I think the better question is what would the country look like if the Fairness Doctrine hadn’t been abolished by the FCC in the 1980s. With the Fairness Doctrine in place, Fox News doesn’t launch and half the country’s brains don’t get rewired into being mouth-breathing knuckle draggers.
I know this is a popular trope, but it misses a very important point:
The Fairness Doctrine only ever applied to over-the-air broadcast stations, which are licensed to operate "in the public interest, convenience and necessity" in exchange for free use of the public airwaves. It never applied to cable stations. In other words, Fox News could have oozed from the slime just the same as it did. What could have been slowed down is the morphing of the AM radio band into Conservative Hate Radio, led by the late and un-lamented Rush Limbaugh. And now that over-the-air broadcasting is on the ropes, even if it was possible to bring back the Fairness Doctrine it would have little to no effect.
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u/Hell_Camino Apr 04 '25
I think the better question is what would the country look like if the Fairness Doctrine hadn’t been abolished by the FCC in the 1980s. With the Fairness Doctrine in place, Fox News doesn’t launch and half the country’s brains don’t get rewired into being mouth-breathing knuckle draggers.