through cables and satellites. Since this medium is not particularly limited (Just add more cables and satellites when you want more channels), it's hard to see SCOTUS allowing Fairness Doctrine regulation of Fox. Now, Rush Limbaugh might be targeted by the doctrine, but he could simply migrate to internet/satellite radio and avoid such regulations.
Moreover, the principle that media should be subjected to "fairness" is, IMO, dubious at best. Whose sense of fairness are we talking about? Are we simply talking about a Red/Blue divide, where case the fairness standard completely ignores a wide variety of third-party opinions? Or, if I state something objectionable on my radio station, should I be obligated to provide free time for the perspectives of a conservative, libertarian, statist, environmentalist, and a constitutional monarchist? "Fairness" implies the midpoint between two opposing sides. What if one side is much closer to the truth than the other, in which case imposing the midpoint is a skew in and of itself?
Furthermore, what if I as a media consumer don't want everything to be "balanced"? Maybe I'm happier with some media sources that essentially parrot back my worldview, some sources that provide extremely dry factual reporting, and some sources that get me angry enough to scream at the TV. In my eyes, there is a "conservatism" (By which I mean "pining for the past") in many people who support this doctrine, a sort of wistful remembering of the good ol' days when there were a couple big broadcast TV stations and some radio stations offering theoretically balanced content. But we, living in the 21st century, have access to sums of news astronomically larger than what was available just a few decades ago. Sitting on my ass in my bedroom, I have access to the official wires of every country that has one, newspapers, government archives, internet radio, blogs from all over the world, and a whole bunch of other media. I don't need the FCC to create its own idea of a balanced news diet when I, as an adult who can read and use a mouse, can create my own custom media diet from scratch.
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