FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Meredith Attwell Baker kicked off the 2010 Congressional Internet Caucus “State of the Net” conference this afternoon with two brief keynote addresses.  Below I’ve summarized the highlights here from my live Tweeting at the event (@AdamThierer):

Commissioner Copps

• “every great challenge this country faces… has a broadband component at its core if it’s going to be successfully dealt with” • Broadband is the great enabler; Private sector will lead, but national objectives and visionary public policy also have to be at core • “sins of recent public policy past” got in way of us doing things that needed to get done • Worries about wider new “divides between us”; have opportunity to close them • Praises Hillary Clinton’s Internet freedom speech from last week • Hard to conceptualize the changes that next 5-10 years hold in light of the developments of past 5-10 • Worried about open Internet; “unreasonable discrimination”… doesn’t want to allow “too much latitude” to private operators… says it is threat to “openness” (he never really defines the term, however) • Passionate views on both sides of Net neutrality debate • Need big pipes and more spectrum to grow capacity (I certainly agree on that one! But Net neutrality isn’t going to help us much in that regard) • He fears consolidation • Says minority and women voices are not getting heard online (he says we should measure it by audience measurements & ad $$ but doesn’t bothering mentioning how much wider the gap was in the old mass media era when none of those voices could get heard at all) • How do we assure what we’re doing “actually works for democracy” and the “public interest” (but never defines what that means) • Says media is failing us today; victims are public; investigative journalism is dying (but never discusses how current FCC regulation affects the equation) • cites Founders (Jefferson, Madison) re importance of media … and then favorably cites McChesney & Nichols new book (ugh, someone needs to tell Commissioner Copps that McChesney is a neo-Marxist who wants to destroy all private media providers!)

Commissioner Baker • 69,000 comments on the record and 30+ workshops for National Broadband Plan • We need to repurpose universal service funds for broadband era • Spectrum policy needs rethinking, need to make better use and get more to market • Need comprehensive inventory and database; secondary markets are vital • Net neutrality proceeding… not clear there is a systematic failure that warrants regulation • NN regs could distort markets; could investment and innovation on Net • Broadband deployed to about 90% of households • No clear definition of Net neutrality; no shared concept; people taking past each other • Many recognize that quality of service is important and network management is necessary • Transparency could obviate the need for Net Neutrality regulations • Unclear where FCC gets its jurisdiction; should wait for Court decision in Comcast case • The FCC’s “light touch” has worked and we shouldn’t move away from it at this point (Amen!)

Bidding has begun on Comcast’s acquisition of a majority stake in NBC Universal.  No, not the bidding between GE and Comcast over the terms of the sale.   That was the comparatively easy part.  The real bidding is over at the FCC, as various interests work to get concessions and pledges from Comcast as a condition of FCC approval of the deal.   The jostling may put post-Thanksgiving Black Friday sales to shame.   Everything from more kid’s shows to broadband open access mandates are potentially on the table.

And that’s if the sale is approved by the FCC at all.   Groups such as Free Press called for its rejection as soon as it was announced.   Commissioner Michael Copps underscored the alpine nature of the approval process, stating bluntly that the deal “faces a very steep climb with me.”

Amidst the din, however, one question has been drowned out:  Why is the FCC involved in this at all?

It’s not an idle question.   The FCC does not, and never has, had general authority to approve or deny mergers in the media world.   In fact, major major deals — such as News Corporation’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal — didn’t involve the FCC at all (to Mr. Copps’ dismay.)

The FCC’s hook into such deals is in fact quite narrow:  the transfer of spectrum licenses.    And such transfers are a surprisingly small aspect of the deal.   None of the  key assets being purchased, Universal Studios, MSNBC or the other cable channels, or even the NBC network itself, is FCC-licensed (though some units may hold stray licenses for ancillary purposes).

In fact, the only significant licenses among NBC’ Universal’s assets may  be the broadcast licenses owned by NBC’s 10 owned-and-operated local stations.  And these are hardly the crown jewels of the transaction.    While Comcast may value the content provided by Universal or CNBC, why would it want broadcast stations?   After investing billions in a digital cable network, what earthly use does it have for towers and antennas?   It would be like American Airlines buying a stagecoach line to supplement its transportation network. 

Yet, based on this thin reed, the FCC has gained approval authority over the entire NBC Universal transaction.   It is of course, not the only agency that must approve — the the Federal Trade Commission or Department of Justice must also review it (which of the two is still to be decided).   These agencies are not pushovers, and their OK should be sufficient to answer any concerns about harm to competition from the deal.  

It would be bad enough if the FCC merely duplicated the FTC or DOJ reviews.   The additional delays alone could kill many deals — famously, it took the Commission 505 days to approve the merger of Sirius and XM Radio.   But the harm goes beyond that.   Unlike the antitrust authorities, who base their review upon established law, the FCC uses a free-roaming and undefined “public interest” test.   As a result, the FCC’s reviews are largely unconstrained, and approval or rejection can be based upon virtually any factor that three of five commissioners find to be plausible.   The result is a highly unpredictable, and political, process in which anybody can propose their own wish list of conditions and rationales.

It makes one wonder why Comcast didn’t just say “no thank you” to the local broadcast albatrosses.   But the bigger problem is with the law that gives the FCC such unneccessary and unconstrained power in the first place.   Its unlikely for the moment, however, that Congress will be inclined to take away that power, or that the FCC will not use it.   So it looks like the bidding will continue.

Stay tuned.

Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps declared yesterday in a speech celebrating the 75th anniversary of the FCC and the Communications Act, that it was time to think “more rigorously” about the impact of the migration of communications to the Internet and “how to ensure that as the Internet becomes our primary vehicle for communicating with one another, it protects the public interest and informs the civic dialogue that America depends on.”

“In the beginning was the Word,” said John Something-or-other.  Well, the word here is “public interest” and—make no mistake about it—this is the beginning of a wholesale attempt to impose the regulatory regime of the broadcast era onto the Internet.

As Adam Thierer has pointed out, the “public interest” is really no standard at all—just so much hot air.

Speaking of transparency…  My colleague Barbara Esbin has a great piece on the PFF blog about changes being implemented by Acting Chairman Copps to make the agency less dysfunctional and more open to the public:

the new Acting Chairman has confirmed what FCC insiders, outside practitioners, and the House staff investigating former Chairman Kevin Martin’s management practices have long known: Commission staffers were not permitted to freely communicate either with one another, or with the other Commissioners. The liberation of the staff, together with changes concerning how the Bureaus and Offices work with each other and how the Commission communications with the public, certainly falls under the category of “change we can believe in…” Acting Chairman Copps has outlined other important changes in how the FCC does business, including establishing a calendar for regular open meetings in advance, and updating the FCC’s website to be more user-friendly, particularly its Digital TV Transition pages. These and other changes and commitments together constitute an extremely promising start for Acting Chairman Copps, and his commitment to transparency and order bode very well for the FCC, its staff, the companies the agency regulates, and the American public.

Great news.  Let’s hope the FCC also gets to work soon on updating its painfully antique website, with its proliferation of databases.

In a City Journal article earlier this year, I wondered “how long some local papers have left when they are barred from restructuring their businesses or partnering with other local media operators to stem the bleeding and reinvent their business models.”  I was responding to the Senate’s smack-down of a half-hearted reform effort that FCC chairman Kevin Martin pushed through in November 2007, which proposed relaxing the FCC’s newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule. That rule, unrevised since going into effect in 1975, prohibits a newspaper operator from also owning a radio or television station in the same media market. However, waivers were granted to grandfather in some combined newspaper and broadcast operations that had existed long before the ban took effect. Martin’s proposal was to simply tweak the rule to permit similar combinations in just the nation’s 20 largest media markets.

Martin’s limited liberalization proposal, however, led to howls of disapproval from FCC democrats like Michael Copps and many folks on both side of the aisle in Congress. Supposedly, this was nothing more than a “giveaway” to the newspaper industry, which critics said was doing just fine.  It really makes you wonder if any of those critics even both reading the news about newspapers today.

As I have documented here on many occasions, as well as in my big Media Metrics report, the newspaper industry is in huge trouble with every financial variable of importance rapidly heading south. Alan Mutter does a good job here of summarizing “the secular forces dragging down newspapers: Declining readership, shrinking advertising, high fixed costs and growing online competition that makes it increasingly difficult to charge the premium ad rates that were possible prior to the Internet.”  As a result of these forces, everyday brings another headline like this one today in the New York Times: “The Star-Ledger of Newark Plans 40% Cut,” or this one in the Wall Street Journal: “Some Newspapers Shed Unprofitable Readers.”  The numbers are just miserable, and they just get worse and worse.

Now, you might say, “So what? That’s creative destruction at work.” Indeed it is, and it’s an entirely natural and healthy marketplace phenomenon. The problem, however, is that there’s still a lot of regulating going on.  Specifically, papers remain bound by red tape in the form of artificial market ownership restrictions that disallow the creation of new business models that might save them what appears to be their possible extinction.

I am not at all confident that consolidation or creative ownership arrangements will actually throw them much of a lifeline — it’s probably too little, too late, now that so many readers and advertisers have flocked to the Net and other media platforms.   Nonetheless, they should not be bound by archaic media ownership rules put on the books a quarter century ago in an era of less competition and consumer choice.  Let papers restructure and compete.  It may be their only chance at survival.

Update: Just a few minutes after posting this I came across this NYT article documenting the latest quarterly newspaper circulation numbers and how the numbers just keep getting worse. Sales in the spring and summer fell almost 5 percent from the previous year according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Faithful readers will recall that, several months ago, I penned a 7-part “Media Metrics” series that took a hard look at the health of the media marketplace. Today, the Progress & Freedom Foundation is releasing a greatly expanded version of these essays that I have put together with my PFF colleague Grant Eskelsen. In this 100-page special report, “Media Metrics: The True State of the Modern Media Marketplace,” we begin by noting that heated debates about the state of the media marketplace continue to rage in Washington, and opinions seem to range from grim to outright apocalyptic. As we note on pg. 1:

Many people—including a large number of legislators and regulators—argue that America’s media marketplace is in a miserable state. Some claim that citizens lack choice in media outlets and that options are just as scarce as ever. Others believe that media “localism” is dead or that many groups or niches go underserved because of a lack of true “diversity” in media. Others argue that the market is hopelessly over-concentrated in the hands of a few evil media barons who are hell-bent on force-feeding us corporate propaganda. And still others say that the quality of news and entertainment in our society has deteriorated because of a combination of all of the above. It all sounds quite troubling, but is any of it true?

After taking an objective look at the true state of America’s media marketplace, we conclude that such pessimism is unwarranted. Indeed, a careful review of the facts reveals that—contrary to what those media critics suggest—we have more media choice, more media competition, and more media diversity than ever before. Indeed, to the extent there was ever a “golden age” of media in America, we are living in it today. The media sky has never been brighter and it is getting brighter with each passing year. We come to this conclusion by looking beyond the rhetoric that has for too long governed debates about media in American and providing a comprehensive look at a variety of media sectors such as audio, video, print and online media. Our survey contains over 70 charts and exhibits illustrating facts and figures on such diverse topics as advertising revenue, company market share, audience trends, and areas of growth in the sector. We will also aim to periodically updated the report to reflect the rapidly evolving media industry.

We encourage readers to provider input about how to improve and expand the report going forward in an attempt to refine and improve the metrics. And we look forward to future debates on this subject–debates that we hope will be guided by facts instead of fanaticism and by evidence instead of emotion. The hyperbolic rhetoric, shameless fear-mongering, and unsubstantiated claims that have driven policy debates in recent years have no foundation in reality and should be rejected as the debate over media policy continues.

This and future installments of “Media Metrics: The True State of the Modern Media Marketplace” will be available on the PFF website at www.pff.org/mediametrics. I have also embedded the entire document below as a Scribd file so that those interested in the topic can peruse the report immediately.

In Part 1 of this series, I argued that the Democratic Party seems to be gradually abandoning whatever claim it once had to being the party of the First Amendment. Regrettably, examples of Democrats selling out the First Amendment are becoming more prevalent and the few champions of freedom of speech and expression left in the party are getting more difficult to find.

For example, in my previous essay, I documented how Democratic politicians were leading the charge to reinstitute the so-called Fairness Doctrine. In today’s entry I will discuss how Democrats are now working hand-in-hand with Republicans to orchestrate what would constitute the most significant expansion of content regulation in decades–the regulation of “excessive violence” on television.

Last week, L.A. Times technology and media reporter Jim Puzzanghera wrote a detailed piece about how “Washington May Take Up TV Violence” in coming months. In his article he noted that:

With a fresh Congress sworn in and a major (FCC) report expected soon on TV gore, pressure is likely to mount to more aggressively stem graphic and gratuitous scenes in shows. One proposal would give regulators powers similar to those they have now to punish indecency and coarse language over the airwaves. In addition, TV violence is shaping up as a 2008 presidential campaign issue with some of the leading potential candidates already at the forefront of the issue. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has long talked about the effect of gory TV shows and video games on children. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) favors allowing families to buy cable channels separately so they can spurn objectionable shows. Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) also have bemoaned TV violence.

Puzzanghera notes that, beyond Democratic presidential front-runners Clinton and Obama, other congressional Democrats and regulators at the FCC have jumped on the regulatory bandwagon. At the FCC, Democratic Commissioner Michael J. Copps, recently argued that, “In the absence of action from the industry [to address violence on television], I think we need to be looking at all our options.” He means regulatory options, of course. And, over in Congress, Puzzanghera reminds us that in 2004, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), the new head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was one of 39 House members signing a letter to the FCC asking the agency to study violence on television and how it might be restricted. With Dingell now running the committee in which most communications / media legislation originates, this could mean that regulation is on the way.

Puzzanghera also highlighted one particularly important legislative proposal that I have written quite a bit about in recent years–Senator John D. Rockefeller’s (D-W.Va) “Indecent and Gratuitous and Excessively Violent Programming Control Act.” (S. 616 in the last Congress).

As I noted in my detailed analysis of the bill in April of 2005: “If passed, S. 616 would represent the most significant congressional effort to regulate speech since the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996.” That’s because the measure would significantly expand the penalties that traditional broadcast outlets face for indecency violations, and then apply those penalties to cable and satellite. More importantly, in the process, the measure also proposes to let FCC regulators embark on a grand new experiment in regulating “excessively violent” video programming, not just on broadcast television, but also on subscription-based cable and satellite TV.

Puzzanghera notes that Rockefeller plans on reintroducing the measure this session and “With his own party now in the majority, Rockefeller may get hearings and a vote, further propelling the issue.” Sen. Rockefeller tells Puzzanghera that “Obviously, the preference would be to have the industry police itself when it comes to excessive violence. However, if they can’t or won’t do it, then Congress must step in and address this growing societal problem,” Rockefeller said. “One of the most basic steps we can take is to give the FCC authority to regulate violence, and if necessary, the courts will then work out the constitutional issues on a case-by-case basis… Just sitting on our hands and doing nothing to protect children is not an option.”

But before Rockefeller and other Democrats embark on a new “it’s-all-for-the-children” crusade to rid the world of media violence, hopefully they will be willing to consider the mixed “scientific” record on this front as well as the First Amendment complexities associated with defining and regulating “excessive violence” on television.

Academic Evidence, or Lack Thereof

The academic literature on the effects of media violence is not nearly as unified as you might think. In fact, as Dr. Edward Fink of the Department of Radio-TV-Film at California State University-Fullerton, notes, you can find endless reports to support just about any thesis you want to believe in:

Do you want to believe that TV violence is bad? Plenty of research there. One example comes from Dr. L. Rowell Huesmann and associates in the American Psychological Association journal Developmental Psychology, March 2003. They found that a high level of TV violence in childhood is a predictor of more-aggressive behavior in adulthood. Do you want to believe that TV violence is not necessarily bad? There’s plenty of stuff! One example comes from Dr. Ron Warren in the Broadcast Education Association’s Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, September 2003. He found that parental mediation of children’s TV viewing can both inhibit negative effects and enhance positive effects. Do you want to believe both? Once again, a bounty of data! One example is the comprehensive National Television Violence Study, published by the University of California, Santa Barbara. It concludes, “Television can be a powerful influence on social mores concerning violence and aggression, for good or for ill.” Do you want summaries of research? One example comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s fact sheet, Key Facts: TV Violence, Spring 2003, which outlines studies that present opposing viewpoints. If you prefer your summary from the government, have a look at Section II, “Violent Programming on Television,” of the 108th Congress’s Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004. All reasonable people, and yes, that includes most broadcasters and academicians, are sensitive to the potential–though not always the actual–harm of TV violence. This argument is not for TV violence; it is against the government’s exercising a right of censorship it does not have, not even in an election year.

Others have confirmed this academic schizophrenia and pointed out that, if anything, the “scientific” literature on this subject is ambiguous at best and perhaps even leans against the “causal hypothesis” that media violence leads to aggressive behavior. Psychologist Jonathan L. Freedman conducted the most comprehensive review of all the major literature on this subject for his book Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression: Assessing the Scientific Evidence. He concluded that “the results do not support the view that exposure to media violence causes children or anyone else to become aggressive or to commit crimes; nor does it support the idea that it causes people to be less sensitive to real violence.” Freedman collected and reviewed all the laboratory experiments, field experiments, longitudinal studies, and other studies employing mixed methodologies. He concluded that “not one type of research provided the kind of supportive evidence that is ordinarily required to support a hypothesis. Not one found 90 percent supportive or 80 percent supportive or 70 percent supportive or even 50 percent. In fact, regardless of the method used, fewer than half the studies found results that supported the [causal] hypothesis–sometimes considerably fewer than half.”

Finally, when we step outside the laboratory setting and examine real world trends in a search for a supposed casual link, we don’t find one there either. Consider, for example, the reversal of various social indicators over the past decade. According to FBI reports, juvenile murder, rape, robbery and assault are all down significantly over the past decade. Overall, aggregate violent crime by juveniles fell 43 percent from 1995-2004. And ongoing University of Michigan surveys have revealed that there are fewer murders at school today and fewer students report carrying weapons to school or anywhere else than at any point in the past decade. Meanwhile, the Center for Disease Control reports that although teenage suicide rates rose steadily until the mid-1990s but then began a dramatic decline which continues today. Again, while all these social trends were improving, media exposure–including exposure to violent fare–was increasing.

These results do not conclusively rule out a link between exposure to violence media content and violent acts in the real world. But they should at least call into question the “world-is-going-to-hell” sort of generalizations made by proponents of increased media regulation who all too often make casual inferences about the relationship between media exposure and various social indicators.

First Amendment Concerns

In light of what the data tells us, one would hope that policy makers would proceed cautiously when it comes to regulating “excessively violent” media content since serious First Amendment / artistic freedom issues are at stake here. And one would especially hope that Democrats would express some skepticism about the folly of such a regulatory pursuit.

After all, why should we let five unelected bureaucrats down at the FCC determine what constitutes “excessive violence.” Are the bloody and occasionally gruesome scenes in TV shows like CSI and ER excessive, or is that a reasonable depiction of forensic and medical science? Hockey games on prime-time TV feature lots of fights, blood, and lost teeth. Should they only be shown on tape delay after kids are in bed? For decades, cartoons have offered a buffet of violent acts, and slapstick comedy of The Three Stooges variety features a lot of unforgivingly violent moments presented as humor. How about gruesome war scenes from actual combat that any child can see on the nightly news? How about Saving Private Ryan or other war movies? What about the stabbing, poisoning, and other heinous acts of violence found in Shakespeare’s tragedies? And, for God’s sake (excuse the pun), what about all the violence in the Bible or Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ? Can any of it be shown on television or cable?

I could go on and on, but you get the point. This all comes down to a question of who calls the shots–parents or government–regarding what we are allowed to see and hear in a free society. This is not to say society must celebrate or even defend violence in the media; there are plenty of movies, shows and games that do contain what many parents would regard as a troubling amount of violent content for young children to witness. Parents need to act responsibly and exercise their private right–indeed, responsibility–to self-censor their children’s eyes and ears from certain things. It’s become increasingly evident, however, that a lot of parents have just gotten lazy about carrying out this difficult job. As the father of two young children, I can appreciate the hassle of constantly trying to monitor a child’s viewing and listening habits. But that’s no excuse for throwing in the towel and calling in the government to censor what the rest of the world has access to. That’s especially the case in light of the fact that, according to the Census Bureau, just one-third of U.S. households have children in them. For the two-thirds of adult-only homes, such a regulatory regime is blatantly unfair.

Again, I can cite plenty of Republicans, such as Sen. Brownback and others, who support calling in Uncle Sam to play the role of surrogate parent and police “excessively violent” media content. But the fact that so many Democrats are joining this crusade is frightening since, again, it makes you wonder if there are any free speech champions left in Washington.

(Up next in this series, I plan on talking about how Democrats are now employing similar tactics and rhetoric in their continuing effort to regulate “violent video games.” But that might get preempted by another piece on how Democrats are leading a variety new efforts to regulate Internet content. Unfortunately, there’s a lot to cover on this front these days.)

The idea that the Democrats are the party of free speech and the great protectors of our nation’s First Amendment heritage has always been a bit of a myth. In reality, when you study battles over freedom of speech and expression throughout American history you quickly come to realize that there are plenty of people in both parties would like to serve as the den mothers of the American citizenry. That being said, it is generally true that there have been a few more voices in the Democratic party willing to stand in opposition to governmental attempts to regulate speech in the past.

But I’m starting to wonder where even that handful of First Amendment champions has gone. Sadly, examples of Democrats selling out the First Amendment are becoming so common that I’ve decided to start a new series to highlight recent examples of Dems actually leading the charge for increased government regulation of speech and expression. I want to stress that I’m not trying to pick on Democrats here, rather, I’m just trying to point out that–unless there is a sea change in their approach to these issues by Democrats in coming months and years–both parties now appear to be singing out of the same pro-regulatory hymnal. This constitutes an ominous threat to the future of free expression.

Today, as part of this new series, I’ll be focusing on the Democratic-led efforts to revive the hideously misnamed “Fairness Doctrine.”

Nat Hentoff, a famous civil libertarian and one of our nation’s most tireless defenders of freedom of speech, penned an editorial for today’s Washington Times about congressional efforts to reinstitute the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which was in effect from 1949 until 1987 when the Reagan Administration FCC abolished it.

This effort, he notes, is being led by four Democrats–Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Reps. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Maurice Hinchey and Louise Slaughter, both of New York. Hentoff argues that these Democrats are under the illusion that by reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine they will be ensuring a greater diversity of views in the modern media marketplace. The reality, he argues, will be quite different. Hentoff was a radio broadcaster himself in the old days when the Fairness Doctrine was in effect and he notes that the threat of regulation had a severe chilling effect on free speech:

If a station failed to adhere to the FCC’s interpretation of this “fairness” doctrine, the broadcaster could lose his or her license. Accordingly, the government would be in charge of policing the First Amendment–precisely the opposite of what the founders clearly intended… During the 1940s and early 1950s, I was a full-time announcer and reporter on radio station WMEX in Boston. When official Fairness Doctrine letters came to the station’s owner from the FCC, the front office panicked. Lawyers had to be summoned; tapes of the accused broadcasts had to be examined with extreme, apprehensive care; voluminous responses to the bureaucrats at the FCC had to be prepared and sent. After a number of these indictments from Washington arrived at WMEX, the boss summoned all of us and commanded that from then on, we ourselves would engage in no controversy at the station. In newscasts, we could report controversies, but none of our opinions on public issues could be aired under the station’s auspices. For any other controversial statements by nonstaff members, opposing views had to be given equal time to reply. This happened at other stations as well.

The chilling effect associated with the Fairness Doctrine has been thoroughly documented by many media analysts and backs up what Hentoff experienced. Economists Thomas Hazlett and David Sosa provided the definitive economic treatment of the issue in their seminal 1997 study, “Was the Fairness Doctrine a ‘Chilling Effect’? Evidence from the Post-Deregulation Radio Market.” Hazlett and Sosa even created an economic model and crunched some numbers to illustrate the Doctrine’s negative impact. And the definitive legal critique of the Fairness Doctrine can be found in Chapter 9 of Thomas G. Krattenmaker and Lucas A. Powe, Jr.’s excellent treatise on Regulating Broadcast Programming. They document the many doctrinal inconsistencies associated with the Doctrine and highlight how the rule was used as a tool of political extortion by presidents from both political parties who wanted to stiffle dissent about their administrations.

But you don’t need to sweat the numbers or read lengthy legal tomes to realize just how much better off we are without the Fairness Doctrine on the books. Just look around at the amazingly vibrant and diverse media marketplace that exists today. The cornucopia of media choices is overflowing and there’s now something for every conceivable human interest under the sun.

But Hentoff notes that the Fairness Doctrine could be even more destructive to the vibrant exchange of viewpoints today because policy makers might try to impose it on these new media outlets as well:

Should this enemy of free expression become law again in coming years, it would very likely also extend to FCC bureaucrats’ taking charge of freedom of speech on cable television and the Internet and continuing new forms of expression–under the mandate of the FCC’s definers of “diversity of views.” There are liberals who preach the need for “diversity of views” in calling for the return of the Fairness Doctrine because they bridle at the high ratings of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and other conservative broadcasters who currently have more public favor than the comparatively fewer liberal commentators. But these liberals ignore why we have the First Amendment. As Oliver Wendell Holmes emphasized: “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought–not the thought that we hate.”

In closing, I should note there have been some Republicans in favor of reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine as well. But there are fewer today than in the past. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that conservative viewpoints are getting a lot more play on the airwaves these days. Thus, some of the former pro-regulatory conservatives probably no longer favor the Fairness Doctrine, feeling that it might chill their voices instead of their opponents.

(Next up in the series: How Democrats are leading the charge to regulate “excessive violence” on television).