As corporations have taken over radio stations, the airwaves have become a right-wing monopoly (not a coincidence).
registerguard.com
The end of fairness: Right-wing commentators have a virtual monopoly when it comes to talk radio programming
By EDWARD MONKS
For The Register-Guard
ONCE UPON A TIME, in a country that now
seems far away, radio and television
broadcasters had an obligation to operate in the
public interest. That generally accepted principle
was reflected in a rule known as the Fairness
Doctrine.
The rule, formally adopted by the Federal Communications
Commission in 1949, required all broadcasters to devote a
reasonable amount of time to the discussion of controversial
matters of public interest. It further required broadcasters to air
contrasting points of view regarding those matters. The
Fairness Doctrine arose from the idea imbedded in the First
Amendment that the wide dissemination of information from
diverse and even antagonistic sources is essential to the public
welfare and to a healthy democracy.
The FCC is mandated by federal law to grant broadcasting
licenses in such a way that the airwaves are used in the "public
convenience, interest or necessity." The U.S. Supreme Court in
1969 unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the Fairness
Doctrine, expressing the view that the airwaves were a "public
trust" and that "fairness" required that the public trust
accurately reflect opposing views.
However, by 1987 the Fairness Doctrine was gone - repealed by
the FCC, to which President Reagan had appointed the majority
of commissioners.
That same year, Congress codified the doctrine in a bill that
required the FCC to enforce it. President Reagan vetoed that
bill, saying the Fairness Doctrine was "inconsistent with the
tradition of independent journalism." Thus, the Fairness Doctrine
came to an end both as a concept and a rule.
Talk radio shows how profoundly the FCC's repeal of the
Fairness Doctrine has affected political discourse. In recent
years almost all nationally syndicated political talk radio hosts
on commercial stations have openly identified themselves as
conservative, Republican, or both: Rush Limbaugh, Michael
Medved, Michael Reagen, Bob Grant, Ken Hamblin, Pat
Buchanan, Oliver North, Robert Dornan, Gordon Liddy, Sean
Hannity, Michael Savage, et al. The spectrum of opinion on
national political commercial talk radio shows ranges from
extreme right wing to very extreme right wing - there is virtually
nothing else.
On local stations, an occasional nonsyndicated moderate or
liberal may sneak through the cracks, but there are relatively
few such exceptions. This domination of the airwaves by a
single political perspective clearly would not have been
permissible under the Fairness Doctrine.
Eugene is fairly representative. There are two local commercial
political talk and news radio stations: KUGN, owned by Cumulus
Broadcasting, the country's second largest radio broadcasting
company, and KPNW, owned by Clear Channel Communications,
the largest such company.
KUGN's line-up has three highly partisan conservative
Republicans - Lars Larson (who is regionally syndicated),
Michael Savage and Michael Medved (both of whom are
nationally syndicated), covering a nine-hour block each
weekday from 1 p.m. until 10 p.m. Each host is unambiguous in
his commitment to advancing the interests and policies of the
Republican party, and unrelenting in his highly personalized
denunciation of Democrats and virtually all Democratic Party
policy initiatives. That's 45 hours a week.
For two hours each weekday morning, KUGN has just added
nationally syndicated host Bill O'Reilly. Although he occasionally
criticizes a Republican for something other than being
insufficiently conservative, O'Reilly is clear in his basic
conservative viewpoint. His columns are listed on the
Townhall.com web site, created by the strongly conservative
Heritage Foundation. That's 55 hours of political talk on KUGN
each week by conservatives and Republicans. No KUGN air time
is programmed for a Democratic or liberal political talk show
host.
KPNW carries popular conservative Rush Limbaugh for three
hours each weekday, and Michael Reagan, the conservative son
of the former president, for two hours, for a total of 25 hours
per week.
Thus, between the two stations, there are 80 hours per week,
more than 4,000 hours per year, programmed for Republican and
conservative hosts of political talk radio, with not so much as a
second programmed for a Democratic or liberal perspective.
For anyone old enough to remember 15 years earlier when the
Fairness Doctrine applied, it is a breathtakingly remarkable
change - made even more remarkable by the fact that the
hosts whose views are given this virtual monopoly of political
expression spend a great deal of time talking about "the liberal
media."
Political opinions expressed on talk radio are approaching the
level of uniformity that would normally be achieved only in a
totalitarian society, where government commissars or party
propaganda ministers enforce the acceptable view with threats
of violence. There is nothing fair, balanced or democratic about
it. Yet the almost complete right wing Republican domination of
political talk radio in this country has been accomplished
without guns or gulags. Let's see how it happened.
As late as 1974, the FCC was still reporting that "we regard
strict adherence to the Fairness Doctrine as the single most
important requirement of operation in the public interest - the
sine qua non for grant for renewal of license." That view had
been ratified by the U.S. Supreme Court, which wrote In
glowing terms in 1969 of the people's right to a free exchange
of opposing views on the public airwaves:
"But the people as a whole retain their interest in free speech
by radio and their collective right to have the medium function
consistently with the ends and purposes of the First
Amendment. It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the
right of the broadcasters, which is paramount," the court said.
"Congress need not stand idly by and permit those with licenses
to ignore the problems which beset the people or to exclude
from the airwaves anything but their own views of fundamental
questions."
Through 1980, the FCC, the majority in Congress and the U. S.
Supreme Court all supported the Fairness Doctrine. It was the
efforts of an interesting collection of conservative Republicans
(with some assistance from liberals such Sen. William Proxmire,
a Wisconsin Democrat, and well-respected journalists such as
Fred Friendly) that came together to quickly kill it.
The position of the FCC dramatically changed when President
Reagan appointed Mark Fowler as chairman in 1981. Fowler was
a lawyer who had worked on Reagan's campaign, and who
specialized in representing broadcasters. Before his nomination,
which was well received by the broadcast industry, Fowler had
been a critic of the Fairness Doctrine. As FCC chairman, Fowler
made clear his opinion that "the perception of broadcasters as
community trustees should be replaced by a view of
broadcasters as marketplace participants." He quickly put in
motion of series of events leading to two court cases that
eased the way for repeal of the Fairness Doctrine six years
later.
At almost the same time, Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., who
became chairman of the Commerce Committee when
Republicans took control of the Senate in 1981, began holding
hearings designed to produce "evidence" that the Fairness
Doctrine did not function as intended.
Packwood also established the Freedom of Expression
Foundation, described by its president, Craig Smith, long
associated with Republican causes, as a "foundation which
would coordinate the repeal effort using non-public funds, and
which could provide lobbyists, editorialists and other opinion
leaders with needed arguments and evidence."
Major contributors to the foundation included the major
broadcast networks, as well as Philip Morris, Anheuser-Busch,
AT&T and TimesMirror.
Packwood and the foundation argued that the Fairness Doctrine
chilled or limited speech because broadcasters became
reluctant to carry opinion-oriented broadcasts out of fear that
many organizations or individuals would demand the opportunity
to respond. The argument, which appealed to some liberals
such as Proxmire, thus held that the doctrine, in practice,
decreased the diversity of opinion expressed on public airwaves.
In 1985, the FCC formally adopted the views advanced by
Packwood and the foundation, issuing what was termed a
"Fairness Report," which contained a "finding" that the Fairness
Doctrine in actuality "inhibited" broadcasters and that it
"disserves the interest of the public in obtaining access to
diverse viewpoints." Congress, and much of the rest of the
country, remained unconvinced.
Shortly thereafter, in a 2-1 decision in 1986, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a new FCC rule
refusing to apply the Fairness Doctrine to teletext (the
language appearing at the bottom of a television screen). The
two-judge majority decided that Congress had not made the
Fairness Doctrine a binding statutory obligation despite
statutory language supporting that inference. The two judges
were well-known conservatives Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork,
each thereafter nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by
President Reagan. Their ruling became the beginning of the end
for the Fairness Doctrine.
The next year, 1987, in the case Meredith Corp. vs. FCC, the
FCC set itself up to lose in such a way as to make repeal of the
Fairness Doctrine as easy as possible. The opinion of the
District of Columbia Court of Appeals took note of the
commission's intention to undercut the Fairness Doctrine:
"Here, however, the Commission itself has already largely
undermined the legitimacy of its own rule. The FCC has issued a
formal report that eviscerates the rationale for its regulations.
The agency has deliberately cast grave legal doubt on the
fairness doctrine. ..."
The court was essentially compelled to send the case back to
the FCC for further proceedings, and the commission used that
opportunity to repeal the Fairness Doctrine. Although there
have been several congressional attempts to revive the
doctrine, Reagan's veto and the stated opposition of his
successor, George Bush, were successful in preventing that.
It is difficult to underestimate the consequences of repeal of
the Fairness Doctrine on the American political system. In 1994,
when Republicans gained majorities in both chambers of
Congress, Newt Gingrich, soon to become speaker of the House,
described the voting as "the first talk radio election."
Although it is not susceptible to direct proof, it seems clear to
me that if in communities throughout the United States Al Gore
had been the beneficiary of thousands of hours of supportive
talk show commentary and George W. Bush the victim of
thousands of hours of relentless personal and policy attack, the
vote would have been such that not even the U.S. Supreme
Court could have made Bush president.
Broadcasters' choice to present conservative views is not
purely about attracting the largest number of listeners.
Broadcasters and their national advertisers tend to be wealthy
corporations and entities, operated and owned by wealthy
individuals. Virtually all national talk show hosts advocate a
reduction or elimination of taxes affecting the wealthy. They
vigorously argue for a reduction in income taxes, abolition of
the estate tax and reduction or elimination of the capital gains
tax - positions directly consistent with the financial interests of
broadcasters and advertisers.
Imagine a popular liberal host who argued for a more steeply
graduated income tax, an increase in the tax rate for the
largest estates and an increase in the capital gains tax rate.
Broadcasters and advertisers have no interest in such a host,
no matter how large the audience, because of the host's ability
to influence the political climate in a way that broadcasters and
advertisers ultimately find to be economically unfavorable.
Hence we wind up with a distortion of a true market system in
which only conservatives compete for audience share. Whether
the theory is that listeners listen to hear views they agree with,
or views they disagree with, in a purely market driven arena,
broadcasters would currently be scrambling to find liberal or
progressive talk show hosts. They are not.
The beneficiaries of the talk show monopoly are not content.
Immediately after he became House speaker, Newt Gingrich led
the Republican battle to eliminate federal funding for the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which, free of some
commercial considerations, had broadcast a wider spectrum of
opinion. Although not fully successful, that campaign led to a
decrease in federal funding for the CPB, a greater reliance on
corporate "sponsors" and a drift toward programming acceptable
to conservatives.
No reasonable person can claim that the repeal of the Fairness
Doctrine has led to a wider diversity of views - to a "warming"
of speech, as the FCC, the Freedom of Expression Foundation
and others had predicted.
Perhaps it should not be a surprise that the acts of President
Reagan, Reagan's FCC appointments, Sen. Packwood, Justice
Scalia and failed Supreme Court nominee Bork and the first
President Bush should combine to ultimately produce, in my
town, a 4,000 hour to zero yearly advantage for Republican
propaganda over the Democratic opposition.Nor should we
overlook the Orwellian irony that the efforts of an organization
calling itself the Freedom of Expression Foundation helped result
in so limited a range of public expression of views.
Perhaps the current president, aware that the repeal of the
Fairness Doctrine had the opposite effect of what was publicly
predicted by his predecessors and aware that a monopoly on
public expression is inconsistent with a democratic tradition, will
direct his administration to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.
What about that cold day in hell?
Edward Monks is a Eugene attorney. |
