FCC Officially Sacks "Fairness Doctrine"

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According to strong>The Hollywood Reporter<, the FCC has announced that "the controversial Fairness Doctrine and 82 other rules governing media" will be officially obsoleted this month.  Paul Bond of HR notes that "FCC Chair Julius Genachowski called the rules 'outdated', and said they were being removed to lessen the burdens of regulation on media companies."

The rule had been officially un-enforced starting in 1987 under President Ronald Reagan (and neither Bill Clinton nor either Bush ever aspired to resurrect it).  The Depression-era Doctrine required that radio and later TV networks present both liberal and conservative points of view on hot-button editorial and political issues; it was also referred to as the "equal-time" law.  Major controversy first arose over the Doctrine in the '60s and '70s, as liberals found the mainstream media hopelessly corporate, pro-(Vietnam)-war, and sexist, while conservatives mounted a full-scale attack, via Spiro Agnew and Pat Buchanan, on the "liberal media".

The "effective repeal" of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 was directly responsible for the rise of right-wing talk radio (Rush Limbaugh hit the jackpot the following year) and ideological news networks like FoxNews and MSNBC. It also heralded a new era in regulation of radio, movies, and television, which had been tightly regulated (especially under Cold Warriors Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, both of whom had serious "issues" with "liberal" newspapers and network anchormen.)

However, it was "new Democrat" Bill Clinton who undertook the most massive deregulation of the media less than a decade later, with 1995-96's Telecommunications Act and its corollary media-ownership laws.  From 1970 to 1995, movie studios were forbidden to directly control theatre chains (1948's Paramount Consent Decree), TV networks could only "own and operate" a handful of stations nationally (the rest were independently owned "affiliate" franchisees), and were restricted from controlling "too many" other news sources (e.g. radio stations, major newspapers) in the same city.  (And the networks could not control certain time periods, most notably the 7:00 to 8:00 Eastern/Pacific "prime access" period from Mon thru Sat, which then had to be filled with independently syndicated programming chosen by local station managers, except for news or sports events.) Networks also could not "own" the prime-time shows they aired, except for newsmagazines and sports; they had to be purchased from outside film studios or production companies (and networks and film studios were absolutely forbidden from owning one another.)

By 1996, every last one of those laws was likewise declared "obsolete", paving the way for the most massive media consolidation in modern history.  Today, it's estimated that only 6 to 8 companies control all major movie studios, TV networks, and most cable stations and book publishers.  Liberal voices like Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Bernie Sanders, and Bill Press have been outspoken in their support of "re-regulating" TV, radio, and movies, and breaking up consolidation, with the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine a key point.

For better or worse, this ruling seems to be a coded death blow to any such plans, at least from within the FCC itself.  The FCC says that Fairness and the 80-odd other "outmoded" rules will be officially purged by mid-September.