Selects: How the Fairness Doctrine Worked

7:03Chuck Bryant:Okay. That's a pretty good idea.

7:07Josh Clark:But none of this has to do with the 1920s except for the fact that people did not curse on the radio back then either because there weren't a lot of people on the radio in the 1920s. No, actually pre... Early, early, early 1920s, that is.

7:22Chuck Bryant:Right, pre-November 1920. There was not much going on on the radio aside from Morse code. Some ham radio operators. And remember, we did a pretty good episode on ham radio. Love those hams. If I remember correctly. Yeah. But one of the things I remember about that ham radio episode is that there was kind of a whole hacker anarchic ethos surrounding the early days of radio. You know, it's just a total free-for-all. You could broadcast on whatever station you wanted to and get in arguments with, you know, the government. If you wanted to, who cared? There was not a lot of ways to trace anybody. So there was a lot of anything goes mentality among the early ham radio operators.

8:05Chuck Bryant:But that was basically all you would hear is people saying like, hey, how's it going kind of thing. You know, maybe some heavy breathing. And then in November 1920, a station called KDKA actually organized itself. And the first broadcast that it put out was reading the election results from the James Cox. Oh, my gosh. It almost just violated FCC rules. All this dirty talk. James Cox, Warren Harding, 1920 presidential election. It was the first commercial licensed radio broadcast in the world, I think.

8:49Josh Clark:Yeah, I think that's a great trivia question. If someone were to say what city hosted or whatever was part of the first commercial radio broadcast, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And the follow-up would be, and what did they broadcast? A presidential election outcome. which was a big deal because it's weird to think about in 1920 that people all over the country were waiting for that morning paper to come out except in Pittsburgh. They knew. Right.

9:22Chuck Bryant:They did know. And not everybody in Pittsburgh, just the people who had basically built their own radios because that was the radios that were around. They were like eight people in Pittsburgh. Pretty much. Pretty much. But the fact that this happened and word spread pretty quickly, yeah, some people in Pittsburgh knew the election results, because they were listening to the radio.

9:40Josh Clark:And they ran around yelling that out and said, we heard it on a radio, and everyone's like, these people, lock them up.

9:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And also, other little-known fact, the first song played on the radio was Radio Killed the Newspaper Star. Did you just make that up, or did you have that prepped? I just made it up. Okay. Good job. Thank you, man. I'm glad I got, like, that grudging good job, because there was almost contempt in that first initial laugh.

10:07Josh Clark:Well, because off the cuff, that's a great joke. But if you workshop that over a few hours, then I don't know.

10:13Chuck Bryant:When's the last time I workshopped a joke? I don't know. You don't let me in your workshop anymore. No, I keep it close to the garden secret. So, okay. So here's the point. This is the reason we're even talking about that first broadcast is because that was November 1920. By 1924, I think there were – and in 1920, there were like 20 ,000 radios. 1924 there were one and a half million radios in the united states by 1930 80 no 1940 83 percent of every household in america had a radio and so there there was this massive transition from distributing news and making sure everybody was up to date on all the information they needed to be like a smart voter or hold like political or social or cultural opinions um that transition moved from newspapers, from print, which still hung around.

11:07Chuck Bryant:Sure. But over to radio. Radio became much more prevalent as far as the spread of information to an increasingly large number of people went in the United States in a very short time, in like 20 years.

11:23Josh Clark:Yeah. So in the 1940s, the FCC, and there's some background to all this that we'll get to, but we haven't even really said what the Fairness Doctrine is yet.

11:35Chuck Bryant:No, no.

11:36Josh Clark:Finally, in 1949, the U.S. government said, you know what, we need some help here. We're a little bit worried that, geez, some private citizen who's wealthy could go and buy all the radio stations and essentially propagandize the news, and there's nothing we can do about it.

11:57Chuck Bryant:Yeah, so basically what they said was this. There is one thing we can do about it. We can flex our muscle as the government and specifically say you broadcasters can't do that.

12:10Josh Clark:That's right. Via something called the Fairness Doctrine, which had the overall goal of basically, and it's very kind of cute to look back at this time period. But its initial goal was to make sure that all the information on the radio waves was good information and true and fair and enriching. And there's only so much space on a radio dial. And this is very critical that there were a limited number of frequencies available.

12:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's frequency scarcity, I think.

12:43Josh Clark:Yeah, let's just put a pin in that because that's a very big deal is how this weighed in the favor of the Fairness Doctrine and then also kind of helped kill it in some ways. Sure. But basically the very progressive view that public interests outweigh private interests and the public has a right to really good information over the free speech of the broadcaster even.

13:04Chuck Bryant:Yes. So you just hit it right on the head. Like that is the crux of the Fairness Doctrine. And it seems like, okay, depending on your viewpoint, either like the most vile idea ever or just a completely sensible idea. And the reason that it can present the same, these two totally different opinions is because this idea, the fairness doctrine, sits right at the heart of the difference between the right and the left, between conservatism and libertarianism and liberalism. Yeah. Right. And it is it comes down to this. Like if you if you have to promote public intercourse, like people understanding not doing it in public, but I mean, like discourse, public intercourse.

13:59Chuck Bryant:So, yeah, I guess doing it in public. If you're going to promote public discourse and protect it as a government saying like it's the role of government to say we need to make sure that the quality of the information that's getting out there is protected and that we have to do that. We have to limit what broadcasters can say. We have to curtail free speech to people on the right, like right there, full stop. That's a problem. That's an issue. It has fatally flawed because you are curtailing the free speech of somebody, whether it's NBC or Joe Schmoe who wants to say something on the radio. It doesn't matter.

14:41Chuck Bryant:You are curtailing free speech and therefore that is wrong. The people on the left say, well, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a privilege to broadcast on the radio. and in order to protect the larger public and its interests, we have to curtail that free speech of the very narrowed moneyed interests that can afford a license to broadcast. And there's no way to reconcile the two. You can't. You have to choose a side. You have to form an opinion one way or the other. And whatever you choose is your larger view of whether you're a liberal or whether you're conservative.

15:23Josh Clark:Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it fell along those lines back then and still does today. Even though the fairness doctrine isn't around, the ideology is.

15:32Chuck Bryant:Well, it keeps getting brought out and kind of, you know, forced along like an angry parade route in order to kind of say like, look, look, look what the government's capable of doing. Look at the overreach they really want to do. Don't let them do it again with X. Right. You know? So it is. it's a huge flashpoint and it's understandable why it seems like so kind of limp and bureaucratic and boring. But when you dig into the history of the whole thing and even the contemporary idea behind it, it's a huge flashpoint politically in the United States. Yeah.

16:07Josh Clark:So it had a couple of main components. And then within that, a couple of big, big rules, very important rules. The first, The components were – they were known together as the fairness rule, which is private broadcasters must report on matters of public interest.

16:23Chuck Bryant:Like it's a responsibility of you as a broadcaster.

16:26Josh Clark:That's right. And private broadcasters must cover opposing perspectives regarding that public interest. That's a big one. That's a big one. And then the little rules there, the personal attack rule said that if you're a broadcaster and you are going to run a negative story on somebody or something, prior to that, you have to let these people know or this organization know and give them time to respond on the air. And then the political editorial rule, which is private broadcasters that air editorial programming that endorses a political candidate must inform other candidates and offer them time to respond on air.

17:06Josh Clark:Not to be confused with the equal time rule. That's different.

17:09Chuck Bryant:Yeah, the equal time rule is why debates are supposed to have all candidates. because you're supposed to, if you give one candidate airtime to say, hey, here's my platform, you're supposed to give all other candidates the equal amount of time. And that political editorial rule kind of, it's close to it, and it follows in the same tradition and principle. But really, the personal attack rule and the political editorial rule that were part of the Fairness Doctrine, that's just like the foundation of good journalism, basically. It was not, they're not radical ideas. That's a good point. So the idea, though, that that public or that private broadcasters have to talk about issues and then have to air opposing viewpoints, that is that is kind of controversial because it's saying like he we the government are saying you have to do this.

18:01Chuck Bryant:This is your responsibility. And the idea that the government even has control over airwaves is is in dispute. but it actually dates pretty far back. And we'll talk about the background, the backstory behind the Fairness Doctrine after a message. How about that? Sounds good.

18:31Josh Clark:I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. please for the love of everything good in this world stop with mint you can get premium wireless for just 15 a month of course if you enjoy overpaying no judgments but that's weird okay one judgment anyway give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch up front payment of 45 for three-month plan equivalent to 15 per month required intro rate first three months only then full price plan options available taxes and fees extra see full terms at mintmobile.com Organic Valley Protein Plus Ultra-Filtered Milk is pasture-raised from cows that might take more steps than most people.

19:40Josh Clark:That's a plus.

19:41Chuck Bryant:And it has 50 % more protein and 50 % less sugar than regular milk. That's a big plus. And the fact that I didn't make a pun about moving, also a plus. Organic Valley Protein Plus Ultra-Filtered Milk. Protein plus pasture-raised.

19:59Josh Clark:Learn more at OrganicValley.com.

20:14Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck, so there's one thing to really understand what we're talking about here. Initially, we were talking about radio waves, and then eventually TV waves, and then that eventually turned into the Internet. But all these things, especially something like airwaves for radio and TV, these exist naturally, right? There's not like a government factory that produces radio waves and then the government can say, well, we produce these so we can divvy them up.

20:41Josh Clark:That's what you think, man.

20:43Chuck Bryant:That's an artificial idea that the government can say, we regulate these airwaves. Because it's citizens listening to the stuff that's broadcast on the airwaves, and it's private companies broadcasting on the airwaves using equipment that's manufactured by other private companies. So the government is insinuating itself and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is too important to leave to the market. We have to regulate this in some ways, and we're going to do that. And the whole thing actually started with the Titanic, to tell you the truth. The Titanic ship? The Titanic ship.

21:17Josh Clark:The very one, Chuck. That's right. Leading up to the Titanic, you know, radio was being used and quite a bit in maritime communication. In fact, we even passed the Ship Act of 1910, which required ships leaving the United States to have radio equipment, to know how to use it and sort of laid out some basic broadcasting standards. But what they didn't do was say, all right, we're going to assign radio frequencies and we're going to like reserve a channel for emergencies only. This kind of stung them because a couple of years after that, a little boat called the RMS Titanic sank.

21:56Chuck Bryant:The ship, the Titanic?

21:57Josh Clark:It wasn't a little boat. It was a ocean liner. Sure. I used to know the difference between an ocean liner and a cruise ship. I think ocean liners are transatlantic. Is that the deal?

22:12Chuck Bryant:I've never heard the difference.

22:14Josh Clark:I think that's the deal.

22:14Chuck Bryant:I figured it was one and the same or something.

22:16Josh Clark:No, I think an ocean liner specifically can cross to different continents.

22:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I guess a cruise ship could just hug the coast or something like that, like a schmo.

22:25Josh Clark:I think that's the difference, but I might be making all that up.

22:27Chuck Bryant:I got you.

22:27Josh Clark:So the Titanic sank. Like, there was a lot of radio traffic going on as the disaster breaks out, obviously. So even though this—in Newfoundland, they heard very early on and picked up this distress call, they couldn't really get it out because everything was all clogged up.

22:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah, there were a lot of ham radio operators screwing things up at the time.

22:50Josh Clark:That's right. And that's what prompted the Radio Act of 1912, which was sort of the beginnings of the foundation of what would eventually become the Fairness Doctrine.

22:59Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

22:59Josh Clark:Because what it did was it established spectrum allocation, and the FCC basically said, hey, listen, if you want to broadcast, you can't just broadcast. You've got to come to us and get a license.

23:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah, initially it was the Commerce Department that was issuing licenses. Yeah. And then came the Radio Act of 1927 that formed the Radio Commission, and they started handling licenses. But not only did they start saying, okay, you're a broadcaster. Here's your license. This is the frequency that you can broadcast on. Prior to that, that was around in the Radio Act. That was the Commerce Department that did that. But there was no way to police it. And so if you were, say, NBC Radio, and there were a bunch of people broadcasting on your frequency at 7 p.m., you'd just switch to— Yeah, well, no, you'd just switch to a different frequency and start broadcasting.

23:53Chuck Bryant:And so there was no way to police it. Well, with the Radio Act of 1927 and the creation of this radio commission, there was a way to police it because you could have your license revoked. And if you kept broadcasting, guys would come to your house and kidnap your family.

24:08Josh Clark:Yeah, but the really important thing, and this is how it—not your family.

24:13Chuck Bryant:Right.

24:13Josh Clark:The really important thing was that it established what we talked about before, which is spectrum scarcity.

24:19Chuck Bryant:Right.

24:19Josh Clark:There's only so much space now. If everyone has to apply for a license who wants to broadcast, it was very key in the setup and then, like I said, eventual downfall of the Fairness Doctrine.

24:32Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because it says this, like, okay, here's the full spectrum, the radio spectrum that we can broadcast on. And we're going to carve it up and each person gets a specific frequency to broadcast on. That means that there's a finite number of frequencies. So there's a finite number of licenses, which means that not everybody can have a license to broadcast, which means that the people who do have that license to broadcast have a very important privilege afforded to them. And because it's a privilege, because the government has insinuated itself and said we're doling out these privileges, we've decided, we the government have decided that you have a responsibility to present fair and balanced reporting to the public, including basically all sides of an issue.

25:26Chuck Bryant:Like you have a responsibility that supersedes your right to free speech as a broadcaster. That's what spectrum scarcity created.

25:36Josh Clark:Right. The 1927 Radio Act, while it did establish that, it kind of made some errors, basically, in how they set it up. There were a lot of misspellings. Yeah, there were a lot of misspellings. But they would say, basically, to the broadcasters, you have to air content in support of, quote, public convenience, interest, or necessity, end quote. But they didn't really define what that was.

26:00Chuck Bryant:Which, by the way, I looked it up. I was like, what does public convenience mean? Apparently in the UK it means a public toilet. And that's the only definition I could ever find for it. So somebody just made that up.

26:13Josh Clark:You have to air content about public toilets. Right. That would be great, actually.

26:17Chuck Bryant:Like that part from Naked Gun. It's just nothing but the sounds of people peeing.

26:23Josh Clark:But this is a big problem because if something isn't clearly defined, then it can't be enforced. Right. You know, so in 1934, they knew that this was a problem. This was how many years later? Like seven years later. And they said, you know what, we need to issue another act because we're the federal government. And so the Federal Communications Act replaced the Radio Act. The FCC was born, replaced the Radio Commission. And the FCC said, all right, the first thing we got to do is define what this public interest thing is all about.

26:57Chuck Bryant:Right, because not only does it make it difficult to enforce, it makes it difficult to follow. So even if you're a broadcaster and you're like, I totally agree with this. I do have a right and a responsibility. What's this public convenience thing again? Like, how do I do this? What am I supposed to be doing? And everyone's like, I don't know. And if it's not defined, yeah, you can't enforce it. You also can't follow it if you want to follow it. So there was just too much gray area. And so the FCC, when this was created, this idea of, okay, we're going to set about defining this stuff and really generating this idea of what it means to be a responsible broadcaster.

27:32Chuck Bryant:It happened at a really liberal time in America's history, right after the New Deal had really kind of come along and changed the complexion of America pretty dramatically. and liberalism and progressivism had really set in and was entrenched in the fabric of American politics. And so there was this idea that the best way to prevent broadcasters from asserting an overbearing influence on public discourse because they had the loudest voice because they had the radio licenses, right, was to just say, you guys can't editorialize at all. And this became known as the Mayflower decision or the Mayflower doctrine.

28:17Chuck Bryant:It was a 1941 FCC ruling that basically said, you know what, you guys have to basically be neutral in that you can't say anything. You can't present any particular side. If we find out that you guys are promoting, say, the policy agenda or the favorite politics of like your station owner or your parent company or something like that. Yeah. You're in trouble. And that was kind of like the line that they drew. No editorializing whatsoever.

28:49Josh Clark:That's right. And that really sort of laid the groundwork in a big, big way for the Fairness Doctrine. Even though the Fairness Doctrine sort of undid that.

28:57Chuck Bryant:It did.

28:57Josh Clark:And said, well, you know, you can editorialize, but you just have to do it on both sides.

29:02Chuck Bryant:Right. You have to present, present, present, present both sides. And like on the one hand, that was a gift to the broadcasters, right? They were saying, okay, you can use your own voice. You can state your own opinion. You can support your own political candidate. But you have to give airtime to the other political candidate. You have to give airtime to people with an opposing view of what you just said. So it was kind of like a compromise, but it was also a weakening of the progressivist agenda, I guess.

29:35Josh Clark:Yeah, and the broadcasters did not like it for sure. because, again, they were still sort of confused about what does public importance mean. We're not even sure, you know, everything's decided and applied on a case-by-case basis. In other words—

29:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's a big one.

29:51Josh Clark:Yeah, in other words, if somebody just files a complaint, basically, they will take up that complaint and hear that complaint. But it wasn't some, like, big sweeping thing.

30:01Chuck Bryant:No, but it was also, Chuck, that means that it's capricious and arbitrary, basically, applying the rule on a case-by-case basis rather than a sweeping regulation. But it's also a weakness because it means that the FCC is saying, we'll leave it to you, the broadcasters, to police yourselves. We're only going to act when somebody complains.

30:22Josh Clark:Yeah, so what happened in a lot of cases was some radio stations were like, you know what, I'm not even going to go there, and I'm going to avoid controversy. at all, you know, all together, because I don't think we pointed out it wasn't just about politics. It was basically covered controversial issues in general, like, and that this will play a big part, like everything from climate denial to the anti-vax movement in the 1980s. Like, they all had to have equal time under the Fairness Doctrine. And a lot of people point to the Fairness Doctrine as, like, how these movements got jump-started to begin with, because they didn't put those opinions in context.

31:02Josh Clark:They were just like, you know, they didn't say this is very scientifically valid. And now here's the opposing viewpoint, which has no science to back it up.

31:11Chuck Bryant:Right, exactly. And that was the fact that they didn't do that. They were erring on the side of caution over editorializing. But also probably they were trying to make sure that everybody was not offended. They didn't offend either side because they didn't want to be boycotted with advertising too.

31:31Josh Clark:Or fined.

31:32Chuck Bryant:Sure. Yeah. So that was a big problem with the Fairness Doctrine is that it was ill-defined. It opened the door for opposing viewpoints that put them on equal footing or equal ground with other viewpoints that were, say, scientifically backed, which created what's called the false balance problem. And then there was opposition to it, to basically the fairness doctrine from the outset, not just the broadcasters who thought they didn't want any kind of restriction on their speech. But also, interestingly, it represented a loophole to combat advertising, too, which I think the FCC hadn't thought of.

32:16Chuck Bryant:But they said, yeah, this actually applies when it came up. There was a ruling in 1967 that found that cigarette advertising qualified as a presentation of one viewpoint of a controversial subject. Basically, cigarette smoking is great. Go smoke some cigarettes. And so some consumer groups petitioned the FCC and said, hey, we should be able to give the opposing viewpoint. Don't smoke cigarettes. that's bad for you. And the FCC said, you're absolutely right. And advertisers were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a big deal. And now they jumped in to back up the National Association of Broadcasters, which was opposed to the Fairness Doctrine in general.

33:03Josh Clark:Yeah, and it also, you know, that kind of thing, if advertising counts, it opens the doors and it did for, you know, like, and we'll get to this more specifically later, but like if a power company wanted to do an ad about their great new nuclear power plant that they were going to build, Like a liberal group can come forward and say, no, no, no. Like that's not an ad. I know they're paying for airspace, but that means we need to talk about the ills of nuclear power. Right, right.

33:30Chuck Bryant:And I mean, even if it was an ad, the opposing group could say we get free airtime to say that this is the opposite of that. And so if you're a broadcaster, especially if you're in like a successful market, that, you know, 15, 30, 60 second spot is important. and you don't want to give that away. But it may also, you may have like an interest in whatever the other group is protesting. So just on that, in that respect as well, you don't really want to air the opposing view. The problem with the Fairness Doctrine, if you're libertarian or conservative, is that it said you have to do that. You have to air this opposing view.

34:08Chuck Bryant:The FCC says so.

34:10Josh Clark:That's right. So you got to think this is going to end up in court at some point. Sure. And it did quite a few times over the years, not surprisingly. And for about a 20 to 30-year period, U.S. courts basically supported the FCC in fulfilling this mandate. There were some real highlights in 1969. There were a couple of big court rulings that affirmed this enforcement. One was Red Lion Broadcasting Company incorporated the FCC. It's a little mouthy. It is. So this one was sort of two cases in one. And the Supreme Court was able to kill two birds. One case was an FCC appeal of a lower court ruling that said this – the personal attack and political editorial rules, those two big rules, were unconstitutional.

34:59Josh Clark:And the second was a broadcaster appealing of a lower court ruling that said the FCC's application of those rules was constitutional. So they said, all right, you guys, let's just combine this into one thing and we'll hear the case. And in the latter one, there was an investigative journalist named Fred J. Cook, and he filed a complaint. And like we said, it was case-by-case stuff. So this complaint made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Fred Cook filed a complaint against Redline Broadcasting, who owned WCGB, because they had a broadcast with Reverend Billy James Hargis that claimed that Cook, who was an author, and wrote a very kind of salacious expose about the FBI.

35:44Josh Clark:And this reverend said, you know what, this author worked for the communists and he attacked J. Edgar Hoover. And it turns out they didn't contact Cook to give him that equal chance to respond. And they denied him his demand for that.

35:58Chuck Bryant:Right.

35:58Josh Clark:And it made it all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said, you know what, Red Lion, you're wrong. You got to do this.

36:04Chuck Bryant:Right. So since the Supreme Court ruled that Cook could have equal airtime, this is like, I think, 12 years or nine years later, I could not find anywhere if he actually took him up on it or not. But the whole thing was just like it was an ad hominem attack, an attack on him, on Cook, because Cook had written a book against Barry Goldwater, who was a presidential candidate at the time. And the people who ran Red Lion didn't like it. So they attacked Cook. But he—so in this ruling, though, and this is the whole point, not that Cook got his time, his airtime, but that the Supreme Court ruled that the FCC applying this Fairness Doctrine was good and fine and constitutional, which is a big deal.

36:55They ruled that the FCC could constitutionally exercise this Fairness Doctrine, which was just enormous.

37:04Josh Clark:Yeah, it was a very, very big deal. The other big kind of landmark case was that same year, the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ et al. v. FCC. Another scintillating title. There was a U.S. appeals court who overturned the FCC's decision not to consider a petition to revoke the license of Lamar Broadcasting, WLBT. So these citizens got together, civil rights groups, and they were like, you know what? This station is awful. They are, first of all, they're not covering the civil rights movement, and they're flat-out racist and segregationist. Right. And so we're going to petition this, and the FCC denied the petition in 1964 and said citizens don't have the standing to file a petition like this.

37:52Chuck Bryant:Which is pretty surprising because, you know, the citizens are the ones the FCC have always been, like, fighting for.

37:58Josh Clark:Right. It was a little – Hinky? Hinky is the word that we used to use. So the petitioners appealed, and in 1966 – yeah, 66, the Court of Appeals for D.C. said you do have standing to petition the FCC to revoke a license. Right. Because that's all about protecting the public interest, which is what the FCC was supposed to be doing in the first place. So get back to work.

38:24Chuck Bryant:And finally, in 1967, the FCC revisited that petition, rejected it again because they said, hey, this station is actually kind of taking some steps since then and we think they're doing the right thing.

38:37Josh Clark:Petitioners still weren't happy. They appealed that. And in 1969, the FCC actually revoked Lamar Broadcasting's license.

38:44Chuck Bryant:They did. As far as I could tell, Lamar Broadcasting was the one and only company to lose their license under the Fairness Doctrine. Like permanently, yeah. Right. They never got it back and chucked a little cherry on top because Lamar Broadcasting lost the license of WLBT in Jackson, Mississippi. It was up for grabs, and it was taken by a majority black-owned group that took over the station at that point. Nice. Isn't that nice? Yeah. So things seem to be going smoothly for the Fairness Doctrine. What could go wrong? Well, we'll tell you what could go wrong after a break. How about that?

39:35Josh Clark:I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

39:43Chuck Bryant:It's the rage bait.

39:45Josh Clark:It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. Organic Valley Protein Plus Ultra-filtered milk is pasture-raised from cows that might take more steps than most people. That's a plus. And it has 50 % more protein and 50 % less sugar than regular milk. That's a big plus.

40:21Chuck Bryant:And the fact that it didn't make a pun about moving? Also a plus. Organic Valley Protein Plus Ultra Filtered Milk. Protein plus pasture raised.

40:33Josh Clark:Learn more at organicvalley.com. When it comes to advancing your education, you have more options than you think. At Rasmussen University, we find ways to remove barriers, not build them. Like a new laptop if you're eligible and enroll in select online or on-campus programs. That means flexible and engaging online courses and resources, tuition savings options if you qualify, exceptional student support, and much more. Online nationally or check out their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the support you need. Visit rasmussen.edu.

41:16Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck. So one thing that I've learned is it's not necessarily like the Supreme Court is their decisions are final forever. They kind of shift and move over time, over long enough periods of time. And the Fairness Doctrine is a really good example of that because in the 60s, the Supreme Court ruled pretty clearly the FCC was constitutional. But by the end of the 70s, the Supreme Court started to side with broadcasters instead. The winds of change kind of blew through there. And there was one case in particular that the Supreme Court heard in 1979 that signaled a real change for the Fairness Doctrine and the FCC applying it.

42:01Chuck Bryant:And it was a case that involved WJIM-TV in Lansing, Michigan, which is owned by a guy named Harold Gross.

42:10Josh Clark:Yeah, so the complaint here was that he, or the station rather, via Harold Gross, had abused their broadcasting power to the detriment of the public. So what he did was he denied airtime to political rivals in some cases. In other cases, he censored coverage of local businesses if they didn't advertise with them.

42:32Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he was accused of clipping, which is taking, like when a network delivers a show, it has commercial breaks in it. he would have his editors go through and add even more commercial breaks, which you're not supposed to do. That was a big one. Didn't cover the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance because he didn't like Jimmy Hoffa's politics, even though it was a national and a local story.

42:53Josh Clark:Yeah, so in 1975, a hearing by the FCC said, you know, you violated the fairness rule. We're taking your license, buddy. But he appealed it, and this time he won the appeal. And like you said, this was a big shift in the way things were being thought about as far as the Fairness Doctrine went.

43:12Chuck Bryant:Hey, one more thing about Harold Gross before we move on. This guy, he was such a businessman that when he started his TV station in 1950, WJIM, he was actually one of the first 108 license holders to broadcast on TV. But he wasn't sure that TV was going to stick around, that it was going to take off as a technology. So he built the WJIM facilities so that it could be converted into a motel if TV didn't go anywhere. So the original WJIM TV station had a pool out back.

43:45Josh Clark:What is it now? Do you know?

43:47Chuck Bryant:What is what?

43:48Josh Clark:The building. The pool?

43:49Chuck Bryant:I don't know. I looked up to see if there was anything recent about it, and I didn't find any new stuff. But I saw a picture of the station, and there's definitely a pool out back from back in the 50s. Kind of a nice perk. I guess so. I wonder if he let anybody swim in it or not. I don't know. Maybe if you advertised, he would have let you.

44:10Josh Clark:So this was the mid to late 70s, and then things really, really started changing in the 1980s because that whole thing about, remember when we said putting a pin in spectrum scarcity, that was no longer a problem. By the mid-1980s, there were more than 10 ,000 radio stations, 1 ,300 TV stations. about 1 ,700 newspapers, and the whole sort of drumbeat was like, wait a minute, there's not a problem here anymore with scarcity. We should be able to do what we want because you told newspapers from the very beginning that their free speech was protected and they could do whatever they want. Why are we any different?

44:52Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's a really big point that a lot of people pointed to over the years is why does this just apply to electronic media? Like the print media literally has an editorial page where they come out with positions on candidates and all this stuff. Why doesn't it apply to them? And for years and years and years, it was any schmo can basically go get a newspaper printed. Radio's different because of that spectrum scarcity. But, yeah, as the satellite people came along and as cable came along, that just kind of went out the door. So spectrum scarcity going away and the fact that the newspaper industry, the print media was not regulated anywhere near the same way really kind of removed any remaining foundation for the Fairness Doctrine to stand on.

45:39Josh Clark:Yeah. So in 1985, the FCC kind of got their gears turning and said, you know what? We think this is we want Congress to review this, basically. We're going to institute a public comment period even. And we think we should abandon the personal attack rule and end this case by case thing. Right.

46:04Chuck Bryant:And yeah, they did this for like two years. And while the FCC is holding like these public hearings on it, Congress at the same time was saying, well, we don't really want the Fairness Doctrine to go away. And not just the left. There was a bipartisan supported bill that got passed in Congress to codify the Fairness Doctrine. But it was vetoed by Reagan. And so after that, that was basically it for the Fairness Doctrine.

46:31Josh Clark:Yeah, the FCC voted unanimously to just get rid of it.

46:36Chuck Bryant:They did. And so they didn't actually get rid of it. They just stopped enforcing it or some parts of it. They kept enforcing, I think, the personal attack and political editorial provisions up until like 2000 for like another 13 years. But the idea that you had to promote opposing viewpoints on your television station or your radio station, that went away starting in 1987. and a lot of people say that really changed the American media landscape big time. Yeah, I mean, you know, depending on who you are.

47:21Josh Clark:I'm just going to sit back and watch this. I know, I'm trying to dance around this. Depending on who you are, you probably have a very strong opinion about the Fairness Doctrine one way or the other. Right. Or you may think it was a mixed thing. It was definitely a flawed policy. I think everyone agrees that it wasn't perfect. But the legacy is really complex. You know, getting rid of it basically opened the door for what we have today, which is a degraded new standard, minority viewpoints that aren't necessarily covered, and how polarized we are. because, you know, people dug in and they said, all right, I'm going to start my super conservative radio stations.

48:00Josh Clark:And then people said, I'm going to start my super conservative liberal website and radio shows. And liberals are going to listen to theirs and conservatives are going to listen to theirs. And never the tweens shall meet.

48:14Chuck Bryant:Right, right. Right, and so especially if you have like each side promoting a viewpoint or an agenda to the detriment of the other side, there's like the middle ground is lost. I know some people aren't very hip on centrism these days anyway, but I mean you can keep a pretty decent-sized society together when you kind of follow a centrist axis upward and onward. And I think that to me, the Fairness Doctrine showed that. I mean, like, I don't think it's a big surprise where I fall on whether the Fairness Doctrine was a good idea or not. But I just don't think it's – like, I can see saying all these people out here need good information.

49:04Chuck Bryant:And it's probably not going to just get out there on its own if we, the government, don't step in and say, here's how we need to get good information out. And I think the current media landscape is just complete proof positive of that, that if you just don't, if you just let it all go free for all, then you end up with what we have, that this is what the market offers us. Echo chambers. Echo chambers, polarization, and a huge division in the country without anybody saying, well, wait, wait, wait, yes, over here, you guys are right. Over here, you guys are right. And things are really messed up.

49:42Chuck Bryant:But also, what about this other stuff? We kind of all agree on this part. And what about this part? Yeah, we have a lot of common ground here. No one's talking about that. And that used to be the role that the media played before.

49:53Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, one thing we can say is without the Fairness Doctrine, we may not have gotten any of these minority viewpoints in the 1940s and 50s and 60s.

50:03Chuck Bryant:Right.

50:03Josh Clark:People might not have been as well informed except maybe via newspaper about the civil rights movement, women's rights movement, how bad smoking is, about nuclear power plants. Like all of these things that were sort of in the shadows were now – now had a guaranteed platform. But like we mentioned earlier, because they didn't really – they had to give these opposing viewpoints. He also could have possibly borne the anti-vax movement and the climate denial movement and stuff like that. So it was flawed, to be sure. Sure.

50:38Chuck Bryant:Yeah, from what I understand, like any Democrat to the right of Ralph Nader, which is almost everybody, says, yes, fairness doctrine. What a terrible idea, terrible idea. It was officially repealed in 2011. And if you'll think back, that was under the Obama administration. So the Obama administration's FCC was the one that officially took the Fairness Doctrine off of the books, removed it.

51:03Josh Clark:Yeah, but I mean that was a purge. That was just like there's a bunch of rotten food in the fridge and why has no one thrown it out yet?

51:10Chuck Bryant:Yeah, but it was also pretty symbolic. It was a symbolic act whether they intended it or not. But the idea that it was removed by a Democratic lefty president's administration is, I don't know, it's saying something, I think.

51:27Josh Clark:Yeah. Here's where we are today, though. There was a poll, a Gallup poll just last year in 2018 that's found Americans don't trust the news. Right. They guessed, let me see, 62 % of what they hear is biased, 44 % is inaccurate, and 39 % is misinformation.

51:51Chuck Bryant:Those numbers seem low to me.

51:53Josh Clark:That's not a great place to be in as a country, though.

51:56Chuck Bryant:No, it's a terrible place. It's a scary place. Like, how is this country still together, you know?

52:00Josh Clark:Yeah.

52:02Chuck Bryant:And the other thing is we're going to get so much guff because we didn't come out and just stay completely down the middle. But I mean I want to say like I understand where people on the right are coming from with this. Like ideologically this is censorship and the prohibition of the exercise of free speech. And that is one of – that is a core founding value of conservatism and libertarianism. So like I can understand how you'd look at the Fairness Doctrine and be like this is government overreach in its worst examples. Yeah, but it's like it wasn't like state-run radio.

52:45Josh Clark:It wasn't like the government, the federal government, propagandizing their agenda. It was saying like, hey, you can say this viewpoint.

52:54Chuck Bryant:You also have to show the other viewpoint. To me, that's almost impossible to argue with.

52:58Josh Clark:Yeah, and I think, don't newspapers of high standing still on their editorial page kind of print the two opposing opinions side by side?

53:09Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's what op-ed stands for, is opposite the editorial page. So the editorial page will be the newspaper's opinion, their editorial board, and then on the literal opposite page is basically the opposing opinion of that. Yeah, it's just a high journalistic standard. Right. But this is the government saying this. newspapers do this on their own I guess just out of tradition whereas electronic media is a little more wild westy than that that's right so here we are today pretty interesting times we live in and it's all because the Fairness Doctrine went away anyway thanks for listening to this episode of Stuff You Should Know if you want to know more about the Fairness Doctrine just go outside see how you like things And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

54:00I'm going to call this the sound of our voices.

54:04Josh Clark:Or I'm sorry, let me say this, the color of our voices. Oh, yeah. I know what my voice is colored. This is good. In fact, yours isn't even colored. This is more of a feel thing. Okay. So, hey, guys. I listened to the episode on perfect pitch. You mentioned that synesthetes are often good candidates for having perfect pitch. I fall into the category of being someone who possesses both. I've been serious about my musicianship since my earliest recollections in life. That's when I began involuntarily hearing all the individual musical notes in their own unique, unchanging colors. For example, the sound of the note F.

54:38Josh Clark:I should have brought in, dude, I bought one of those little, what do you call it? Pitch pipe. I bought a pitch pipe. Why didn't you bring it in? No, I should have brought it in. The one note harmonica. I should have bought two. I'm going to buy you one.

54:50Chuck Bryant:I would love it. Can you have it engraved too?

54:53Josh Clark:Sure. Okay. So the sound of F for Allison has never not caused a rush of the color orange to sweep over her from head to foot. I also hear people's individual voices and colors. What's unique about voices to me, they're incredibly textured in and of themselves. You guys have voice colors and textures. I love mine. Read mine. Josh's voice, anytime I hear it, sounds like suede. if suede suede could make a sound painted medium to dark brown with a tiny hint of Easter egg purple that's your voice

55:30Chuck Bryant:that is a lovely combo if you ask me

55:32Josh Clark:Chuck's voice on the other hand has zero fuzz to it at all Chuck's voice is very metallic almost shimmery like you're gazing upon a deep blue green body of water and you can see straight to the bottom

55:44Chuck Bryant:nice that's a nice voice right there Chuck

55:46Josh Clark:these are both great voices I'm very happy that I mean who knows what what could have come out of this email. Yours smells like puke. And yours sounds like nails on a chalkboard. The end. I've come to find out that no two voice colors are exactly the same, kind of like thumbprints and snowflakes. A person's voice color does not morph into something else either if they suddenly start speaking in another language. And it also has nothing to do with his or her particular personality type. So they're not saying you're smooth like suede as a person.

56:20Chuck Bryant:Oh, yes. Clearly. Or that I'm shimmery as a person.

56:23Josh Clark:Sure. The point of the matter, I delight in hearing both of your voices nearly every day as I tune into the show. It's become a staple in my daily existence. Keep on being wonderful. That is from Allison, who is at our Salt Lake City show. Awesome. And she interacted with us from the crowd. That's great. Thank you for interacting with us, Allison. We appreciate that. It's illegal at our shows, but I think I asked a question and she answered it. It's against the rules. That's what they say.

56:49Chuck Bryant:Well, thanks, Allison. That was one of the more interesting emails we've ever received, frankly. If you want to be like Allison and go to one of our live shows, you will never regret it for a single moment in your entire life. And if you want to get in touch with us like Allison did too, you can go onto our website, stuffyoushouldknow.com, follow our social links there, or you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

57:19Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

57:35Chuck Bryant:I'm U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. The sound of a seatbelt. It's one of the most important sounds in our car. It means everyone is ready and everyone is safe. The more our kids see us put on our seatbelts, the more natural it is for them to put theirs on too. Make it a priority. Buckle up every time. Hear the sound?

58:00Josh Clark:Make it a habit. Paid for by NHTSA.

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58:54Chuck Bryant:Also a plus. Organic Valley Protein Plus Ultra Filtered Milk. Protein plus pasture raised.

59:02Josh Clark:Learn more at OrganicValley.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.