Banzhaf talked about his activism against TV cigarette advertising as a part of his lectures on administrative law.
His father basically smoked himself to death, and John made it his personal mission to go after the tobacco companies. He was (and still is) an expert on and a brilliant practitioner under the federal Administrative Procedure Act. Whether or not you agree with the cases and legal positions he took, you really couldn’t have a better teacher of administrative law than John Banzhaf. I was very lucky indeed.
What concerned Fred Friendly primarily in his First Amendment writings on ‘fairness in broadcasting’ was the chilling effect of ‘fairness regulation’ on the journalism of the mainstream media.
John Banzhaf was making his argument against cigarette ads with a fairness complaint in the mid 1960’s.
Friendly touched on that issue as well as other ‘fairness’ issues including Democrats attacks on ‘right-wing’ broadcasters, the liberal attack on a pro-segregation television station in Mississippi and the Nixon Administration attacks on the liberal media and a radio preacher.
There’s a wealth of experience in Banzhaf’s career and it will be interesting to see where his latest work regarding the Baltimore DA will lead.