The fairness doctrine was established in 1949 to ensure that both sides of controversial issues had a chance to air their viewpoints on television. According to The Museum of Broadcast Communication, “The FCC took the view, in 1949, that station licensees were "public trustees," and as such had an obligation to afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of contrasting points of view on controversial issues of public importance. The Commission later held that stations were also obligated to actively seek out issues of importance to their community and air programming that addressed those issues. With the deregulation sweep of the Reagan Administration during the 1980s, the Commission dissolved the fairness doctrine.”
Since the Reagan Administration decided the fairness doctrine was unnecessary, television analysis has become progressively worse. The broadcast networks have increasingly relied on the “if it bleeds it leads” mantra for news coverage. Both local and national broadcast news stations focus now more than ever before on shootings, fires, natural disasters, and other relatively worthless topics. As far as they’re concerned they might as well. These stories are cheaper to cover, garner higher ratings, and in turn allow them to charge more for advertising.
The original idea behind the abolition of the doctrine was that people had enough alternate means of obtaining different viewpoints, so it was no longer necessary to require stations to cover them. It is likely that the birth of cable drove this decision, but cable has so far not picked up the slack.
Cable stations like Fox News don’t serve the public interest, but the right extreme of the Republican Party. This righteous partisanship would be ok if there were stations that broadcast the opposing view, but there aren’t any. Instead you have shows like the ultra-conservative O’Reilly Factor and then “hard news” programs like the less conservative Anderson Cooper 360. Where is the liberal media?
Again, the content relates to the ownership of the stations. Sure, CNN is more liberal than Fox News is, but Fortune 500 companies own both stations. Rupert Murdoch of News Corp owns Fox News, whereas Ted Turner of AOL-Time Warner owns the other. Giant corporations are concerned with making a profit—not serving the public interest.
Despite suffering a 30 percent drop in profit in 2007 according to the BBC, Time Warner still made 6.5 billion dollars. Newscorp took in 2.3 billion in profit in 2007. These staggering figures show just how concentrated the media are.
Bringing back the fairness doctrine will help reverse the trend toward more style and less substance in the news. Life’s not fair, but the media can be—provided they do their job.