Now they've got our attention…

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on August 13th, 2008

There may have been a time, way back in this nation’s history (we’re talking the 50’s here) when the Fairness Doctrine might have seemed like a useful and responsible tool to shape and sculpt the public debate. Things were simpler then.

In 1949 (the year the Doctrine was cooked up), most televisions had three channels, maybe. And radio was limited to one band– AM. It might have made a lot of sense to force the broadcasters of the day to “devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters.” The “scarcity rationale” seemed reasonable.

But by the time the Doctrine was (rightfully) obliterated in 1987, we lived in a brave new world– FM radio had dwarfed AM. Cable television was just getting up a head of steam and, even if your TV wasn’t “cable ready,” you could still pull in dozens of channels on VHF and UHF.

Since then, the broadcast world has gotten braver and newer. And we have this other thing called The Internet. (Not quite broadcast, not quite printing press. It’s a bizarre and fantastic hybrid of both, with a little bit of pamphleteering thrown in.)

So, it is most disconcerting to find that some folks want to bring the Fairness Doctrine back.

It gets better.

Apparently, the name Fairness Doctrine is not Orwellian enough. The new champions of fairness and equity have decided on “net neutrality.”

We have been mystified by the debate over net neutrality. Mainly because the combatants have been an unlikely amalgam of left and right, of conservative and liberal, of democratic and republican. You can’t tell the players without a program!

This editorial, from City-Journal.org, is, so far, one of the clearest delineations of the net neutrality debate we’ve seen thus far. Entitled “A Fairness Doctrine for the Internet,” the article is written by Adam Thierer and it details a situation which led to the unlikely pairing of NARAL and the Christian Coalition in calling for government regulation of content on the internet. And the NY Times lent its support.

The Times apparently needs to brush up on the First Amendment. It’s certainly true that any government action restricting online speech in this fashion would be unconstitutional. When government censors, it does so in a sweeping and coercive fashion, prohibiting the public, at least in theory, from seeing or hearing what it disapproves of and punishing those who evade the restrictions with fines, penalties, or even jail time. Not so for Verizon or any other private carrier, which have no power to censor sweepingly or coercively. A world of difference exists between a private company’s exercising editorial discretion to transmit—or not transmit—certain messages or types of content and government efforts to censor.

Now, it seems, some folks want to not only revive the Fairness Doctrine, but they want to disguise it with new language so that the internet might be included.

Says FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell:

I think it won’t be called the Fairness Doctrine by folks who are promoting it. I think it will be called something else and I think it’ll be intertwined into the net neutrality debate.

We intend to keep an eye on this. McDowell asks this chilling question:

So, will Web sites, will bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?

We don’t really see just how the federal government could possibly regulate each and every website and determine its content, its editorial slant. It would seem to be a gargantuan task, a major headache. But, given the fact that the federal government is this nation’s largest employer (1.8 million civilian employees, not even counting the post office), it’s probably not a task they’d shy away from.

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