Why the airwaves seem so crazily biased

Via Echidne, this fascinating bit of information: the FCC used to require that the airwaves operate according to a Fairness Doctrine, meaning that they would not take a partisan position on the news. However, apparently in 1985 the FCC (unsurprisingly, under Reagan, who advocated removing educational requirements from Saturday morning TV) decided that the fairness doctrine "no longer served the public interest" and did away with it. Congress passed a law to reinstate it (and even Gingrich and Helms were on board), but Reagan vetoed it. In 1989, they tried again, but Bush the First managed to threaten the bill out of existence.

The impact of the elimination of the fairness doctrine was immediate and significant. In 1980 there were 75 talk radio stations in the country. By 1999 there were more than 1300. The conservative Weekly Standard recently summed up the landscape, "… 1300 talk stations, nearly all born since the repeal of the fairness doctrine and nearly all right-leaning…"

Today there are few if any public interest conditions for broadcast licensees. They can be as one-sided and contemptuous of people and issues as they desire. So long as they don't use obscenities they can vilify individuals, candidates and political positions without ever letting their audience hear from the other side.

Who knew. Explains a lot. I'm going reading, and will add to this post as I find more info...

Update 1: Here's an interesting article that includes some of the court cases that spurred the FCC to change it's mind in the 1980s -- opponents of a nuclear plant wanted time to counter a TV campaign promoting clean nuclear fuel, a supporter of bottle deposits wanted time to counter the beverage industry's huge ad buys against the deposit referendum, etc.

Update 2: It seems that another force at work was the huge proliferation of stations, especially on cable, during the 1980s, which in effect led to the belief that balance would be found between channels rather than within them. In fact, many stations were feeling that they couldn't even include editorials without trying to come up with "equal time." (See such arguments here and here.) You can certainly imagine the screaming if editorials were banned at most newspapers, but those publications do try to provide a balance of views elsewhere (as on their Community or Letters pages).

I'm just not sure that most people channel surf for news or opinion enough to find their own balance, especially once particular corners become defensively armed against the "spin" from the other side. The resulting insulation is what can make even so banal an event as the debates a revelation for some people (as when Andrew Sullivan says that the Haliburton accusations against Cheney were "news to him"!).

Molly Ivins asks:

Is the free market not supposed to encourage competition rather than lead to its disappearance? The U.S. now ranks 17th, below Costa Rica and Slovenia, on the worldwide index of press freedom established by the Reporters Without Borders.

It makes one so proud to feel like a third-world nation . . .