[Something seriously flaky appears to be going on with Blogger today. I apologize, noting the irony of this happening during a personal blogging fugue on the topic of media access and censorship. No conspiracy theories here; just frustration from this end too!]
In this post, I'll survey some of the arguments of the more popular left-leaning blogs and media outlets in support of the Fairness Doctrine. (We read 'em so you don't have to!) In sum, I find them to be incoherent and un-principled--based to a large degree on feelings and animus towards particular personalities rather than reason or logic. Part I of this series is here. Part II is here.
Firedoglake, for example, argues that:
Much of the right wing's success in manipulating corporate media came as a direct result of Ronald Reagan's precious "deregulation"...
The unstated assumptions here seem to be that 1) deregulation is undesirable, 2) the media has moved to the right over the past twenty years, 3) 'corporate' media is uniquely unresponsive to what individuals would otherwise choose to read and hear and 4) some form of illegal 'influence' has gone on behind the scenes and that
government influence would be more desirable. None of these stand up to scrutiny.
As I argued in
Part II, the reasonableness of certain cursory forms of media and broadcast regulation do not in any way warrant pervasive regulation of its
content. The idea that the media has moved to the right is simply bizarre, as I noted in
Part I, where I also nixed the idea that corporations are somehow irresponsible and inflexible in responding to the desires of media consumers. (And government, Hollywood and universities
are? Hello!) The fourth allegation is so vague as to not warrant a response beyond what I already provided above.
Shakespeare's Sister has broken permalinks, however in a rambling Tuesday post entitled, transparently enough, "Bring Back the Fairness Doctrine", they argue (it seems--hard to tell, really), that because ABC's "Road to 9-11" pointed up Bill Clinton's role in allowing 9-11 to happen and because some people took issue with that and because Sean Hannity is a little over-the-top sometimes, that the government ought to step in and referee such material in the future.
What they don't describe is the spectre of unaccountable FCC bureaucrats telling ABC exactly how they should edit such politically explosive material in the future. What they also don't explore is the possibility that
expansive federal rules on media balance that start with a Zombie Fairness Doctrine might logically view Hollywood as their next target for oversight.
Given the proliferation of media distribution and access outlets, including the Internet, this is not so far-fetched as it may seem. And while such an outcome might seem like it is devoutly to be wished under a Republican administration with Michael Moore and Al Gore running around making political films, it is an impulse that--just like the special prosecutor law--ought be quashed in its infancy lest it devour all of us. (If you really want to have nightmares, imagine a president Eliot Spitzer circa 2012 with his hand on this throttle.)
The site "fair.org" (a bit presumptuous, no?) starts it's post
"The Fairness Doctrine: how we lost it and why we need it back" not with reference to the
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution but with a ruling from the high-water mark of socialist foolishness in the United States: 1969, a time when half a dozen television stations plus newspapers and radio stations were about it--if you lived near a major city, that is. No blogs, no podcasts, no satellite radio, no web, no e-mail. Heck, it wasn't even convenient or cheap to get something copied on paper.
A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a... frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount. — U.S. Supreme Court, upholding the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 1969.
The piece launches from there into an indictment of the "staunchly conservative" Sinclair Broadcast Group for initially requiring its stations to air 'Stolen Honor', thus giving the Swift Boat Vets more airtime and tossing John Kerry into the dustbin of U.S. history where he belongs. They fail to note that without the Fairness Doctrine in place, enough pressure was put on Sinclair
through ordinary market mechanisms to make its broadcast entirely optional for affiliates. That isn't enough for the far left.
It goes without saying after such an introduction that fair.org is anything but "fair". Not having figured out the new media world in which it is widely acknowledged that
everyone is biased and that balance is in the eye of the beholder, they think that the label of "fair" is really really important. In that vein, as I said yesterday, FOX's claim to being fair and balanced is a relic of this mindset or else thoroughly tongue-in-cheek. Regardless, they are what they are and most sane people don't accept that claim any more than they do (or should) for any other media.
All of which is beside the point because--like many other far left blogs and opinion pieces on the subject--the argument of fair.org is from the particular (e.g.,
John Kerry got a raw deal!) to the general. That's exactly opposite to how the Constitution is framed (general principles built on eternal truths). Because Sean Hannity is sometimes a boor or Sinclair is "staunchly conservative" or Rush is irritating to the left's high view of itself does not mean that the government has a role in regulating content. It is a proposition based on particular personalities, not proven principles.
A much more informative but
equally misquided post is offered by something called the Sustainability Institute based in Hartland, Vermont--a beautiful place, so long as you don't have to argue politics with your neighbors. (Whenever I hear the word 'sustainability', I am now in the habit of asking the person if s/he is familiar with the famous
bet twenty-seven years ago, between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon--but that's another post altogether.) They write:
The Fairness Doctrine was an ingenious device, because it empowered the public, not the government, to monitor the fairness of the airwaves. Citizens who felt that a public issue was not being fairly discussed brought complaints directly to broadcasters. Most of those complaints were settled then and there, usually by the simple provision of time for another point of view. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) came into a case only rarely, when the broadcaster and the citizens could not agree. Even then, the FCC did not impose fines or dictate how the station should respond; it only directed the station to come up with more balanced coverage. One of the times when the FCC did get involved was the case that killed the Fairness Doctrine.
What they seem to mean by "ingenious device" is again, an argument from the specific to the general. I.e.,
because most people most of the time didn't get slapped down by the government, the law was therefore just. Which is like saying that because most people most of the time resolve their tax issues with the IRS without going to jail, that punishing marginal tax rates and a steeply progressive tax system are therefore just.
Deconstruct "ingenious device" and what's left is a federal regulation that most people will attempt to abide by out of fear, doubt and caution rather than by
actual government thugs having to
actually crack
actual skulls... which would not play well on unbiased TV because it would look too much like what it is: Communist dictatorship.
This is where I selectively reference Ayn Rand's thorough portrayal of this dilemma. Short take: government needs only to reserve for itself the
far-off threat of physical force in order to change behavior in very significant ways. To argue as the Sustainability Institute does, that the force is seldom to be used is not an argument about the Constitutionality of the law but about the mode of its enforcement.
The tellingly titled blog "Crooks and Liars", winner of the 2005 Koufax "Best Blog" award for non-professionals is
plain in arguing purely from personality rather than principle:
Oh, I love this. LOVE it. I can't think of anything that would derail the right wing noise machine than bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. Can you imagine how much Fox News would have to revamp their programming? It would be unrecognizable. And get this: Tim Russert might actually have to invite Democratic officials on Meet The Press! The mind reels at the possibilities.
Well, at least we can agree on the mind reeling part. I would remind the left of what it has said it is concerned about (wrongly, IMHO) under the Bush administration and ask it to examine what they are wishing for, i.e., with regards to media censorship, impositions on free speech and accelerating the encroachment of tyranny. Their efforts to put this power in the hands of government is
precisely what they have been crying wolf about these past few years. It goes beyond ironic. It is either duplicitous or simply ignorant. Possibly both. Their implicit argument seems to be one that those on the left are particularly prone to: the ends (the imposition of 'progressive' policies on the nation) justifies the means (media censorship by government).
Note also what's being said and not said here. The ONE television media outlet irritating to the far left would no longer be as irritating if the Fairness Doctrine were brought back. It bears repeating that free markets and corporate forms are not somehow anathema to democracy. They are simply another
expression of democracy in a free and open society. People choose to watch FOX, boosting their ratings, boosting their advertising revenue, making it possible for them to expand their franchise. So what?
If, tomorrow morning, everyone stopped watching FOX, they would crumble and disappear. It might take a year or two, but last I checked, nobody was
forcing anyone to watch FOX.
Yet if the Fairness Doctrine was brought back, government bureaucrats would in effect, take away the choice of people who have freely chosen to watch FOX in favor of a government-mandated, watered-down version of it. And to what benefit? Today, people who want 'balance' and have no access to cable or the Internet merely have to channel surf between FOX and (take your pick): PBS or CBS or NBC or ABC. I fail to see the burden here--unless, like the far left, you believe that the latter four are also biased to the right--a conclusion that beggars reason.
This post is the most reasonable of the lot from the left, adding more background:
In the early 1940s, the FCC decided that broadcasters should not be allowed to editorialize at all—a strange requirement considering that even decisions about what to cover on the local news are "editorial" ones. This idea, known as the "Mayflower Doctrine" (a reference to the well-known Pilgrim hatred of editors), was replaced in 1949 by the Fairness Doctrine, which said that broadcasters could editorialize, but had a responsibility to air multiple points of view on controversial subjects. The ruling was FCC policy, not a law, though supporters claimed that a 1959 amendment to the Communications Act had in fact made it law.
The dubious origins of the law in an era when Communism was seen as pretty neat stuff and wartime restrictions on pretty much everything were just around the corner should be enough to cause wider skepticism of the merits of reviving it. Still more to come... but probably not today.
"The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists... are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic." - Newsweek, April 28, 1975 (also the source for the 'inconvenient' chart we don't see anymore, at right, below)
If you don't have a sense of God's hand in history and of there being nothing new under the sun, this will give them to you. Short takes: we've been fighting Islamic terrorism since August, 1776; but for the Civil War, Israel might have been formed 85 years earlier than it was; George Bush was active in these matters long before the current one was born; the copy of the Koran (from Thomas Jefferson's library) on which Keith Ellison swore his oath of office earlier this year contains an introduction from the translator stating that his purpose is to enable readers to better understand and fight the Islamic jihadist enemy. 
). He is using them to play us like a fine stringed instrument.
