Can media fairness be mandated?

Radio's sway on immigration urges calls for controls.

By Dante Chinni

from the July 5, 2007 edition

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Washington - There is nothing inherently fair about media coverage in the early 21st century.

Anyone who watches TV news knows reporters can lock on to a particular angle when covering a story. On talk radio, hosts have their jobs precisely because they voice opinions on the issues of the day. And there are no guarantees that a story's two or three or six sides are given equal weight.

This is simply understood as the rules of big media today, but up until just 20 years ago things were quite different – by federal rule.

Back then, the Federal Communications Commission used something called the Fairness Doctrine, a set of rules designed to ensure broadcast outlets provided a reasonable opportunity for "ample play for the free and fair competition of opposing views … [for all] issues of importance to the public." The thought behind the doctrine, which governed broadcast outlets from 1949 to 1987, was that the airwaves were public, in limited supply, and leased to private companies for use by the government. The rules were part of the broadcasters' public-service mission.

This August will mark the 20th anniversary of the end of the Fairness Doctrine. It was dismantled and eventually dumped during the Reagan Administration in part due to the rise of cable TV – which didn't use the airwaves and offered audiences more programming options.

Twenty years is a long time in the fast-changing media world. And there is suddenly talk in this town of reviving the Fairness Doctrine. Politics is driving the discussion.

Democrats have long complained that the conservative tone of talk radio (which took off when the Fairness Doctrine ended) distorts their positions and pushes political debate to the right. Some Democratic senators have discussed bringing the rules back.

And last week, the doctrine's revival got an extra boost when the unlikely duo of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California and Sen. Trent Lott (R) of Mississippi complained on Fox News that the one-way bias of talk radio against immigration reform was killing the measure and hurting the country. "Talk radio is running America," Senator Lott said in an earlier interview. "We have to deal with that problem." Senator Feinstein said she was "looking at" reviving the Fairness Doctrine.

It may be an uphill fight. The Democrats' dislike of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and some Republicans' unhappiness with the tone of the immigration debate in talk-land may not be enough to reregulate the airwaves.

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