In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission issued a policy statement that became known as the Fairness Doctrine. The policy grew out of a specific concern - because there were so many applications being submitted for radio stations and only a finite amount of radio frequency was available, not every applicant would be granted a broadcasting license, and the FCC wanted to ensure that broadcasters did not use their allotted frequencies to advocate their singular perspective. The essence of the policy was that as broadcasters are granted licenses by the government to use the broadcast spectrum - a public resource - as a for-profit enterprise (the miniscule spectrum territory occupied by nonprofit broadcasting excepted), broadcasters were obligated to give ample time to matters of public importance and to provide a range of viewpoints on controversial issues.
(Just to clarify this point in case you didn't know - the public owns the airwaves, not the broadcast networks, their corporate overlords, or radio mega-conglomerates like Clear Channel, with 1,215 radio stations, 37 TV stations and counting); I, you, your aunt Sally, and the rest of the citizens of this country own the airwaves, like we own the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and the other public lands.)
In practice, however, the Fairness Doctrine was a failure. It was never enforced by the FCC to require commercial broadcasters to program public affairs shows, and broadcasters did not heed its strictures. The FCC's only enforcement tool - revoking a broadcaster's license when it came up for renewal - was never used a penalty for failing to meet the standards of the Fairness Doctrine. And in 1987, a Reagan appointee to the FCC, Mark Fowler, killed the Fairness Doctrine, on the grounds that the scarcity argument which necessitated the "public trustee" stance of the commission had gone disappear-o with the rise of cable TV's multitude of channels. (Later that year, Congress voted to put the policy into law - requiring the FCC to enforce the Fairness Doctrine whether they liked it or not - but Reagan, the saint of deregulation, vetoed it.)
The problem with Fowler's reasoning, is that while a thousand stations have bloomed - on cable, on the satellite networks, on the Internet - the lion's share of the market is concentrated in very few hands. Take radio, for instance. According to the "Joint Statement on Current Issues in Radio," four groups - Chancellor, Clear Channel, Infinity, and Capstar - control 63 percent of Top Forty radio, which includes 61 million listeners nationwide, and 56 percent of Country, which includes 28 million listeners nationwide. Clear Channel alone controls 60 percent of Rock radio. Clear Channel owns stations in 247 of the 250 major radio markets (including 12 in Poughkeepsie). So while there certainly are a lot of stations, there certainly isn't a lot of diversity, nor is there any sense left of broadcasting in the public interest (public TV and radio stations again excepted). Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays put it best when he told Fortune magazine in 2003, "We're not in the business of providing news and information. We're not in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the business of selling our customers' products."
Why all the agitation now over the Fairness Doctrine? The Sinclair Broadcast Group. No doubt you've heard something of the fracas over Sinclair's decision to air Stolen Honor, the anti-Kerry film rehashing bogus claims about Kerry's service record and anti-war activities, on its 62 TV stations - reaching 24 percent of US households. (In April, Sinclair ordered seven of its stations not to air Ted Koppel's "Nightline" broadcast featuring a roll call of the 700 troops who had died in Iraq.) That such a partisan film would be broadcast two weeks before the election, by a company that contributed over $2 million in the past eight years to the Republican Party, raised the ire of shareholders, advertisers, and the public. As we went to print in late October, Sinclair was forced to retreat from airing Stolen Honor, and its stock price had fallen 20 percent in the wake of the controversy.
And while this contretemps worked out in the end, the question remains: Should we have to rely on market forces to ensure that broadcasters act as stewards of a vital public resource?
We need a new, enforceable Fairness Doctrine.
- Brian K. Mahoney