Fairness doctrine

Mm-hmm

... called the Fairness Doctrine.

Now, the Fairness Doctrine has not been enforced, not been, um, uh, in, and I don't even actually know the official legal status of it.

Is it still, is it still a regulatory principle as it once was? So when there were three networks-

Mm-hmm

And this went by, b- became obsolete with the rise of w- well, cable networks, not to mention social media, not to mention, um, so many other aspects of, of, um, of m- modern communications.

Now, because cable is not over the air, it cannot be re- it is not regulated by the FCC.

So they could not then say to cable stations, "You c- you, you have ..." They could not enforce a fairness doctrine.

But towards the end of his life, he endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 and later personally escorted Reuben Murdoch into Reagan's Oval Office.

And that, I take it, was when they decided to get rid of the Fairness Doctrine, which sort of moderated political speech in the media.

And ever since then, this massive advantage of the Republicans have had with right-wing media, Rush Limbaugh, all of that stuff that wouldn't have been possible prior to the ending of the Fairness Doctrine.

So why is it that the Republicans have created this network that Roy Cohn was at the pinnacle of, that was so effective? And one of the legacies of the McCarthy era was that it really hoisted the canard that anybody that was progressive on domestic issues was therefore aiding and abetting the foreign Soviet enemy.

And it shrunk the Democratic Party in many ways, made them the Me Too Party, that we're just as tough on communists as you guys are.

You have to.

The Fairness Doctrine, which doesn't exist anymore and hasn't for a long time, and of course won't exist under a Donald Trump FCC ever unless they need it to exist for a single case, in which case they'll bring it back, prosecute somebody, and then erase it from the books again.

but I guess there's nothing to, to present, but I mean, not the democratic party.

Maybe they ought to be, I don't like to tell them how to do their job, but I suppose you could ask for some kind of equal time.

Oh, interesting.

I was going to say, because I was going to make a connection to the Fairness Doctrine, which obviously forced television shows like the McLaughlin Report to show both sides.

But that's interesting that it was on throughout the 90s.

When was that? I believe it was the late 80s under the Reagan administration.

Yeah, the

Fairness Doctrine was under Reagan.

So that was maybe right after.

So it was from 1982 to 2016, which I didn't realize.

is now.

But did that all come apart with the Fairness Doctrine? Was that part of the reason? why we now can do whatever we want in terms of buying radio stations.

Is that something that came after the Fairness Doctrine?

It was related in that they basically said, there's such a diversity of thought now, we don't need that anymore.

If you're liberal, you can find a liberal station.

What does Walter Cronkite have to tell us today? He's like a grandfatherly figure, sitting you down, you sit on his lap, and he's going to tell you the news of the day.

You know, it's almost hard to believe it's been less than 40 years since the upending of the Fairness Doctrine.

For you Zoomers out there, there was something called the Fairness Doctrine, where if you were hosting a show, you could not do so with a biased edge.

That if, say, you were a conservative, you had to give the liberal equal time.

And it was called Point Counterpoint.

But because we live in a monoculture, you thought when it was one person hosting the show because they had to deal with this fairness doctrine that they were going to give you the unbiased truth.

Not always the case, as we saw with, once again, Walter Cronkite and the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War.

But because they upended that fairness doctrine in 1987, it gave rise to talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh or Fox News and then since then Newsmax and One America News and even podcasts like the one you are listening to right now.