Obama Against Fairness Doctrine

Obama Against Fairness Doctrine: "Obama Against Fairness Doctrine


An Obama spokesman said that President Obama is against the move to bring back the fairness doctrine. The fairness doctrine would force broadcasters to give viewers opposing viewpoints to controversial issues.

Many democratic senators have called for this policy to be reinstated. Radio talk show hosts generally are against it."

Obama is wrong on this one. The airwaves are a limited, government controlled resource. Unlike the Web where a true free market of ideas reigns, the air waves are controlled by a relatively few large conglomerates. Even if well intentioned, the profit motive MUST drive these conglomerates to sell whatever works, Right now, you sell more ads by folks who want to go to the Coliseum to see the lions eat the liberals than you do for the other side. The result is stultifying and certainly anything but democratic (small d).

A better answer would be to make a truly free market. Let me put it this way. The cost of this blog is mainly my time. I suspect the cost of Huffington or KOS is far below the cost of operation KOMO or KIRO. Given modern technology, the costs of transmitting radio should be pretty small, perhaps it could even be done by a publicly funded agency or a utility.

Assuming I am right, what other costs are there? Assuming some mix of music and talk, as we hear on most public stations, the cost of staffing such a station would be pretty small ... especially if we also provided some part of the time for volunteer groups. Hell, some folks ... eg restaurant associations .. would likely sponsor their own shows as an inexpensive form of advertising.

The real issue then would be supporting the creative side of broadcasting, the writers and speakers. Our current model, however, is top loaded. Most writers, like3 most actors, are paid very poorly while the few who reach prominence are paid absurdly large sums. An open broadcasting market would change that in one way. The open market would encourage .. like the web .. far more competition. Undoubtedly some stars would arise and they would end up with syndicated, remunerative jobs. Can anyone spell Larry King?

So, instead of the constitutionally dubious fairness approach, I suggest a free market approach. One way to do this is to minimize the value of federal licences and let the licensing be done locally under a law that requires a mix of programming, including local originated content. A similar law has worked in Canada to encourage the Canadian publishing industry. Here in Seattle I suspect that such a law would kill the far right talk shows and encourage a lot more creativity.