Talk radio: It's time for more than right-wing hot air (Fairness Doctrine Alert)

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.

"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.

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.

"The current "owners" of our AM dial are there only because government chose them to hold its licenses."

This is the scam that's used to enable the government to impose the "fairness doctrine." The same could be said of real estate, since there is only so much of it in locations which are suitable for publishing enterprses, title to the land originally came from the Federal government in most cases, and local government, through trespassing and other property protection laws, protects the ability of newspaper publishers to use their property to publish newspapers.

The various broadcasting bands, just like land, started out the property of the Federal government; there is a limited number of them, just as with desirable real property locations; and the government protects the exclusive right of each licensee to use its frequency, just as the government protects the right of a property owner peacably and lawfully to use his propety.

Hence, there is really no more logical justification for imposing content restrictions on broadcasting than there is for imposing them on print to internet publicatins.

But fairness no longer mattered on talk radio....That opened the door for Limbaugh and his imitators -- they could savage Democrats for days and hours on end, with no opportunity to reply.

What an ID-ten-T!!! And this man teaches 1st ammendment law? He never mentions the DOMINANT liberal newspapers, magazines and national TV networks. That domination is why conservative radio came into being.

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