Fairness Doctrine?
Posted 23 June 2007 at 6:52 am
There’s a lot of buzz in the media about a conversation that Republican Senator James Inhofe alleges took place as he walked to the Senate floor for a vote with Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer at some time up to three years ago. Inhofe says that Clinton and Boxer were complaining about conservative-biased talk radio and discussing whether there was a legislative solution to the problem. Clinton and Boxer both deny that such a conversation took place, and I suppose we’ll never know for sure unless someone admits in their deathbed-written memoirs thirty years from now that they were lying.
But regardless of the truthiness of the event, the story has suddenly generated a lot of discussion about the so-called Fairness Doctrine. This was an FCC-regulated rule which (to paraphrase), on a broadcast TV or radio station, any time that a specific person in the political arena is attacked, required equal time to be given to that person for a response; or similarly, required equal time whenever a political candidate is explicitly endorsed. The fairness doctrine was slowly dismantled from the 1980s to present day and is no longer required of broadcasters.
In my last post, I talked about the bias in mainstream news media and the efforts made by the far left to eliminate Fox News’s differing viewpoint. The fairness doctrine, if it were applied in full today, would wreak havoc with today’s talk radio, which is (by some reports) about 90% conservative, and discusses specific figures in politics on a regular basis. It’s pretty obvious that there are some on the far left who would love to see this happen.
But what the debate should hinge on is this: with the number of radio and TV stations today (even with their monolithic ownership), and with the digital screwjobswitch happening on broadcast TV in 2009 and the advent of satellite radio, is there a significant barrier to entry for competing viewpoints that would require that non-market forces step in to regulate those viewpoints?
I’d say that’s a big no. The far left attempted to make a foray into national talk radio with Air America Radio in 2004, but due to several incidents of internal mismanagement, was forced to declare bankruptcy in 2006. In that time, however, Air America managed to garner favorable ratings in Portland and Seattle, both considered by many to be rather liberal cities. Air America has found new management and is set to go forward again (minus some of their celebrity names), so there’s still ample opportunity to let market forces work. If they play their cards right, they’ll be able to get enough market penetration to keep themselves from being displaced by more popular programming, such as sports, that brings in more advertising dollars.
I suspect that there’s something else at work here, and no, it’s not some vast right-wing conspiracy. Rather, I suspect that the demographic of conservatives lends itself well to radio listening. Are you allowed to listen to the radio at work? How much time do you spend listening to the radio in your car? Does your evening schedule give you the time to listen, or do you have other things (including competing entertainment like TV) you want or need to do? My hypothesis is that if you take those factors and correlate them with political viewpoint, you’ll find that conservatives simply have more access to the radio in situations where the radio is their only available form of entertainment.
Or, simply put, if people aren’t listening to liberal talk radio, how is that conservative talk radio’s fault?