Some straight talk about the Fairness Doctrine
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.
