Does the Fairness Doctrine Still Roar?

Campus Report ^ | May 1, 2008 | Bethany Stotts

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Does the Fairness Doctrine Still Roar?

by: Bethany Stotts, May 01, 2008

America continues to face obstacles to free speech touted in the name of the “public interest.” While well-intentioned by some, the encouragement of paternalistic government intervention in the broadcast of news and other media threatens the same repressive consequences as the now defunct Fairness Doctrine.

A recent conference, “Does the Red Lion Still Roar?,” debated the ongoing legacy and relevance of the 1969 Supreme Court case Red Lion Broadcasting Corporation v. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The unanimous court ruling upheld the FCC’s authority to impose “equal time” and “response to personal attack” provisions under the Fairness Doctrine...

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“We need not approve every aspect of the fairness doctrine to decide these cases, and we will not now pass upon the constitutionality of these regulations by envisioning the most extreme applications conceivable...but will deal with those problems if and when they arise,” concluded Justice Byron White for the court majority opinion...

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..Only one speaker condemned the other panelists for supporting increased government regulation and intrusion within the industry. “Would you rather have the government decide for you what they think is suitable, which was the language of Red Lion?,” asked Helgi C. Walker, a lawyer at Wiley Rein LLP. “The first amendment is about individual liberty and it’s not about government paternalism and I don’t know why [if] in so many contexts you would want to uphold individual liberty, in almost every other...context, and why here it can all be different,” she said.

She pointed out that Justice White had a history of deciding in favor of the state, essentially watering down the First Amendment. “Justice White was no promoter of the First Amendment....He was pretty much a statist...

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