This is some talk of bringing back the ‘fairness doctrine’ in the United States. This, before President Reagan got rid of it, allowed the powers-that-be to force broadcasters to have when was deemed to be ‘balanced’ news and current affairs coverage.
In reality, of course, ‘balanced’ means either leftist opinions (the establishment, produced by the universities, do not see their opinions as opinions, they see them as ‘objective’ or even ‘scientific’ journalism – even when they formally do not believe that there is any such thing as objective truth), or a pointless mess of people shouting debating points at each other.
In reality it takes several minutes to explain a point of view, and the reasons for it, about most political matters – exchanges of debating points do not achieve much. The destruction of such things as talk radio (by demanding a “right of reply”) would leave the leftist shows, both serious and comic, untouched. Who wants to bet that the “fairness doctrine” would be applied in some God like “fair” way to them? As for “hard news” as opposed to “comment” (not that I fully accept this distinction).
The left often attack “Fox News” for claiming to be “Fair and Balanced” and (whilst a lot of FNC is not conservative at all) it is perfectly clear where, for example, Brit Hume’s political loyalties are, which one can tell by his choice of words, tone of voice, body language and in other ways, but the left fail to see, or pretend to fail to see, that their own people (i.e. all the other news networks) are also not “fair and balanced” – because this is not in the nature of man (sorry “humanity”), and that all that the ‘fairness doctrine’ would do is to give their side a monopoly of news presentation.
Still, the whole thing is far from confined to the United States.
For example, in Britain we have a version of the ‘fairness doctrine’ – which means, in practice, that broadcasters (government owned or private) represent the ‘liberal’ (i.e illiberal) left. Indeed it is almost universal outside the United States. The most recent example I have came upon concerns India:
A couple weeks ago I watched a brief report on NDTV about the new ‘content code’. According to this compulsory code stories that were against the Indian “national interest” would be spiked, and broadcasters would not be allowed to “highlight” (i.e. favour) certain opinions. In practice it is a safe guess that the opinions that broadcasters would not be allowed to highlight would be opinions opposed to the Congress party and to the various leftist parties who support in government. However, the NDTV report did not say that broadcasters should be allowed to favour any opinion they wished and that people should be allowed to choose between them.
No – the line was that “self regulation” should be supported. The Indian newspapers, the report said, practice this via the “Press Council of India” and broadcasters should be allowed to the same. The government will force its line into regulations – because no one is really opposing this “fairness” line as a matter of principle.
Sadly it appears that no one really stands for anything like the US First Amendment, or for freedom in general, in India. On the one side we have Congress and the various leftist parties (trying to gradually introduce more welfare spending), and on the other side we have the religious nationalist BJP (i.e the saffron fascists). The old days when the Independence party stood for freedom (yes it lost every election – but it was there) are long over.
The above is not meant as attack on India – things are much the same in Britain. No major political party really stands for freedom here either. Not only not in a strict libertarian sense – not even in a general sense.
I still do not understand how the “Fairness Doctrine” got past the US Supreme Court when it was first introduced; I mean, the First Amendment is as clear and uncompromising as they come. I just wonder how they squared that.
According to wikipedia, the Supreme Court ruled as follows:
“A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a… frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others…. It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”
Which as I understand it is basically saying that a requirement that forces the broadcaster to air contrary opinions is not a restriction on the broadcaster’s right to air his own opinions and therefore is not a first amendment violation.
There are of course ways of complying with a fairness doctrine that are completely unfair, as the (un)liberal media display regularly. There’s been a classic of this recently in Britain with the treatment of John Redwood’s recent fairly anodyne policy announcement on reducing government bureaucracy – when the BBC (which in theory at least is supposed to abide by a version of the fairness doctrine) covered it the wording of the story (at least if you believe the BBC…) seemed to be broadly fair, however they illustrated it with 14 year old footage of Redwood famously failing to sing the Welsh national anthem, thereby conveying the subliminal message “this man is a tit and not to be taken seriously.” (It was also quite remarkable just how many times the BBC managed to use the phrase “right wing” in conjunction with Redwood’s name, but doubtless they would claim that is nothing more than an objective fact, as it probably would have been, the first time they did it, if it was in context:-/)
Its a well written article.
Yes it is in that fine tradition that we Americans have had the warm and fuzzy-sounding “Fairness Doctrine.” A bit of pap anything but fair for a long time. Soon after the Dems took control in mid January one of their most die-hard left-wingers, Dennis Kucinich was intent to use his new powers to focus on our Federal Communications Commision and introduce the old bill, again. Indeed, their “ethics reform” was in motion. Our new majority leader Harry Reid also introduced a bill to register bloggers? Hmm. These failed thank goodness.
BTW a little history on how this originated. It was enacted in the 1940s, when radio and television stations were few and far between and it may have made sense to require balance then, lest a region be inundated with unchallenged opinion presented as fact.
What follows is not an attack it is not an attack on RPW – it is an attack on the line of thought RPW has draw attention to.
If every time a person broadcasting expressed an opinion the opposite opinion had to be expressed (if the powers-that-be upheld a complaint) then radio and television shows would degenerate into head butting contests with people makeing debating points at each other (rather than explaining their way of looking at the world) – this is what a lot of shows are already.
Actually head butting contests get lower ratings than shows where the main person gets a chance to shape the show (to present his or her view of the world) – a lot of the public do not like blood sports as much as it is thought they do. Full disclosure – I can not stand the “debate” bits of shows, where one person gets a few seconds and then another person gets a few seconds to rebut (and the people watching the show go away more confused than when that segment of the show started).
Of course the “fairness doctrine” would only be applied one way. Conservative talk radio would be destroyed (which it would be if leftists demanded “equal time” to the broadcaster that people had CHOSEN to listen to) but the nightly news on (for example) P.B.S., C.B.S. and N.B.C. would be unchanged.
This is because put a leftist spin on events and policy would be ruled “objective scientific journalism” (as with the whole “Progessive” movement in journalism from the early 1900’s onwards).
There is plenty of room for CHOICE in broadcasting with different radio and television stations taking different points of view – and having the TIME to EXPLAIN them (which can not happen in a exchange of sound bites – which is what a “debate” is).
As for the Supreme Court, it will not astonish you to learn that I am interested in the text of the Constitution itself (and the opinions of those who wrote it) not the “interpretations” of priests. If the First Amendment does not protect the rights of the owner of a radio or televison station to give his opinions (whilst not using violence against the owners of other radio or television stations presenting their opinions) there is not much point in it.
A more interesting question is how did the American PRESS get the way it is.
The vision of different newspapers arguing for different ways of looking at the world, has been replaced by stale, boring newspapers giving “objective scientific journalism” (i.e. wall-to-wall leftistism from the editorial page, to the news pages and from the news pages to the book and film reviews).
“That is the market, that is what the people have chosen” – then why is the circulation of these newspapers in free fall?
I suspect that the readership for newspapers that did not hire “school of journalism” people, and were not in bed with the local and national establishment opinion would be rather high.
I would like to apologize for calling the B.J.P. “fascists” -I do not support their religious nationalism, but using the word “fascists” was over the top.
Even if there wasnt an “Evil Leftist Conspiracy”, completely unbiased broadcasting is practically impossible. It is also incoherent with any notion of democracy. Reporting in a biased manner is really no different to giving a public speech from a certain viewpoint – you may as well ban politicians from holding opinions as well.
The joint-press-conferences pseudo-debates that have replaced in-depth political debates in the US are a good example of what happens when pseudo-objective leftists or other halfwits get to pretend to be fair. Zzzzzz….