on the airwaves. This, the argument went, meant that the airwaves were now as accessible as printing presses, so the Fairness Doctrine was no longer needed. Of course, this was long before the Internet and YouTube (which are still no match for a mainstream broadcasting or cable news outlet, obviously!).
And need I add that an average citizen's only access to a print audience via a printing press was maybe a letter to the editor, or at best an op-ed in your local paper -- unless you count mimeograph machines! 
So to use the availability of the printing press as the standard for fairness was questionable by the 1980s anyway.
And the average citizen's only access to the airwaves was via Public Access TV (where you might get 11 viewers, including your mother, if you were lucky), or a low-watt community radio station -- if you had one in your area. So the whole argument was bogus.
Three decades after the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, we are reaping the whirlwind.
This interesting summary from the NY Times is worth a look.
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