Posted on 02/01/2004 9:39:24 AM PST by Andy from Beaverton
Talk radio: It's time for more than right-wing hot air Why should we settle for just RIGHT-WING HOT AIR? 02/01/04GARRETT EPPS
I t was a match worthy of World Wrestling Entertainment. In this corner, one mild-mannered, wordy academic; in the other, Kevin Mannix's minister of information, the pistol-packing Godzilla of Portland talk radio, Lars Larson.
It was the fall of 2001. I was a visiting professor at Duke University. A Portland radio show wanted someone to explain the new policy of trying foreign terrorists in front of military commissions. I boned up on the topic and called in at the appointed time.
"You're on the air with Lars Larson," said a voice. Then another -- it sounded like God on steroids -- boomed, "So Professor Epps, what do you think of the Portland Police Department refusing to cooperate in the war on terror?"
At least, I think that's what he said. My life, to coin a phrase, passed in front of my eyes. "I don't know anything about it," I managed to croak.
"Oh, that's no problem," said the Voice. "See, what happened was -- "
"I really can't comment," I said. "We can talk about military commissions, or I can hang up."
The next day, the producer called again. "Lars wants you back," she said. OK, I answered -- but this time I really do need to know what he wants to talk about.
I've never heard from him again.
Since then, whenever I hear some high-testosterone right-wing radio host thrashing a tongue-tied liberal, I wonder whether the match was fixed from the start. Did they even tell the victim what the show would be about?
There are people, I know, who think this kind of ambush radio is genuine discussion of public issues. There also are people who think World Wrestling Entertainment is sports.
WWE fans, of course, are welcome to their choice of fun. But what if the government was building pro-wrestling arenas and shutting down competing sports? Would we still feel so confident the public's choice was "free"? And what if the government did the same thing to create a political advantage for one party?
Make no mistake: That is what's happened in AM radio over the past two decades. As a result of government policies, talk radio has become the GOP's Air Force. Since the 1980s, Republican administrations have been manipulating media law to protect an important part of their attack machine.
As we contemplate the howling wilderness of democratic discourse in the early 21st century, it's time at least to ask ourselves whether we want to change direction. Into the badlands
I first heard Rush Limbaugh in 1989. I was heading east out of Tucumcari, New Mexico, across the forbidding wilderness the Spanish explorers called el malpais -- the badlands. As I scuttled across the desert, my car radio could pull in only one station, an AM giant out of Amarillo, Texas, that broadcast Limbaugh's show not once but twice a day.
For three hours in the sweltering heat, I listened to Rush denounce "Fort Worthless Jim" -- the then-speaker of the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, Jim Wright. Wright, to be sure, was something of a sleazeball. But by sundown I was wondering whether it might not be nice every now and then to at least call him by his legal name.
But fairness no longer mattered on talk radio. Until 1987, the Federal Communications Commission had enforced something called the "fairness doctrine," which required broadcasters to provide opposing viewpoints on controversial issues.
When Reagan Republicans got control of the FCC they repealed the doctrine that guided broadcast and radio for 38 years. That opened the door for Limbaugh and his imitators -- they could savage Democrats for days and hours on end, with no opportunity to reply. "News-talk" stations soar These Republicans understood the political power of the medium. Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms began their political careers as broadcasters. But their influence was somewhat limited: the targets of their attacks sometimes got to bite back. (Once, during Helms' years as editorial writer for WRAL-TV in Raleigh, a local rabbi got equal time to protest the future senator's habit of deliberately mispronouncing Jewish names.)
After 1987, "Fort Worthless Jim" had no recourse. And talk radio became a potent political weapon. In 1980, there were 75 stations in the country devoted to "news-talk." Today, there are more than 1,300.
I know that in theory these could be liberal attack radio stations. But in the real world we live in, the multimillionaires who own chains of radio stations tend to be Republican. Very, very Republican, in fact. "Freedom of the press," as the great critic A.J. Liebling famously said, "Is guaranteed only to those who own one." The same is true in radio.
Most of the more than 1,000 stations simply devote all their airtime to syndicated right-wing programs. And the political effect has been dramatic. Political scientist David C. Barker, author of "Rushed to Judgment: Talk Radio, Persuasion and American Political Behavior," has analyzed statistics that suggest the Republican "landslide" of 1994 stemmed largely from the increased polarization of one demographic -- right-wing talk listeners.
The Gingrich Republicans probably agree; early in 1995, the 73 new GOP House members formed something called "the dittohead caucus," after Limbaugh's name for the listeners who echo his every pronouncement.
The situation got worse in 1996 when the Republican Congress passed a landmark telecommunications act. One of its provisions lifted longstanding limits on multistation ownership by nationwide chains -- right-wing talk's biggest purveyors.
Before the law, no one company in the United States owned more than 40 stations. Today the largest -- Clear Channel, the free-speech champions who banned John Lennon's "Imagine" and more than 100 other songs after Sept. 11 -- owns more than 1,200. Revising the rules The 2000 election brought us another Republican administration, and another Republican-dominated FCC. This time, the commission set its sights on the rules forbidding one company to dominate local television markets.
Despite unprecedented public outcry, the commission's chairman, Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, pushed through the rules raising the number of TV stations one company can own, and permitting TV and newspaper companies to take over radio stations in the same market. There was not even a pretense of open hearings.
The media consolidators may have overplayed their hand this time. A strange coalition of liberals and small-town conservatives convinced Congress to add a new measure to the omnibus spending bill President Bush signed a few days ago. The FCC had decided one company can own 45 percent of the nation's TV market. The bill reduces that to 39 percent -- still more than before.
Even GOP lawmakers such as Sens. Trent Lott of Mississippi and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas have wondered aloud whether corporate domination is good for the airwaves. They've hinted it may be time to look at the "fairness doctrine," too. Conservative Republican publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard quickly savaged them as disloyal.
Airwaves belong to the public Is "fairness" the answer? The big media and their political allies like to paint the question as a First Amendment issue. Certainly we should be cautious about giving the government too much power to supervise programming. But the airwaves, unlike a newspaper's printing press, aren't private property; they belong to the people.
The current "owners" of our AM dial are there only because government chose them to hold its licenses. Asking them to make a commitment to open discussion doesn't seem like too much in exchange for what is essentially a license to print money.
And the FCC and its defenders aren't First Amendment values poster children. Powell and his crew have mounted an unprecedented crusade against "indecent" programming, meaning sexually suggestive shows.
Just last week, for example, the commission fined Clear Channel a record $755,000 for playing a segment called "Bubba the Love Sponge" on some of its Florida outlets. I'm sure the "Sponge" number was distasteful -- but this is censorship in aid of specific cultural values. If sex isn't protected, it's hard to see why Michael Savage should get a free pass.
The struggle to restore a semblance of fairness will be a hard one. The Republican right knows talk radio functions as its Air Force; it won't give up the partisan advantage easily. And there is room for debate about what shape a new fairness doctrine should take.
Certainly the airwaves should have room for Rush Limbaugh. True, he is a windbag and a hypocrite. (If you doubt that Rush is also, as Al Franken says, "a big, fat liar," consider that when the Senate voted on the media-ownership rules earlier this year, Rush generated thousands of calls to lawmakers' offices by telling his "dittoheads" the vote would actually restore the fairness doctrine and silence him.) Rush also is a giant talent.
But would it be so terrible if every now and then his targets got to answer him on the air? Would radio really be destroyed if station owners had to respect the diverse voices of their local communities? As a hard-core First Amendment junkie, I don't think opening the airwaves to more voices would do harm to freedom of speech.
Sure, there's room on the air for WWE-style entertainment. Most of us enjoy it. But not all the time. Every once in a while, even AM radio ought to broadcast a match that isn't fixed.
Garret Epps teaches First Amendment Law at the University of Oregon Law School. Sir, have you looked at the document? The 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution reads as follows... Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Obviously mr. epps is either an imbecile, or he's really an expert at how to destroy the 1st Amendment, and the Constitution freedoms it anchors.
Atos
Dear Mr. Positive:ML/NJYour Oregonian article was forwarded to me.
You should know that I might consider myself a part of "the dittohead caucus." Remember you said:,
"the dittohead caucus," after Limbaugh's name for the listeners who echo his every pronouncement.You might know if you actually listened that your definition is not the one that Rush created, or most of us think of when we use it. It means, "I'm really glad your show exists and someone is finally giving voice to so many things I know to be true."It does NOT mean that we always agree with Rush. E.g.: I think he is an economic and scientific ignoramus (even when I agree with him). I don't agree with him the SUVs are every driver's right. He was wrong about TWA 800. I could go on.
But you shouldn't, until you understand what you are writing about. It would be so much more becoming to your lofty status.
Reading today’s scholarship on freedom of speech, one would hardly guess that government control over the content of speech through licensing requirements – supposedly outlawed long ago – is alive and well. The amazing ignorance with which this matter is usually discussed today may be seen in the following quote from legal scholar Benno Schmidt, the former president of Yale:
The First Amendment tolerates virtually no prior restraints [on speech or the press]. This doctrine is one of the central principles of our law of freedom of the press. . . . [T]he doctrine is presumably an absolute bar to any wholesale system of administrative licensing or censorship of the press, which is the most repellent form of government suppression of expression. . . .”
Schmidt fails to notice that every radio, television, and cable broadcaster in America is subject to a “wholesale system of administrative licensing,” i.e., the “most repellent form of government suppression of expression.”
Broadcasters have to obtain a license from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations receive licenses only when the FCC judges it to be “in the public interest, convenience, or necessity.” Licenses are granted for a limited period, and the FCC may choose not to renew. The FCC has never defined what the “public interest” means. In the past, it preferred a case-by-case approach, which has been called “regulation by raised eyebrow.”
During most of its history, the FCC consistently favored broadcasters who shared the views of government officials, and disfavored broadcasters who did not.
The first instance of serious and pervasive political censorship was initiated by Franklin Roosevelt’s FCC in the 1930s. The Yankee Radio network in New England frequently editorialized against Roosevelt. The FCC asked Yankee to provide details about its programming. Sensing the drift, Yankee immediately stopped broadcasting editorials in 1938. In order to drive its point home, the FCC found Yankee deficient at license renewal time. They announced,
Radio can serve as an instrument of democracy only when devoted to the communication of information and exchange of ideas fairly and objectively presented. . . . It cannot be devoted to the support of principles he [the broadcaster] happens to regard most favorably. . . .
In other words, if you want your broadcasting license renewed, stop criticizing Roosevelt.
The FCC soon afterwards made exclusion of “partisan” content a requirement for all broadcasters. It was understood, of course, that radio stations would continue to carry such supposedly “nonpartisan” fare as presidential speeches and “fireside chats” attacking Republicans and calling for expansions of the New Deal. In the name of “democracy,” “fairness” and “objectivity,” the FCC would no longer permit stations to engage in sustained criticism of Roosevelt’s speeches and programs.
In 1949, the FCC announced its Fairness Doctrine. Broadcasters were required “to provide coverage of vitally important controversial issues . . . and . . . a reasonable opportunity for the presentation of contrasting viewpoints on such issues.” In practice, the Fairness Doctrine only worked in one direction: against conservatives.
During the Republican Eisenhower years, the FCC paid little attention to broadcasting content, and a number of conservative radio stations emerged. After John Kennedy was elected in 1960, his administration went on the offensive against them. Kennedy’s Assistant Secretary of Commerce, Bill Ruder, later admitted, “Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue.”
This strategy was highly successful. Hundreds of radio stations cancelled conservative shows that they had been broadcasting. The FCC revoked the license of one radio station, WXUR of Media, Pennsylvania, a tiny conservative Christian broadcaster. When WXUR appealed to the courts, one dissenting judge noted “that the public has lost access to information and ideas . . . as a result of this doctrinal sledge-hammer [i.e., the Fairness Doctrine].” The Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. It saw no free speech violation in the government shutdown of a radio station for broadcasting conservative ideas.
The government also revoked the license of a television station in Jackson, Mississippi. WLTB was unapologetically and openly opposed to federal civil rights policies at the time, and would introduce NBC’s news reports with this warning: “What you are about to see is an example of biased, managed, Northern news. Be sure to stay tuned at 7:25 to hear your local newscast.” The D.C. Circuit Court ordered the FCC to revoke WLTB’s license. In an outrageous opinion authored by Warren Burger, who was shortly afterward appointed by President Nixon as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Circuit Court demanded in indignant tones that WLTB’s owner be silenced: “After nearly five decades of operation, the broadcast industry does not seem to have grasped the simple fact that a broadcast license is a public trust subject to termination for breach of duty.” Again, the Supreme Court refused to hear the station’s appeal.
Conservatives tried to use the Fairness Doctrine as well, but failed in every case. Liberal author Fred Friendly writes, “After virtually every controversial program [on the major TV networks] – ‘Harvest of Shame,’ . . . ‘Hunger in America’ [1960s programs advocating liberal anti-poverty policies] – fairness complaints were filed, and the FCC rejected them all. As FCC general counsel Henry Geller explained, ‘We just weren’t going to get trapped into determining journalistic judgments. . . .’” In other words, when liberals were on the air, the FCC called it journalism. When conservatives were on the air, the FCC called it partisan and political, and insisted that the liberal point of view be given equal time.
In the 1980s, President Reagan appointed a majority to the Federal Communications Commission, and it abolished the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. The effect was dramatic. Immediately, conservative talk radio blossomed. Rush Limbaugh was the biggest winner. He came along at just the moment when, for the first time since the 1950s, stations could be confident that conservative broadcasting would no longer lead to license renewal problems or Fairness Doctrine complaints and litigation.
The end of the Fairness Doctrine was a tremendous victory for the First Amendment. But it does not mean that broadcast media are now free. The authority of the FCC over broadcasters remains in place. It can be brought back with the full partisan force of the Roosevelt and Kennedy administrations as soon as one party gets control over all three branches of the federal government and chooses to do so.
If Mr. Epps does not think the liberal viewpoint is getting out, then he should review the journalistic content of the newspaper that he is publishing this in. The Oregonian is one of the worst offending leftward-tilting piece of trash newspapers I have ever read. However, the "fairness doctrine" would not apply to printed news media, would it Mr. Epps?
I frankly wish there was a commercially viable liberal talk-radio show that could intelligently and legitimately challenge my viewpoint. However, someone who believes in an intellectually and morally bankrupt philosophy, such as liberalism, could not put together such a show.
See post 46 for proof of how "compelled fairness" works when it's instituted. It means all conservative ideas are suppressed.
Also keep in mind that there are not merely two sides to any given argument. A radio discussion between a Green Party candidate and a Libertarian is not going result in the same ideas being put forth as a radio discussion between a member of the DLC and and a Republican. So where do we draw the line? Whose ideas are worth how much coverage?
In the Red Lion case, forty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled on grounds of "scarcity of outlets" that freedom of speech did NOT apply as fully to broadcast media as to print media. Based on that, the FCC was allowed, but not compelled, to establish the "Fairness Doctrine" either under its rule-making abilities or because Congress said so in the law itself.
In the intervening 40 years, the number of daily newspapers in the US has declined. The number of "daily" TV stations has increased by a factor of about 50 times. So, whenever the Supreme Court can be dragged, kicking and screaming, to revisit the subject, Red Lion will probably be reversed.
As for your argument that the broadcasters use "public airwaves" and therefore there must be a "fairness doctrine" has never carried much water in the Supreme Court.
Bottom line, your agrument is hanging by a thin theoretical thread, and is dead as long as Congress disagrees, which it currently does. Trust me, I know these things. I practice First Amendment law in the Supreme Court, and often win my cases.
Congressman Billybob
Yeah, Rush (and others) blows hot air often, but he's nearly always on the right side of the issue.
Note that in the very first paragraph, the author engages in precisely the sort of name-calling he so bemoans in the rest of the article.
An article which, unsurprisingly, is filled with distortions and outright lies. (Whether this is due to the author's ignorance or is intentional on his part, I cannot say.)
Since the 1980s, Republican administrations have been manipulating media law to protect an important part of their attack machine.
A distortion, and I'm being kind in merely calling it that. The only regulation that was ever changed that had any relevance to actual content was the abandonment of the Fairness Doctrine. And even then, under the Evil Reagan FCC, it was only removed after the SCOTUS issued a ruling in the early 1980s saying, "Well, the Doctrine is still constitutional, but only because we still live in a country where the majority of the public can only get its information from print media and broadcast TV and radio. If and when the number of information dissemination options starts to grow, we will overturn it." So once cable TV and the early days of online world came along, the FCC saw the writing on the wall and killed the FD before the Supreme Court did it for them. (And, of course, the number of media options has exploded since the 1980s, so a reconstituted FD would almost certainly fail a Court challenge today, and the public would fight back like hell if it didn't. )
As for the rest of his argument, namely that "The Republicans" are allowing Clear Channel to buy up all the stations and force them to air all-conservative programming: CC only came along as a major force a number of years after talk radio started to explode. Most of the popular talk shows on the air today were already popular, and already being carried in most markets, long before CC bought so many of the stations on which they were carried. Does it really matter whether or not CC or a mom-and-pop operation owns your local talk station when it's going to air Limbaugh and Sean Hannity every day anyway?
Today the largest -- Clear Channel, the free-speech champions who banned John Lennon's "Imagine" and more than 100 other songs after Sept. 11 -- owns more than 1,200.
A distortion. Yes, Clear Channel owns ~1200 stations. There are roughly 12,000 stations in the United States, and more are going on the air every day. So CC controls about 10 percent of the market. That's some stranglehold.
And, again, the content has remained pretty much the same anyway. It wouldn't matter if no one company was allowed to own more than 5 radio stations in the entire country. Every market would still have at least one talk radio station that aired mostly conservative programming, BECAUSE IT GETS RATINGS AND MAKES MONEY. Period.
Clear Channel, the free-speech champions who banned John Lennon's "Imagine" and more than 100 other songs after Sept. 11...
This is an urban legend.. In other words, it is a lie.
But fairness no longer mattered on talk radio. Until 1987, the Federal Communications Commission had enforced something called the "fairness doctrine," which required broadcasters to provide opposing viewpoints on controversial issues.
Lie. See my post 46 in this thread for an explanation of how the Fairness Doctrine was used by the government to DESTROY the vast majority of conservative radio programming. Not "demand equal time," DESTROY. And I mean almost ALL of it. If you put conservative opinions on your radio station, the government didn't order you to provide an equal amount of time for liberal opinions; they REVOKED YOUR LICENSE AND TOOK YOUR STATION OFF THE AIR FOREVER. Except in the most hardcore conservative areas of the country - places so across-the-board right-wing that nobody would ever even ASK for equal time, it was impossible to broadcast conservative opinions without being harassed or threatened into submission.
In 1980, there were 75 stations in the country devoted to "news-talk." Today, there are more than 1,300.
I don't know if the numbers are exactly correct, but the gist is of course true. However, what these numbers actually show is proof that the Fairness Doctrine did not encourage reasoned discourse; it instead ensured there was little discourse at all. Stations didn't have to fear lawsuits and government harassment as long as they just played records and the occasional apolitical talk show. (And liberally-biased news, of course.)
As for the rest of Epps's argument, the "Clear Channel owns everything, thus..." line is BS.
These Republicans understood the political power of the medium. Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms began their political careers as broadcasters.
False in both cases. Reagan began his political career as president of the Screen Actors Guild. Helms began his as advisor to Sen. Willis Smith and as a newspaper columnist.
The FCC had decided one company can own 45 percent of the nation's TV market.
A lie. The new rule is that a company can own stations that reach 45 percent of the nation's households (since reduced to 39, as he says). They cannot own 39 percent of all TV stations in the country. There's a big, big difference. Also note that this is only a rise from the old rule which allowed a 35 percent reach. Four whole extra percent. And no company is allowed to buy up all the stations in one market, either.
(By the way, just how much "talk TV" is there out there? Are these new mega-TV-opolies canceling their network affiliations in droves and instituting conservative-slanted programming or something? Nope.)
The current "owners" of our AM dial are there only because government chose them to hold its licenses.
False. The owners (or former owners of stations held by different owners today) applied for licenses and were granted them. And those licenses are not forever. Every single one of them has to be renewed every few years. The government did not "choose" the companies.
And the FCC and its defenders aren't First Amendment values poster children. Powell and his crew have mounted an unprecedented crusade against "indecent" programming, meaning sexually suggestive shows.
Distortion. The FCC has always issued fines to stations that violate the indecency rules, regardless of what party has controlled the White House or Congress at any given time. If anything, broadcast outlets have more freedom today than ever. Remember how "the f-word" was deemed, by the Bush-Powell FCC, to be okay to be aired until the public outcry forced them to reconsider the ruling? The Clinton FCC sure never allowed that.
Just last week, for example, the commission fined Clear Channel a record $755,000 for playing a segment called "Bubba the Love Sponge" on some of its Florida outlets.
Bzzzzt. "Bubba the Love Sponge" is not a segment, it is a PERSON. That's the guy's radio name. He calls himself "Bubba the Love Sponge". A minor error, but a perfect example of how slapdash the author has been with his "facts" throughout this piece. He's just taken everything he's heard from all his liberal friends and media outlets (you know, the ones they "don't have") and thrown them all together into a quickie column with making even the slightest attempt to verify any of them.
And we have fairness from ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBC?
I didn't think so.
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