The Fairness Doctrine

One of the favorite issues that some ultra-conservatives get themselves riled up about is the Fairness Doctrine.  Since President-elect Obama’s victory earlier this month, some of those on the far right have already begun to stir this issue up again.  They are paranoid that the Democratically-controlled House, Senate, and Oval Office will conspire to impose the Fairness Doctrine again, but this appears to be a false alarm.

The Fairness Doctrine was in effect from 1949-1987, and required that broadcasters devote some of their time to discussing controversial public interest issues and that they provide contrasting views.  It never required equal time or equal coverage, but just required at least some diversity of opinion in the public airwaves.  Since its repeal in 1987, a few attempts have been made to reinstate it.  One of those attempts came in 1993, and it was given several nicknames by its passionate opponents.  The “Hush Rush” movement is one of the best.  This effort failed, and there has been relatively little push for it since then.

Obama’s position has been that he “does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters, [but he] considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible.  That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets.”

I have at least three responses that come to mind on this issue.

1. The Fairness Doctrine seems reasonable enough.  It does not require equal time or anything that severe.  It would not “hush Rush.”  Since the airwaves are owned by the public, it does seem reasonable to expect that some of their use would be covering issues of public importance and at least presenting both sides of controversial issues.  This is also consistent with a longstanding interpretation of the First Amendment.
2. This appears to be a non-issue since the Democrats are not pushing for it and the President-elect is not in favor of it.
3. There is already a great deal of fairness on the airwaves.  Even though talk radio is dominated by conservatives in most media markets, the opportunity exists for liberal counterparts.  Air America was one example of a liberal attempt at talk radio, but it went bankrupt after just two years of broadcasting.  It just seems that liberal versions of talk radio cannot thrive like the conservatives can.  Conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have no liberal counterparts.

The best chance for overall fairness is probably not going to be found in any sort of doctrine or mandate, but in the overall market forces and diversity of sources.  Those who consume media choose their sources and the biases that come along with them.  Since the country is relatively divided, it follows that media outlets will be roughly balanced when taken as a whole.  Compared to the vast amount of sources available for information and commentary, no single source of media and its internal fairness or unfairness should present too much of a threat.

One of the most obvious balances to the conservative domination of talk radio is the liberal domination of the blogosphere.  Liberal blogs with massive followings like Daily Kos have no real conservative conterpart. This may be because of the generational divide; younger people who are likely to spend time surfing the internet for news and commentary tend more Democratic.  It may also be because of the regional divide; urban and suburban people are more likely to be techno-savy and have internet access, while more conservatives live in rural areas and cling to their guns and religion (just kidding about that last part).

Even though this particular iteration of the Fairness Doctrine hype is irrelevant, it does bring up the interesting conversation of overall media trends and biases.  In a free market where media is driven by the consumers, fairness seems all but inevitable.  I am not concerned any single source of media and its potential biases, or about imposing some sort of superficial and artificial fairness any of those sources.