To paraphrase Shakespeare, “A rose by any other name is still a rose.” And many would say the “Fairness Doctrine” by any other name is still the “unFairness Doctrine,” if you will.

The Fairness Doctrine went into effect from 1949 – 1987. It basically stipulated that if a broadcaster had a program on a controversial topic, then he was obligated by the FCC (the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees broadcasting) to provide the other side in a way that was roughly comparable. If you had a program on abortion presenting the pro-abortion side, then you had to (theoretically) present a program presenting the anti-abortion side. That’s how it was supposed to work. This went into effect at a time when the broadcast “spectrum” was very limited. By the 1980s, with cable-TV, and today with satellite radio and dish-networks, and even Internet broadcasting, the spectrum has widened considerably.

           
During the 1980s, the Reagan administration opposed the Fairness Doctrine because they felt it violated the first amendment. Mark Fowler, chairman of the FCC under Reagan, said that some conservatives at the time feared that if the Fairness Doctrine was overturned, then conservatives would never be heard in broadcasting. But the Reagan administration was determined to overturn it on principle---on the principle that it violated the spirit of free speech that the founders gave us in the first amendment. So in 1987-1988, broadcasters in America were freed from the burden of the Fairness Doctrine. Within a year or so, Rush Limbaugh’s program went national. Sometimes, when Rush Limbaugh was criticized for voicing only one side of an opinion and he was asked how come he never had the other side, his response was, “I am the other side.” For years, news and information broadcasting, radio and TV, has been dominated by the liberal side. Everyone knows that. Veteran TV-journalist, Bernie Goldberg, became “poison” (his word) at CBS-news when he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, admitting the left-leaning bias of the mainstream media, including CBS. Within a few years, he left---after 28 years at CBS-TV News. He has since written some bestselling books on the bias of the media.

           
Meanwhile, many Christian programs, both on radio and TV, were able to expand, after the “Fairness Doctrine” became history. There is truly an alternative media---through conservative talk radio and Christian broadcasts. But now it seems that some liberals want to shut down this alternative.

I spoke about this topic recently with Craig Parshall, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the National Religious Broadcasters. He said about the Fairness Doctrine: “Rather than creating a large marketplace of ideas, it created a chilling effect, because there were so many complaints being filed against broadcasters saying they didn’t give me enough time, they didn’t pick the right representative to speak against this particular issue, the FCC couldn’t possibly control all the complaints. You know, in 1980, there were over 20,000 complaints filed with the FCC just on this one issue about alleged violations of the Fairness Doctrine.” 

“The Fairness Doctrine became a political football for censorship.  No question asked that what it would do [if it were applied again], it would crush talk radio.  Talk commentary on television and certainly conservative and conservative Christian viewpoints would end up being censored. 

Recently, the senate voted, in the DeMint amendment, against the “Fairness Doctrine” by that name. But at the same time, in the Durbin amendment, they voted in favor of measures that would essentially apply the Fairness Doctrine under other names! Other names include “localism” and “diversity of ownership,” and other nice-sounding phrases.

Craig Parshall tells what “localism” can mean: “The localism approach is this. They’re simply trying to tell  broadcasters, large and small, that they must in their programming day meet a certain number of criteria in terms of meeting what the local community feels are important issues of public concern in their programming for that day. Now, you ask yourself, well, who makes the decision in terms of programming? One of the mandates that was being proposed last year by the FCC was the creation of advisory counsels, which means every segment, and I mean every segment of your local community must be represented in an advisory counsel that then comes in quarterly and tells Christian broadcasters, as well as general market broadcasters what they must put on the air and what they can’t put on the air. So, if you can imagine the local Planned Parenthood executive director coming into the Christian radio station saying, okay now, we don’t want anymore of the sanctity of life stuff. We want to talk about the Planned Parenthood proposals for public education. We want to talk about condom distribution and so forth. And if you don’t follow their recommendations, what’s the natural recourse? The natural recourse is that they’ll file complaints with the FCC and then you hire lawyers and then you’re tied up in litigation and possibly lose your license. That’s what localism is.” 

Here’s what Craig Parshall says about “media diversity ownership:” “Now, they will say that it means equal opportunity for all people to be station managers, both radio and television. But in actuality, I believe what this is, is following up with a recommendation that was made about two years by a liberal think-tank. And here’s what this particular research institute found.  They said that in a report on what they described as the imbalance on talk radio, they said, ‘There’s far too much conservative talk and not enough liberal talk.’ Well, the reason that’s true is because most people don’t want to listen to liberal talk, and the advertisers of those stations have decided they want to put their advertising dollars in conservative talk shows, because that’s where people tend to go with their dialing choices. But what they decided was they could really work a rather immediate and dramatic change in viewpoints across the country if they require that its large urban areas, for example, and they mention a number of them, if you have liberal female or liberal minority ownership of radio and television stations in these large urban markets, you could then sort of gerrymander an immediate change in viewpoint by simply preferring ownership in those areas in the hands of those whose viewpoints would be more liberal rather than conservative.” 

Craig told our radio audience that when he and his wife Janet (host of Janet Parshall’s America, a nationally syndicated radio show) went to Canada as guests on a Christian broadcasting program, they were told what they could and could not say because of Canada’s strict broadcasting laws---the types of laws some want to see applied to American broadcasting.

Says Parshall, “And when we sat down in the studio, and this is a Christian broadcaster, we were given literally a laundry list of things we could not talk about. We were warned not to talk about homosexuality. We were talked told not to compare the gospel of Christ with other religious viewpoints. And there were at least a dozen different things we had to not say during the course of a broadcast in a Christian broadcasting facility.”

I asked him: “And that wasn’t because of the Christians wanting it to be that way, it was because the government was imposing that on the Christian broadcaster in Canada.” 

Craig answered, “This is the broadcasting mandate up in Canada. And I’m trying not to overestimate the danger that we face, but I have to be honest with you, Jerry, and say that from our standpoint, the threats we are facing right now on Capitol Hill are some of the most dangerous threats of censorship against Christian broadcasting we have seen in over a half a century. And remember, NRB, our organization, was birthed in adversity, because evangelical broadcasters were taken off the air back in the heydays of early days of television and radio. So, that’s where we got our start. So, we have a long history and we’re very slow to sound the alarm. But I have to tell you that the mentality that we are hearing, and by the way, Christian broadcasting networks are being named by name in the cloakrooms up there on Capitol Hill by the liberals in terms of who they want to target for this new strategy.” 

Please look soon for your opportunity, through Coral Ridge Ministries, to address this terrible threat to our freedoms, the so-called “Fairness Doctrine.” (Remember, the same idea is being promoted by other names.) I believe we should pray and act that Christian and conservative views will not be censored from the airwaves.