The
Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States
Federal Communications CommissionThe Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, directed, and empowered by Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President...
(FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of
broadcast licenseA broadcast license is a specific type of spectrum licence that grants the licensee the privilege to use a portion of the radio frequency spectrum in a given geographical area for broadcasting purposes....
s both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was (in the Commission's view) honest, equitable and balanced.
The Fairness Doctrine should not be confused with the
Equal TimeThe equal-time rule specifies that U.S. radio and television broadcast stations must provide an equivalent opportunity to any opposing political candidates who request it...
rule. The Fairness Doctrine deals with discussion of controversial issues, while the Equal Time rule deals only with political candidates.
In 1969, the
United States Supreme CourtThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal judiciary. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justices, who are nominated by the President and confirmed with the "advice and consent" of the Senate...
upheld the Commission's general
right to enforce the Fairness Doctrine where channels were limited, but the courts have not, in general, ruled that the FCC is
obliged to do so. In 1987, the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine, prompting some to urge its reintroduction through either Commission policy or Congressional legislation.
Origins
According to Steve Rendall of the media criticism group
Fairness and Accuracy in ReportingFairness & Accuracy In Reporting is a progressive media criticism organization based in New York City, founded in 1986.FAIR describes itself on its website as "the national media watch group" and defines its mission as working to "invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity...
,
The Fairness Doctrine was introduced in the U.S. in 1949. The doctrine remained a matter of general policy and was applied on a case-by-case basis until 1967, when certain provisions of the doctrine were incorporated into FCC regulations.
In 1974 the Federal Communications Commission asserted that the
United States CongressThe United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States of America, consisting of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both senators and representatives are chosen through direct election....
had delegated it the power to mandate a system of "access, either free or paid, for person or groups wishing to express a viewpoint on a controversial public issue..." but that it had not yet exercised that power because licensed broadcasters had "voluntarily" complied with the "spirit" of the doctrine. It warned that:
Decisions of the United States Supreme Court
In
Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, , the U.S. Supreme Court upheld (by a vote of 8-0) the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine in a case of an on-air personal attack, in response to challenges that the doctrine violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The case began when journalist
Fred J. CookFred James Cook was an investigative journalist whose prime years of reporting spanned from the 1950s to the late 1970s...
, after the publication of his
Goldwater: Extremist of the Right, was the topic of discussion by
Billy James HargisBilly James Hargis was a fundamentalist Protestant Christian evangelist who was a forerunner of the Christian Right. At the height of his popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, his Christian Crusade ministry was broadcast on more than 500 radio stations and 250 television stations...
on his daily Christian Crusade radio broadcast on
WGCBWGCB-TV is a television station serving the Harrisburg/Lancaster/York region of Pennsylvania, United States. Broadcasting a digital signal on UHF channel 30, it is an independent station producing mainly Christian programs...
in
Red Lion, PennsylvaniaRed Lion is a borough in York County, Pennsylvania, settled in 1852 and incorporated in 1880. The population was 6,149 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Red Lion is located at , about 35 miles southeast of Harrisburg....
. Mr. Cook sued arguing that the Fairness Doctrine entitled him to free air time to respond to the personal attacks.
Although similar laws are unconstitutional when applied to the press, the Court cited a
SenateThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral United States Congress, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate and the House are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution . Each U.S state is represented by two senators,...
report (S. Rep. No. 562, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 8-9 [1959]) stating that radio stations could be regulated in this way because of the limited public airwaves at the time. Writing for the Court, Justice
Byron WhiteByron Raymond "Whizzer" White won fame both as a football running back and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Appointed to the court by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, he served until his retirement in 1993...
declared:
The Court warned that if the doctrine ever restrained speech, then its constitutionality should be reconsidered.
However, in the case of
Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. TornilloMiami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 , was a United States Supreme Court case that overturned a Florida state law requiring newspapers to allow equal space in their newspapers to political candidates in the case of a political editorial or endorsement content...
, ,
Chief JusticeThe Chief Justice of the United States is the head of the United States federal court system and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States...
Warren Burger wrote (for a unanimous court): This decision differs from
Red Lion v.
FCC in that it applies to a newspaper, which, unlike a broadcaster, is unlicensed and can face a theoretically-unlimited number of competitors.
In 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not forbid editorials by non-profit stations that received grants from the
Corporation for Public BroadcastingThe Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a private non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress and largely funded by the United States Federal Government to promote public broadcasting...
(
FCC v. League of Women VotersThe League of Women Voters is an American political organization founded in 1920 by Carrie Chapman Catt during the last meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association approximately six months before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote...
of California, ). The Court's 5-4 majority decision by
William J. Brennan, Jr.William Joseph Brennan, Jr. was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. During his term on the Supreme Court, he was known for being a leader of the judicially liberal wing of the Court....
stated that while many now considered that expanding sources of communication had made the Fairness Doctrine's limits unnecessary: After noting that the FCC was considering repealing the Fairness Doctrine rules on editorials and personal attacks out of fear that those rules might be "chilling speech", the Court added:
Revocation
Under FCC Chairman
Mark S. FowlerMark S. Fowler served as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from May 18, 1981 to April 17, 1987. Appointed by Ronald Reagan, he repealed the Fairness Doctrine and spearheaded the deregulatory trend in telecommunications policy, stating, "The television is just another appliance -...
, a communications attorney who had served on
Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States and the 33rd Governor of California .Born in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s...
's presidential campaign staff in 1976 and 1980, the commission began to repeal parts of the Fairness Doctrine, announcing in 1985 that the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
On February 16, 2009, Fowler told conservative radio talk-show host
Mark LevinMark Reed Levin is an American radio host, lawyer, author, and political commentator who served in the Reagan administration. He is the host of The Mark Levin Show, a top-rated, nationally-syndicated talk show that airs throughout the United States, and the President of Landmark Legal Foundation....
that his work toward revoking the Fairness Doctrine under the Reagan Administration had been a matter of principle (his belief that the Doctrine impinged upon the First Amendment), not partisanship. Fowler described the White House staff raising concerns, at a time before the prominence of conservative talk radio and during the preeminence of the
Big Three television networksThe Big Three Television Networks are the three traditional commercial broadcast television networks in the United States: ABC, CBS and NBC. The United States' public television network, PBS, is not included.-Backgrounds:...
and PBS in political discourse, that repealing the policy would be politically unwise. He described the staff's position as saying to Reagan: Instead, Reagan supported the effort and later vetoed the Democratic-controlled Congress's effort to make the doctrine law.
In one landmark case, the FCC argued that
teletextTeletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...
was a new technology that created soaring demand for a limited resource, and thus could be exempt from the Fairness Doctrine. The Telecommunications Research and Action Center (TRAC) and Media Access Project (MAP) argued that teletext transmissions should be regulated like any other airwave technology, hence the Fairness Doctrine was applicable (and must be enforced by the FCC).
In 1986, Judges
Robert BorkRobert Heron Bork is an American legal scholar who has advocated the judicial philosophy of originalism. Bork formerly served as Solicitor General, acting Attorney General, and judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit...
and
Antonin Scaliais an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was appointed in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan having previously served on the D.C. Circuit and in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and teaching law at the Universities of Virginia and Chicago...
of the
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia CircuitThe United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit known informally as the D.C. Circuit, is the federal appellate court for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Appeals from the D.C. Circuit, as with all the U.S. Courts of Appeals, are heard on a...
concluded that the Fairness Doctrine did apply to teletext but that the FCC was not required to apply it. In a 1987 case,
Meredith Corp.Meredith Corporation is based in Des Moines, Iowa. The company has two divisions, publishing and broadcasting.Edwin Thomas Meredith founded the company in 1902 when he began publishing Successful Farming magazine. In 1922, Meredith began publishing Fruit, Garden and Home magazine, a home and...
v. FCC, two other judges on the same court declared that Congress did not mandate the doctrine and the FCC did not have to continue to enforce it.
In August 1987, the FCC abolished the doctrine by a 4-0 vote, in the
Syracuse Peace Council decision, which was upheld by a different panel of the Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit in February 1989. The FCC also suggested that because of the many media voices in the marketplace, the doctrine be deemed unconstitutional, stating that:
Reaction
In June 1987, Congress had attempted to preempt the FCC decision and codify the Fairness Doctrine , but the legislation was vetoed by President
Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States and the 33rd Governor of California .Born in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s...
. Another attempt to revive the doctrine in 1991 was stopped when President George H.W. Bush threatened another veto.
Two corollary rules of the doctrine, the "personal attack" rule and the "political editorial" rule, remained in practice until 2000. The "personal attack" rule applied whenever a person (or small group) was subject to a personal attack during a broadcast. Stations had to notify such persons (or groups) within a week of the attack, send them transcripts of what was said and offer the opportunity to respond on-the-air. The "political editorial" rule applied when a station broadcast editorials endorsing or opposing candidates for public office, and stipulated that the unendorsed candidates be notified and allowed a reasonable opportunity to respond.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the FCC to justify these corollary rules in light of the decision to repeal the Fairness Doctrine. The FCC did not provide prompt justification and ultimately ordered their repeal in 2000.
In February 2005, U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter (Democrat of New York) and 23 co-sponsors introduced the Fairness and Accountability in Broadcasting Act (H.R. 501) in the 1st Session of the 109th Congress of 2005-7 (when
RepublicansThe Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the Grand Old Party or the GOP, despite being the younger of the two major parties. In the U.S...
held a majority of both Houses). The bill would have shortened a station's license term from eight years to four, with the requirement that a license-holder cover important issues fairly, hold local public hearings about its coverage twice a year, and document to the FCC how it was meeting its obligations. The bill was referred to committee, but progressed no further.
In the same session of Congress, Representative
Maurice HincheyMaurice Dunlea Hinchey , is an American politician. He has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 1993, representing New York's 22nd congressional district since 2003...
(another Democrat from New York) introduced legislation "to restore the Fairness Doctrine". H.R. 3302, also known as the "Media Ownership Reform Act of 2005" or MORA, had 16 co-sponsors in Congress.
Support
Some Democratic legislators have expressed interest in reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine, although no one has introduced legislation to do so since 2005.
In June 2007, Senator
Richard DurbinRichard Joseph "Dick" Durbin is the senior United States Senator from the U.S. state of Illinois and Democratic Party Whip, the second highest position in the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate. He became Majority Whip of the U.S. Senate when the 110th Congress convened on January 4, 2007...
(D-
IllinoisIllinois , the 21st state admitted to the United States of America, is the most populous and demographically diverse Midwestern state and the fifth most populous state in the nation...
) said, "It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine,” an opinion shared by his Democratic colleague, Senator
John KerryJohn Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, and is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee....
of
MassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its population of...
. However, according to Marin Cogan of
The New RepublicThe New Republic is an American magazine of politics and the arts. It is published semimonthly and has a circulation of approximately 60,000. The editor-in-chief is Martin Peretz and the current editor is Franklin Foer...
in late 2008:
On June 24, 2008, U.S. Representative
Nancy PelosiNancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi is the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. She is a member of the Democratic Party...
of San Francisco,
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
(who had been elected Speaker of the House in January 2007) told reporters that her fellow Democratic Representatives did not want to forbid reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine, adding "the interest in my caucus is the reverse." When asked by John Gizzi of
Human EventsHuman Events is a weekly conservative magazine founded in 1944. The magazine takes its name from the first sentence of the United States Declaration of Independence which reads "When in the course of human events..."...
, "Do you personally support revival of the 'Fairness Doctrine?'", the Speaker replied "Yes."
On October 22, 2008, Senator
Jeff BingamanJesse Francis "Jeff" Bingaman, Jr. , is the senior U.S. Senator from New Mexico. He has been in the Senate since 1983 and is a member of the Democratic Party. Bingaman was Attorney General of New Mexico from 1978 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 1982, when he defeated Republican incumbent...
(Democrat of
New MexicoNew Mexico is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. Inhabited by Native American populations for many centuries, it has also been part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S. territory. Among U.S...
) told a conservative talk radio host in
Albuquerque, New MexicoAlbuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 521,999 as of July 1, 2008, according to U.S. census estimates, and ranks as...
:
On December 15, 2008, U.S. Representative
Anna EshooAnna Georges Eshoo is a U.S. politician who has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 1993, representing California's 14th congressional district. The district, known as "the heart of Silicon Valley," includes Redwood City, Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Palo Alto...
(Democrat of
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
) told
The Daily PostThe Daily Post is the local daily newspaper in the city of Rotorua, New Zealand. The paper was formerly edited and printed locally, but now the sub-editing has been phased out to a centralised facility in Tauranga...
in
Palo Alto, CaliforniaPalo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, USA. It is named after a tree called El Palo Alto...
that she thought it should also apply to cable and satellite broadcasters.
On February 4, 2009, Senator
Debbie StabenowDeborah Ann "Debbie" Stabenow , née Greer, is a Democratic United States Senator from Michigan.In the 2000 election, Stabenow defeated the Republican incumbent, Senator Spencer Abraham. She is the first female U.S. Senator from Michigan...
(Democrat of
MichiganMichigan is a Midwestern state of the United States of America. It was named after Lake Michigan, whose name is a French adaptation of the Ojibwe term mishigama, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
) told radio host and
WorldNetDailyWorldNetDaily is an American online web site that publishes news and editorial articles from a U.S. conservative point of view. It was founded in May 1997 by Joseph Farah with the stated intentions of "exposing wrongdoing, corruption and abuse of power." In addition to articles, the site also...
columnist
Bill PressWilliam "Bill" Press is an American talk radio host, political commentator and author.-Career:Press started his broadcasting career in Los Angeles for TV stations KABC-TV and KCOP-TV. He has worked as a political commentator for CNN and MSNBC...
, when asked whether it was time to bring back the Doctrine: When Press asked if she would seek Senate hearings on such accountability in 2009, she replied:
A week later, on February 11, 2009, Senator Tom Harkin (Democrat of
IowaIowa is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland." It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of...
) told Press, "...we gotta get the Fairness Doctrine back in law again." Later in response to Press's assertion that "...they are just shutting down progressive talk from one city after another," Senator Harkin responded, "Exactly, and that's why we need the fairthat's why we need the Fairness Doctrine back."
Former President
Bill ClintonWilliam Jefferson "Bill" Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He was the third-youngest president; only Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were younger when entering office...
has also shown support for the Fairness Doctrine. During a February 13, 2009, appearance on the Mario Solis Marich radio show, Clinton said: Clinton cited the "blatant drumbeat" against the stimulus program from conservative talk radio, suggesting that it doesn't reflect economic reality.
In August 2009 (after talk radio was alleged to have inspired the abusive disruption of Congress members' town meetings on health-care reform), Bill Mann wrote in
The Huffington PostThe Huffington Post is an American liberal news website and aggregated blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Jonah Peretti, featuring various news sources and columnists...
:
Opposition
The Fairness Doctrine has been strongly opposed by prominent
conservativeConservatism is the diverse political and social philosophy that supports tradition and the status quo, or that calls for a return to the values and society of an earlier age, the status quo ante. However, the term has been used by politicians and political commentators with a variety of meanings...
s and libertarians who view it as an attack on First Amendment rights and property rights. Editorials in
The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is an English-language international daily newspaper published by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, in New York City, with Asian and European editions. As of 2007, it has a worldwide daily circulation of more than 2 million, with approximately 931,000...
and
The Washington TimesThe Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon and is subsidized by the Unification Church community.-Founding:...
have said that Democratic attempts to bring back the Fairness Doctrine have been made largely in response to and contempt for the successes of conservative
talk radioTalk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often feature interviews with a number of different guests. Talk radio typically includes an element of listener participation, usually by broadcasting live...
.
On August 12, 2008, FCC Commissioner
Robert M. McDowellRobert Malcolm McDowell is a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission.-Federal Communications Commissioner:...
stated that the reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine could be intertwined with the debate over
network neutralityNetwork neutrality is a principle proposed for residential broadband networks and potentially for all networks...
(a proposal to classify network operators as
common carrierA common carrier is a business that transports people, goods, or services and offers its services to the general public under license or authority provided by a regulatory body. A common carrier holds itself out to provide service to the general public without discrimination for the "public...
s required to admit all Internet services, applications and devices on equal terms), presenting a potential danger that net neutrality and Fairness Doctrine advocates could try to expand content controls to the Internet. It could also include "government dictating content policy". The conservative
Media Research CenterThe Media Research Center is a conservative content analysis organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, founded in 1987 by L. Brent Bozell III...
's Culture & Media Institute argued that the three main points supporting the Fairness Doctrine — media scarcity, liberal viewpoints being censored at a corporate level, and public interest — are all myths.
On the February 16, 2009, Mark Fowler told
Mark LevinMark Reed Levin is an American radio host, lawyer, author, and political commentator who served in the Reagan administration. He is the host of The Mark Levin Show, a top-rated, nationally-syndicated talk show that airs throughout the United States, and the President of Landmark Legal Foundation....
on Levin's talk radio program:
Suggested alternatives
Media reform organizations such as
Free PressFree Press is a non-partisan media advocacy organization, and by membership the largest such organization in the United States. It was founded by media critic Robert W. McChesney, journalist John Nichols and current executive director Josh Silver. The current chair of Free Press is Columbia...
feel that a return to the Fairness Doctrine is not as important as setting stronger station ownership caps and stronger "public interest" standards enforcement (with funding from fines given to
public broadcastingPublic broadcasting includes radio, television and other electronic media outlets that receive some or all of their funding from the public. Public broadcasters may receive their funding from individuals through voluntary donations, a specific tax such as a television licence fee, or as direct...
).
In June 2008,
Barack ObamaBarack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii...
's press secretary wrote that Obama (then a Democratic U.S. Senator from Illinois and candidate for President): In February 2009, a White House spokesperson said that President Obama continues to oppose the revival of the Doctrine.
Public opinion
In an August 13, 2008, telephone poll released by
Rasmussen ReportsRasmussen Reports is an American public opinion polling firm. Founded by pollster Scott Rasmussen, co-founder of ESPN, the company updates its President's job approval rating daily other indexes, and provides public opinion data, analysis, and commentary, along with coverage of business, economic,...
, 47% of 1,000 likely voters supported a government requirement that broadcasters offer equal amounts of liberal and conservative commentary, while 39% opposed such a requirement. In the same poll, 57% opposed and 31% favored requiring Internet web sites and bloggers that offer political commentary to present opposing points of view. By a margin of 71%-20% the respondents agreed that it is "possible for just about any political view to be heard in today’s media" (including the Internet, newspapers, cable TV and
satellite radioA satellite radio or subscription radio is a digital radio signal that is broadcast by a communications satellite, which covers a much wider geographical range than terrestrial radio signals....
), but only half the sample said they had followed recent news stories about the Fairness Doctrine closely. (The
margin of errorThe margin of error is a statistic expressing the amount of random sampling error in a survey's results. The larger the margin of error, the less faith one should have that the poll's reported results are close to the "true" figures; that is, the figures for the whole population.- Explanation :The...
had a 95% chance of being within ± 3%.)
Recent legislation
In 2007, Senator
Norm ColemanNorman Bertram "Norm" Coleman, Jr. , is an American attorney and politician. He was a United States senator from Minnesota from 2003 to 2009. Coleman was elected in 2002 and served in the 108th, 109th, and 110th Congresses. Before becoming a senator, he was mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota, from 1994...
(Republican,
MinnesotaMinnesota is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. The twelfth largest state by area in the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.2 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the...
) proposed an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that forbade the FCC from "using any funds to adopt a fairness rule." It was blocked, in part on grounds that "the amendment belonged in the
Commerce CommitteeThe Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is a standing committee of the United States Senate in charge of all senate matters related to the following subjects:* Coast Guard* Coastal zone management* Communications* Highway safety...
’s jurisdiction".
In the same year, the Broadcaster Freedom Act of 2007 was proposed in the Senate by Senators Coleman with 35 co-sponsors (S.1748) and
John ThuneJohn Randolph Thune is the Republican junior U.S. Senator from the state of South Dakota.Born and raised in South Dakota, Thune attended college at Biola University in California before returning to his home state to obtain a graduate degree at the University of South Dakota. He worked as a...
(R-SD) with 8 co-sponsors (S.1742) and in the House by Republican Representative
Mike PenceMichael Richard "Mike" Pence is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives for . He currently serves as Chairman of the House Republican Conference for the 111th United States Congress. Pence's district covers much of Eastern Indiana.-Early life and family:Pence was born...
of
IndianaIndiana is a U.S. state, the 19
th admitted to the Union. It is located in the Great Lakes region, and with approximately 6.3 million residents, is ranked 16
th in population and 17
th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38
th in land area, and is the...
with 208 co-sponsors (H.R. 2905). It provided that: Neither of these measures came to the floor of either house.
In the current Congress, some members have introduced the Broadcaster Freedom Act of 2009 (S. 34), to block reinstatement of the Doctrine. On February 26, 2009, by a vote of 87-11, the Senate added that act as an amendment to a bill to give the District of Columbia a voting representative in the House. The
Associated PressThe Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
reported that the vote was: The AP report went on to say that President Obama had no intention of reimposing the doctrine, but Republicans (led by Sen.
Jim DeMintJames Warren "Jim" DeMint has been a U.S. Senator from South Carolina since 2005. He had previously represented South Carolina's 4th congressional district from 1999 to 2005. He is a member of the Republican Party....
, R-S. Carolina) wanted more in the way of a guarantee that the doctrine would not be reimposed.
See also
- Equal-time rule
The equal-time rule specifies that U.S. radio and television broadcast stations must provide an equivalent opportunity to any opposing political candidates who request it...
- Free speech
- Media Freedom Project
The Media Freedom Project is a project of Americans for Tax Reform, dedicated to free market, deregulatory media, technology and telecommunications policies....
- Nakdi Report
The Nakdi Report, also known as the Nakdi Document or as the Nakdi guidelines is the document that provides ethical guidelines for use in Israel's broadcasting industry. Published as the Guidelines for Coverage of News and Current Affairs in 1995, the doctrine was first introduced in 1972 by the...
- Prior restraint
Prior restraint is a legal term related to censorship in the United States referring to government actions that prevent communications from reaching the public. Its main use is to keep materials from being published...
- United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the federal government of the United States...
Further reading
- Fred W. Friendly
Fred W. Friendly was the former president of CBS News and the creator, with Edward R. Murrow, of the documentary television program See It Now.-Early career:...
, The Good Guys, The Bad Guys and The First Amendment: free speech vs. fairness in broadcasting (Random HouseRandom House, Inc. is the world's largest English-language general trade book publisher. It has been owned since 1998 by the large German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing...
, New York, 1976; ISBN 0-394-49725-2) — a history of the Red Lion case and the Fairness Doctrine.
External links
- A primer on the Fairness Doctrine and how its absence now affects politics and culture in the media.
- Fairness Doctrine by Val E. Limburg, from the Museum of Broadcast Communications
The Museum of Broadcast Communications is located in Chicago, Illinois. Its mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform, and entertain through our archives, public programs, screenings, exhibits, publications and...
- Fairness Doctrine from NOW on PBS
- The Media Cornucopia from City Journal
- Important legislation for and against the Fairness Doctrine from Ceasespin.org
- Speech to the Media Institute by FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell
Robert Malcolm McDowell is a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission.-Federal Communications Commissioner:...
on January 28, 2009, outlining the likely practical and constitutional challenges of reviving a fairness or neutrality doctrine