The First Amendment reads (in part): “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….” “Abridge” is legally defined as: “…(T)he making of a declaration or count shorter, by taking or severing away some of the substance from it.” The Founders prohibited the government from not just silencing speech – but from doing anything at all to in any way reduce it.
Not at all surprisingly, two government speech regulations ended up doing exactly what the Constitution was written to prevent it doing. Behold the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-imposed Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time provision.
These inanities were inflicted on anyone who had a broadcast license on spectrum given to them by the government. (That’s over-the-air television and radio.) These regs left most such recipients regretting mightily not having just paid for the airwaves – so as to have gotten (at least a little) out from under government’s massive thumb.
These two First Amendment assaults were imposed in the name of government-defined-and-mandated speech “equality.” As usual, government fundamentally misrepresents its charter. It is required to ensure equality of opportunity – not empowered to impose equality of outcome. Anyone can say anything they want – that’s Constitutional opportunity. Anyone else receiving a government-mandated equal chance on the same platform – is unConstitutional free speech abridgment. How so? Here goes….
The Fairness Doctrine “was a policy…introduced in 1949 that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was-in the Commission’s view-honest, equitable, and balanced.”
How’d that work in practice? So you’re a radio station owner. Your business model and imperative is to program your station – strategically planning each broadcast minute so as to maximize your audience. You of course want the most compelling people on the air.
How can you do this if every yahoo on the planet can – at any time at all – demand access to your airwaves? Yahoos who may not be…the most intriguing, articulate of individuals. And the rampant schedule volatility would render your business totally dysfunctional. You couldn’t program your station even five minutes in advance – as you would be suffering an insufferable parade of Fairness Doctrine-imposed yahoos lining up to access your microphone.
So in the name of equalized speech, the Fairness Doctrine resulted in – zero speech. Station owners would simply not inform their audiences about anything that might invoke the absurdity. How do we know the Fairness Doctrine did this? Because the Ronald Reagan Administration’s FCC voted to stop enforcing it, and months later Rush Limbaugh began his nationally syndicated radio rise – and the talk radio revolution. The results were so obvious – the Barack Obama Administration’s FCC officially removed the language that imposed the Doctrine. Not because they too thought it was awful policy – but because the politics of it were so against them.
