Those are all good points, and not arguable as they represent your opinion.
The way I see this issue in the media is that we have a case where a President is pushing the powers of his power to issue edicts that sometimes brutally push existing laws and regulations. We are seeing an inordinate number of them going to the courts, where even the appointments of judges are being challenged.
As to the Fairness Doctrine, remember that what it did was keep most (please not I say "most" and not "all") medium and smaller market stations from doing any kind of controversial talk programming. Stations did not editorialize because they would have be subjected by all manner of Equal Time requests.
Remember, during much of the time that Fairness was in effect, we also had the NAB Code of Ethics. That code was considered to be collusion by legal counsel of the NAB and dropped. There was considerable pressure against the Fairness Doctrine based on it forcing radio and TV to do something no print medium was obligated to do which was to present all manner of opposing viewpoints; it was repealed more because it forced on electronic media something that "our" competitors in the print world did not have to deal with.
I think it might be advisable to explain why both the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time Rule (not discussed thus far but which does have some bearing on this matter) came to be in the first place. This is taken from both my memory of what I learned at Loyola Marymount University during the early 1980s and the first episode of the WNYC's "Divided Dial," from last year. And, of course, anybody is free to correct me.
Originally, there was no Equal Time rule or fairness doctrine for radio or television. It wasn't written in the Federal Radio Act of 1927; nor was it written in the Communications Act of 1934, the law that created the FCC.
In 1936 (if memory serves), a Catholic priest named Charles Coughlin purchased airtime on Detroit's WJR, Los Angeles' KMPC, and a third station (whose callsign I now forget). He used this airtime to attack President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his policies, especially his foreign policy towards Nazi Germany. Father Coughlin was very fond of the policies that Adolf Hitler was putting in place in Germany and called for many of those policies (including some against Jews) to be instituted in the U.S. Because he was on at one 50kW station (WJR) and because there were a lot fewer radio stations then than now, Father Coughlin got a lot of public support for his viewpoints, and, on radio at least, nobody was challenging him. It wasn't until the onset of U.S. involvement in World War II that Father Coughlin lost his show due to public opinion finally turning against him.
Per "The Divided Dial,", during WWII, the U.S. government didn't allow radio stations to broadcast any comments opposing U.S. participation in the war. Many critics, including the ACLU, were very concerned about this policy. (In fact, I believe the ACLU may have taken this to court, but I don't know the outcome.)
After the war, the Truman Administration agreed that not allowing radio stations to air commentaries on current controversial topics wasn't a good idea--it made for people less knowledgeable about the issues. In 1949, both the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time Rule were created by the FCC. Of these, the Equal Time Rule was the more controversial in that it required that if a radio station had a candidate for political office on the air, it had to offer the same air time at the same rates to any other political candidates running for that office. In contrast, the Fairness Doctrine was much looser; all it required was that if a radio station ran a commentary on a controversial issue, it must also let its listeners know what those on the other side of that issue were saying. Unlike the Equal Time Rule, there was no same time requirement nor same rate requirement--the opposing view could be buried late at night.
DavidEduardo is correct in the reasons President Reagan gave for removing the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time Rule in 1987. From my perspective, the results have been disastrous! We are mostly getting just one side of controversial issues and only the candidates with the most money can get their voices heard on most commercial radio outlets these days.
Public radio, including NPR, has (mostly) been the exception. Public radio stations, especially around election time, *will* do news features on (usually) all of the major candidates in statewide and big city races, regardless of party. And, in those states (like my current home state of Arizona), the local public radio outlets will extensively cover any initiatives that may be on the ballot.
I was alittle surprised by DavidEduardo's argument that stations in small towns didn't cover political issues because of the Fairness Doctrine. I very well remember being up at Camp Tatia [not sure of spelling] (a summer camp for blind children near Show Low, Arizona) in 1976 and listening to a *very* anti-Communist commentary by one Allen (or was it Alan) Stang. KVSL didn't air the other side of his commentaries that I ever heard, and I have no knowledge of any attempts to revoke the station's license for airing those commentaries without response. (As a then 13-year-old kid, I thought they were great--I later learned that they were mostly lies.)
My point in this long post was to try, as best I can, to explain how and why the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time Rule came about in the first place and to comment on what has happened since they were removed. Sadly, I don't think that either policy could stand up to our courts today, particularly U.S. Supreme Court scrutiny. For the U.S. experiment in democracy to continue, we need to have a well-informed citizenry and I fear that, especially with threatened Presidential actions against the CPB, that citizenry will become much less informed than it's ever been.
