Fairness Doctrine

[melm00se]

21. In addition to el_bryanto's comments

the original Fairness Doctrine was applicable only to over the air (OTA) broadcast new outlets. FOX, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and the like would have been unaffected by by the Fairness Doctrine.

Additionally, what leverage would the FCC have over these outlets? Cable news stations, to my knowledge, are not licensed by the FCC as OTA stations are. Under the old FD, a station could lose their license to use the public airwaves if they were not compliant.

Extending the Fairness Doctrine to cable outlets could create a launching point for it to apply to internet content especially seeing so much of today's content is internet based and those numbers are destined to go nowhere but up.

This could lead to sites like DU being regulated under the "new" Fairness Doctrine which could force DU to battle it out in the courts (costing significant money) or open up the gates to a balancing volume of conservative viewpoints.

back to el_bryanto's point:

The media landscape is radically different today than it was almost 70 years ago when the FD was originally implemented. Back in the 1950's, many markets had (at best) 3 TV stations (ABC, NBC and CBS) which acted as the primary electronic news outlets and most, if not all radio stations (mainly AM at the time...FM didn't really come into play until the 1960's) were music oriented with limited news content.

Fast forward to today:

Consumers have at their fingertips not only the 3 outlets of yesteryear but also a plethora of web based video content: BBC (both America and UK based), al-Jazeera, HLN, Bloomberg, and on and on. In addition, they have immediate access to hundreds (if not thousands) of other news outlets and uncounted numbers of pure opinion sites.

The need to control and ensure that the consumer has access to balanced coverage of stories and events is long since past. In fact, trying to enforce control over content might have the completely opposite effect than intended: outlets, instead of dealing with the inevitable complaints to the FCC (or whatever agency will have regulatory control) and the resultant investigations, will become far more bland in their content. News outlets might let stories slide by rather than deal with the almost inevitable level of compliance necessary to avoid getting sanctioned (if sanctions, as mentioned before, are even possible).