The Problem With the Fairness Doctrine

A Free Republic post yesterday points to a 1997 Cato Institute paper on the Fairness Doctrine and why it is a weapon of the government that is the enemy of the First Amendment:

In 1962 President Kennedy's policies were under sustained attack from conservative broadcasters across the country. Of particular concern to the president were vocal right-wing opponents of the nuclear test ban treaty being considered by the Senate at the time. The administration and the DNC seized upon the Fairness Doctrine as a way to "counter the radical right" in their battle to pass the treaty. The Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which was established and funded by the Democrats, orchestrated a very effective protest campaign against hostile radio editorials, demanding free reply time under the Fairness Doctrine whenever a conservative broadcaster denounced the treaty. Ultimately, the Senate ratified the treaty by far more than the necessary two-thirds majority.

Flush with success, the DNC and the Kennedy-Johnson administration decided to extend use of the doctrine to other high-priority legislation and the impending 1964 elections. Democratic Party funding sources were used to establish a professional listening post to monitor right-wing radio. The DNC also prepared a kit explaining "how to demand time under the Fairness Doctrine," which was handed out at conferences. As Bill Ruder, an assistant secretary of commerce under President Kennedy, noted, "Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters in the hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue."

By November 1964, when Johnson beat Goldwater in a landslide, the Democrats' "fairness" campaign was considered a stunning success. The effort had produced 1,035 letters to stations, resulting in 1,678 hours of free airtime. Critical to the campaign was the fact that much of the partisan commentary came from small, rural stations. In a confidential report to the DNC, Martin Firestone, a Washington attorney and former FCC staffer, explained,

"The right-wingers operate on a strictly cash basis and it is for this reason that they are carried by so many small stations. Were our efforts to be continued on a year-round basis, we would find that many of these stations would consider the broadcasts of these programs bothersome and burdensome (especially if they are ultimately required to give us free time) and would start dropping the programs from their broadcast schedule."

One of the key strengths of the Fairness Doctrine as a weapon of the government (e.g. incumbents) is that it creates a false perception of public opinion. For instance, if there is a huge outcry from the public against strawberry icecream, but the Fairness Doctrine mandates that for every person who expresses an opinion against strawberry icecream, broadcasters must find and broadcast someone who likes strawberry icecream, not only will they expend a lot of their resources finding the rare person who likes strawberry icecream, by giving the overall impression that 50% of people hate strawberry icecream and 50% of people like strawberry icecream, that presents a false impression of the overall public opinion on the issue--a false impression received by the listening public, and by the representatives who may vote on icecream legislation.

Now apply this to a real issue such as illegal immigration. The vast majority of people in the country oppose it an oppose amnesty, as outcry a few weeks ago demonstrated...and as a result, amnesty proposals in Congress flopped. But if the news had been forced to give equal time to both views, Congress would have been presented with the "picture" of public opinion that people were evenly divided on the issue. Then amnesty would almost certainly have passed.

The perception of the threat of public outcry is often the only tool--between elections--the people of the United States have when their representatives go badly off course. The Fairness Doctrine would take that tool away from them.

And contrary to the public protestations of liberal politicians and their apologists in the Left wing blogosphere, they want very much to bring it back, and have already been strategizing extensively on how to do so.