Sunday, June 14, 2009
Fariness Doctrine
I’ve noticed in the current affairs section at work a surprising number of books with the word censorship in the title. Naturally, as a future librarian, I had to check them out. They are all on the same basic theme: the Fairness Doctrine. Not being familiar with that, I looked it up. Essentially, it was enacted in 1949 to require radio broadcasters to provide differing ideas on controversial issues. It was later repealed by the Reagan administration. Apparently, conservative talk radio hosts were panicked that the Obama administration was plotting to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, despite Obama’s statement that he does not intend to. A Fox News story (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/18/white-house-opposes-fairness-doctrine/ ) says that conservative talk show hosts, “see the doctrine as an attempt to impose liberal viewpoints on their shows”. “What this would do is create a dysfunctional situation where no radio station could afford to express an opinion anytime. Whose opinion will determine what’s fair, what’s balanced, what’s diverse?” (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/02/26/senate-votes-to-kill-fairness-doctrine-but-gop-concerns-remain/ ). Not being a conservative myself, I don’t really listen to any of these broadcasts, but I can see why they would be worried should the Fairness Doctrine somehow make a comeback. In one of the books I looked at (Brian Jennings’ Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio or Brad O’Leary’s Shut Up America! The End of Free Speech—I can’t remember which) the author points out that conservative radio programming is simply more popular and that is no reason to impose liberal thought on their programs. Whether it’s true or not that more conservatives listen to the radio, I agree with the principle that they have the right to express their ideas without being required to offer an opposing viewpoint. An author of a book doesn’t have to publish a companion volume to his work to make it balanced. Same goes for the internet or television, so why should radio stations need to? I can see that the intent of the Fairness Doctrine was good, in that they wanted to ensure there was no bias, but I don’t think it really worked out that way.
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I guess as long as they are not billing themselves as a news station but just a talk show I would agree with you. "Liberal" radio shows just haven't succeeded for some reason (I'm thinking of Air America radio, though I just looked it up and it is running now?) Not a conservative myself, either, and just tend to listen to music on the radio.... Good information about the Fairness Doctrine with which I wasn't really familiar.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard of the fairness doctrine before either. Thanks for the info. I think that if these shows were news shows then they should discuss the issues form all angles. Since they are not news shows, but talk shows I don't think that the focus needs to be about all sides. They are shows created to discuss one side of an issue and that's what they do. I am not a conservative at all, but I do believe that they should have just as much opportunity to discuss issues from their perspective as anyone else.
ReplyDeleteI've heard about the Fairness Doctrine but I didn't realize there was worry about it being reinstated! Although I know there were good reasons for it existing originally, I do think it is quite outdated now. That is, I believe one of the main arguments for the Fairness Doctrine was that this regulation needed to be imposed because the scarce amount of opportunities to broadcast one's views meant that they should allow relatively equal air time to opposing views, or risk being "unfair." This argument is simply antiquated now, because there are so many more ways to broadcast one's views. If you don't have airtime on the local radio station, you could seek to express your views instead on TV, or the Internet, etc. etc.
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