Slate has an article with the title of "Bring Back the Golden Age of Broadcast Regulation"
https://slate.com/technology/2019/06/youtube-facebook-hate-speech-regulation-how.html
As is so common now, the article bases its contention that regulation of Facebook and Twitter and the rest of the social media gang should be based on decades old principles, now discarded, of radio regulation. Specifically it names the Fairness Doctrine. And it says that the doctrine required stations to take on controversial subjects of community interest. From there, it descends into sub-basement after sub-basement of inaccuracy.
"Fairness" did not obligate stations to discuss controversial topic. It required, though, some form of equal treatment of opposing viewpoints if requested and some form of balance if positions were discussed on subjects of great controversy.
However, most stations, particularly music based ones, did not take on controversial subjects. It was not required.
The writer, one April Glaser, claims that stations were obligated to broadcast a percentage of hours dedicated to such controversial subjects under the title of "Public Affairs". Wrong. While "Public Affairs" was a pretty much required area for license renewal promises and analysis of past performance, most stations took the approach of discussing subjects like local health care, infrastructure, education and the like as part of their "PA" commitment. Most of us stayed away from incendiary topics as we did not have the ability to deal with honest-to-goodness Fairness Doctrine compliance and did not want expensive FCC complaints to be made. So we did PA shows about the summer classes at local schools, or ran the "Mayor's Report" or something similar. During much of the 50's at a number of stations I took care of the PA commitment quite legally by doing the "Question Man" with one minute on the street comments about current events topics; add up the minutes and you got a couple of hours of PA each week!
The article also seems to indicate that a corollary to Fairness was the requirement to do community leader interviews. There was no connection; the interviews were part of a once-every-three-year process for license renewal where stations asked a batch of leaders what the big issues of the day were. We did not have to address any particular ones of them on air, just show that we knew about them.
And then the author says stations had to do surveys of the general public. As someone who did quite a few license renewals in the 70's period referred to, I must have missed the memo on that. It was not done in that period.
There is more, but what it shows is that poorly researched or poorly reported opinion pieces based on inaccurate reading of historical facts leads to "think pieces" that are just verbal garbage. And, of course, few readers will fact check and most will take such articles as being real and say, "yeah, we ought to bring that back".
Wrong.
https://slate.com/technology/2019/06/youtube-facebook-hate-speech-regulation-how.html
As is so common now, the article bases its contention that regulation of Facebook and Twitter and the rest of the social media gang should be based on decades old principles, now discarded, of radio regulation. Specifically it names the Fairness Doctrine. And it says that the doctrine required stations to take on controversial subjects of community interest. From there, it descends into sub-basement after sub-basement of inaccuracy.
"Fairness" did not obligate stations to discuss controversial topic. It required, though, some form of equal treatment of opposing viewpoints if requested and some form of balance if positions were discussed on subjects of great controversy.
However, most stations, particularly music based ones, did not take on controversial subjects. It was not required.
The writer, one April Glaser, claims that stations were obligated to broadcast a percentage of hours dedicated to such controversial subjects under the title of "Public Affairs". Wrong. While "Public Affairs" was a pretty much required area for license renewal promises and analysis of past performance, most stations took the approach of discussing subjects like local health care, infrastructure, education and the like as part of their "PA" commitment. Most of us stayed away from incendiary topics as we did not have the ability to deal with honest-to-goodness Fairness Doctrine compliance and did not want expensive FCC complaints to be made. So we did PA shows about the summer classes at local schools, or ran the "Mayor's Report" or something similar. During much of the 50's at a number of stations I took care of the PA commitment quite legally by doing the "Question Man" with one minute on the street comments about current events topics; add up the minutes and you got a couple of hours of PA each week!
The article also seems to indicate that a corollary to Fairness was the requirement to do community leader interviews. There was no connection; the interviews were part of a once-every-three-year process for license renewal where stations asked a batch of leaders what the big issues of the day were. We did not have to address any particular ones of them on air, just show that we knew about them.
And then the author says stations had to do surveys of the general public. As someone who did quite a few license renewals in the 70's period referred to, I must have missed the memo on that. It was not done in that period.
There is more, but what it shows is that poorly researched or poorly reported opinion pieces based on inaccurate reading of historical facts leads to "think pieces" that are just verbal garbage. And, of course, few readers will fact check and most will take such articles as being real and say, "yeah, we ought to bring that back".
Wrong.
