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("Same as It Ever Was . . . .Same As It Ever Was")

Believe me, I'm not singling out 1974 as a focal point for things gone wrong. But with all due fairness, most indications point to this being around the time of the Great National Nervous Breakdown and the long painful assessment of "where did we go wrong?". Call it Navel Gazing, call it Overwhelming Guilt, America was truly bothered by a lot of things - and Television News was viewed as a biggest culprit.

The problem then, as is the problem now with Mainstream News, particularly with Network News, is getting any useful information out of the half-hour format that's been the standard since the inception of Television News in the early 1950's. The problems were wide and varied, from advertising influence to the nature of Television being a visual medium and some news stories just weren't visual.

It hasn't changed and, if anything has become less and less relevant over the years as news has become more focused on entertainment, rather than a place of hard (and useful) information.

In this broadcast, again part of the National Town Meeting series, features New York Times Correspondent Harrison Salisbury, Journalist David Halberstam, former FCC Chairman Nicholas Johnson and former head of CBS News Sig Mickelson from November 3, 1974. The audience consists of Yale University students (where the Town Hall was held) who ask a number of pointed questions.

Bruce Burke (Student): “I kind of wonder about the whole notion of the Fairness Doctrine. As I understand it, the Fairness Doctrine tends to apply to hard news broadcasts . And it seems to me that, while the Fairness Doctrine to apply to Editorial type content would in fact be a wise thing, considering the immediacy of the impact and the availability to other speakers outside those of the Network organizations. It seems to me questionable for the various networks to be monitored, by either private organizations or others as to the fairness content of their hard news broadcasts. I was wondering what the speakers would think about the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine as it concerns hard news.

Sig Michelson: “I think the Fairness Doctrine is about as required for the human being as a tail, which we long since got rid of when we quit living in trees. I think as long as our broadcasting is operated on the basis of a trusteeship principle which was written into the Federal Radio Act back of 1927 and under the Federal Communications Act of 1934, that the licensing process in of itself is quite adequate to keep a reasonable degree of fairness as long as the broadcaster is a trustee of the public interest. On the other hand, I think it’s a very dangerous commodity as Mister Whitehead tried to use it in his speech out in Indianapolis in 1973 when he suggested that this was a wedge, a weapon the local stations could use to force the networks to knuckle down with their news broadcasting. I think it’s a very dangerous weapon and I would like to see it eliminated, and I’d like to see us go back to where we were before 1949, and operate on the Trusteeship Principle and maintain our fairness on that basis.

Bear in mind that this is before the wave of deregulation during the Reagan years gutted the FCC, converted entire networks into propaganda outlets, turned the Fairness Doctrine into a worthless piece of paper,obliterated newspapers, dismantled Broadcast News Divisions, converted the Trusteeship Principle into a very bad joke and replaced much useful news with team coverage of celebrity rehabs.

In short, made anything you could use pretty much impossible to find.

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Bill Moyers weighs in on the right wing screechers crying about the possibility of the Fairness Doctrine being brought back. I think the bigger issue is media consolidation, which Bill has addressed in other shows, but did not do so here. Those complaining about the possibility of the Fairness Doctrine coming back will always have the biggest megaphone until these companies are broken up, and media ownership rules are revised.

Moyers: Do I think any conservative commentator wished for what happened in Knoxville last year, or to Doctor George Tiller in Wichita two months ago? Not for a minute. The killer who pulled the trigger is the guilty party. But do I wish the vendors of venom, and their sponsors, would think harder about how angry words become accomplices of foul deeds? Yes, I do. Most certainly. Especially as the words and crazy theories of militias and other elements of the lunatic fringe are given even a shred of credibility by their repetition in the conspicuous conservative media. God only knows the price we pay when we turn political opponents to be debated, into mortal enemies to be eliminated.

Now, when some of those who shout through the megaphone of right wing radio hear a critique like this, they immediately throw a fit. They claim that people like me are calling for a return to the Fairness Doctrine. Some of you remember the Fairness Doctrine, adopted 60 years ago by the Federal Communications Commission. It said that opposing points of view had to be presented on radio or TV in a way that was honest, equitable and balanced. If not, said the FCC, a station could lose its license.

Ronald Reagan abolished the doctrine in 1987, but mention it today and the Rush Limbaugh's of the world still scream like martyrs being stretched on the rack. These people earn millions inciting riots in the public mind. If they were required to be fair, they would soon be penniless, out on the street, cup in hand. So when we first telecast our report on the killings in Knoxville last year, some of them threw a tantrum, as if our criticism of their malicious rhetoric was a call for government censorship.

It's true that in this current climate of mean-speak some members of congress and others have called for reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. But I'm not one of them. The Doctrine is a throwback to a time when there were a lot fewer ways to hear news and opinion than there are in today's universe of websites, blogs, and tweets. Just last week, the two new commissioners to the FCC expressed their strong opposition to its restoration. The new FCC chairman is opposed, too.

Conservatives nonetheless wave the fallacious threat of its return as a bloody flag, lofted above the straw men they evoke to roil the faithful and keep the cash registers ringing.

So let me say it again: the first amendment protection of a free press extends to The Savage Nation as surely as it does to The Nation magazine. Anyway, you can't coerce taste; fairness is not a doctrine to be enforced, but a choice to be made, a responsibility to be honored.

That's it for this week, but the Journal continues at our website. Log onto PBS.org and click on Bill Moyers Journal, where you can find out more about the history of talk radio and free speech and follow the debate on health care reform.

I'm Bill Moyers. See you next time.

With all the talk these past few weeks about the Fairness Doctrine and the latest debate on Broadband use for rural areas, I was reminded back when the FCC actually meant something - an agency whose job it was to protect the interest of the American People and the airwaves from the lunatic fringe, the special interests and the misguided. Listening this morning to Morning Edition and an interview with former FCC economist Michael Katz, he managed to bring home in big bright letters the concept of what we have lost over these years of deregulation, incompetence and ignorant hubris, I thought back when Newton Minow spoke to a gathering of National Association of Broadcasters in May 9, 1961.

I'm wondering if it's too late . . . . .

Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. It has an inescapable duty to make that voice ring with intelligence and with leadership. In a few years, this exciting industry has grown from a novelty to an instrument of overwhelming impact on the American people. It should be making ready for the kind of leadership that newspapers and magazines assumed years ago, to make our people aware of their world.

Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today's world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind's benefit, so will history decide whether today's broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or to debase them.

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Here in Seattle -- the town Bill O'Reilly derides as a "far left haven" -- one would think that a properly functioning free market would create offerings on local AM radio reflecting the political climate: generally liberal to middle of the road, with a few dedicated conservatives hanging in there.

But that's not what we get.

We have three all-conservative talk stations in town. The largest news station has a popular talk show featuring a right-winger and a fake centrist. The other big news-talk station, KIRO, is supposed to be a pan-ideological station; it features a popular centrist Democrat but also one of the most obnoxious right-wingers -- and no genuine liberals, having dumped David Goldstein awhile back. And then we have a little Air America station that's reasonably popular but only runs nationally syndicated material and does nothing locally.

I have friends in the Bay Area who tell me it's not any better there. (I'm sure readers from there can fill us in down in the comments.) And in Washington, D.C., the owners are shutting down their progressive talk station in a population that's decidedly Democratic.

It's happening all over, and it's a problem, because these are the public airwaves, not just the private commodities that are radio stations -- which is why we have a Federal Communications Commission in the first place. We need to talk seriously about reforming radio so that the public's well-being is served on its airwaves.

Now, we've had a little fun making fun of the right-wing paranoids for getting all worked up about this issue well in advance of it actually surfacing. But now it is in fact surfacing: Sen. Debbie Stabenow earlier this week said she'd be interested in taking a look at reviving the Fairness Doctrine.

Predictably, it's emerging now with a right-wing frame:

"Dems target right-wing radio":

More and more Democrats in Congress are calling for action that Republicans warn could muzzle right-wing talk radio.

Representative Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from New York is the latest to say he wants to bring back the "Fairness Doctrine," a federal regulation scrapped in 1987 that would require broadcasters to present opposing views on public issues.

"I think the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated," Hinchey told CNNRadio. Hinchey says he could make it part of a bill he plans to introduce later this year overhauling radio and t-v ownership laws.

What Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been telling their audiences is that any talk about the Fairness Doctrine is actually about trying to "silence" them. But of course, no one's interested in "silencing" anyone on the right: all we're talking about is creating a level playing field on the public airwaves so that a broad range of viewpoints can be heard instead of just one narrow bandwidth of ideology. This notion, naturally, is what they fear most, since their ideas don't compete well outside the vacuum they've created.

Frankly, even though at one time I was a full advocate of simply reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine, I no longer believe that's the wisest course. For one thing, the Doctrine didn't actually achieve what it was supposed to do, which was making for a rounded and robust political conversation; mostly it stifled it, in large part because it didn't address the structural defects involved.

The core problem is ownership: Radio station ownership in the past twenty years has been decidedly conservative. And anyone who's worked in media can tell you that ownership sets the tone and direction of what you do. After the Fairness Doctrine was removed, these wealthy right-wing owners effectively proved right one of the fears that drove the creation of the Fairness Doctrine in the first place: That the wealthy can and will dominate the political conversation on the public airwaves by simply buying up all the available space. Since the wealthy in this country are overwhelmingly conservative, the end result was not only predictable, it was in fact predicted.

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Well, we've known for awhile that the wingnuts are getting themselves all worked up into a nice paranoid tizzy over the nonexistent evil liberal plan to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine.

Still there was Fox News' Casey Stegall hot on the case today from LA. But notice something missing from the report? That's right -- any actual liberals who are advocating such a thing. So Stegall gives this lame excuse:

But not a single lawmaker who has called for a return of the Fairness Doctrine rules, when offered this national platform, would go on camera to talk about it.

That's right, those evil liberals are so sneaky they're planning this but not talking about it. Though you'd think he'd at least be able to name one of those "single lawmakers."

I'm sure the logical reality -- that in fact there are no liberals who are proposing such a thing anywhere either in Congress or at the FCC -- didn't cross Stegall's mind.

Or at least, they didn't let it ruin an otherwise perfectly good storyline.

Fox News, Fake News. What's the diff?

From Go Left TV:

The collapse of mainstream media didn't happen overnight. It was the effort of years and years of work by the GOP, which culminated in the 1980's when Ronald Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine and loosened media ownership rules. As Mike Papantonio of Air America's Ring of Fire explains, this paved the way for media consolidation and the decline of the American press.

Part one:

Part two:

Part three:

January 07, 2009 C-SPAN

Republican leaders talked about the introduction of the Broadcaster Freedom Act on the floor of the U.S. House. The Broadcaster Freedom Act would prevent the Federal Communications Commission from implementing the Fairness Doctrine without an act of Congress.

Dave N: It's getting comical, really, how many right-wingers are working themselves up into a fine froth over this. I just got a frantic e-mail from Ann Coulter touting a new "Human Events" report on this dread threat to conservative airwave hogging values. (Image here.)

Funny thing: There really isn't anyone seriously advocating the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, but it's the boogeyman du jour. Matt Yglesias has more. Ron Chusid at Liberal Values has a roundup.

Well, I say let 'em expend all their energy on an issue that isn't one.