Posted by
Always To The Right on Thursday, November 06, 2008 2:00:53 PM
The time for a Fairness Doctrine has passed, two Congressional Democrats tell CNS News
in an interview today. Senator Ben Cardin and Rep. Chris Van Hollen,
both from Maryland, appeared skeptical that an initiative to reinstate
the old control on political broadcasting could pass, and would be
effective in any regard
The Reagan administration ended the Fairness Doctrine twenty-one
years ago, leading to a revival of the AM broadcast band, which had
begun to die off with the explosion of access to FM and its superior
signal quality for stereo music. At that time, the Internet didn’t
exist as a commercial entity, and cable television was still primarily
a rural phenomenon, although it had already begun gaining ground in
suburbs and cities. Most people got information either through
newspapers or regulated broadcast stations in television and radio.
Now, as Van Hollen points out, the world has changed. With
inexpensive broadband increasingly available to all consumers,
information flows in many channels. The Internet does not have federal
content regulation or licensing requirements. Except for explicitly
illegal content such as child pornography and expressions of violent
overthrow of the United States, anyone can express any opinion on the
Internet, with only self-imposed limitations. Cable and satellite
television now dominate markets, most of which technically avoids FCC
licensing regulations as well. Satellite radio has begun to make its
own inroads in markets as cable TV did a generation ago.
Only broadcast channels such as terrestrial television and radio
fall under the FCC’s aegis now. Imposing greater restrictions would
inevitably lead to the demise of broadcasters, especially in the AM
band. Without politics, most of these stations would cease to exist,
and Van Hollen correctly notes that the content would just move to
another medium. The FD would not keep anyone from accessing
information that they wanted to get — it would just ensure job losses
and irrelevance for AM radio.
It’s interesting to hear this from two Democrats. While they didn’t
want to take a firm position against the FD, it seems that a
reinstatement is only popular with a subset of Democrats and not with
the party as a whole. Common sense about technology appears to be
winning over partisan hackery — or at least we hope it does. Make sure
to let your representatives in Congress know that Cardin and Van Hollen
are right.