Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Liberal constraints on private power?: reflections on the origins and rationale of access regulation
- 2 Liberalism and free speech
- 3 Foundations and limits of freedom of the press
- 4 Why the state?
- 5 Practices of toleration
- 6 Access in a post–social responsibility age
- 7 Who decides?
- 8 Four criticisms of press ethics
- 9 Political communication systems and democratic values
- 10 Mass communications policy: where we are and where we should be going
- 11 Content regulation reconsidered
- 12 The rationale of public regulation of the media
- 13 The role of a free press in strengthening democracy
- Index
12 - The rationale of public regulation of the media
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Liberal constraints on private power?: reflections on the origins and rationale of access regulation
- 2 Liberalism and free speech
- 3 Foundations and limits of freedom of the press
- 4 Why the state?
- 5 Practices of toleration
- 6 Access in a post–social responsibility age
- 7 Who decides?
- 8 Four criticisms of press ethics
- 9 Political communication systems and democratic values
- 10 Mass communications policy: where we are and where we should be going
- 11 Content regulation reconsidered
- 12 The rationale of public regulation of the media
- 13 The role of a free press in strengthening democracy
- Index
Summary
Public regulation of the broadcast media is now under strong attack and may even be fighting for its life. Opposition to regulation has been gaining strength gradually over the last decade, but it has now gathered such force that even the very federal agency that developed the principal regulations at issue and has served as overseer of the regulatory system for the past half century is openly calling for a return to the free market system as the exclusive mechanism for ensuring a rich marketplace of ideas. That politics makes strange bedfellows has long been appreciated, but the alliance of political ideologies that stands behind this opposition to public regulation gives new life to that adage. The Federal Communications Commission's 1985 “Report on the General Fairness Doctrine Obligations of Broadcast Licensees,” which issues the call for the abandonment of the fairness doctrine, draws heavily on the writings and opinions of Justice William O. Douglas.
It is, indeed, the fairness doctrine that is now the primary battleground for the war being waged over public regulation of the media. Generally, three arguments are leveled against the doctrine. First, it is claimed that the doctrine chills more speech than it fosters. Because the doctrine imposes a variety of costs on broadcasters – such as the cost of covering opposing viewpoints at the broadcaster's own expense and the costs of resisting fairness doctrine complaints – broadcasters often choose not to cover public issues at all, thus reducing instead of expanding the amount of discussion of public issues on television and radio.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Democracy and the Mass MediaA Collection of Essays, pp. 355 - 367Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990
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