You Couldn't Have a FOX News under the Fairness Doctrine

My own:

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: “This devolution of the American Press began in 1988, when Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine. We had a rule in this country that was passed in 1928 at the dawn of commercial radio… and that rule said that the airwaves belong to the public. The broadcasts can be licensed to use them, but only with the proviso that they use them to promote the public interest and to advance American democracy.”

“There were three requirements under the Fairness Doctrine — number one; they had to air issues of public import. That’s why there’s a 6 o’clock news hour on the networks. Not because they wanted it — they wanted entertainment put in that slot. The news departments traditionally were money losers. So, they were forced to do that as part of the Fairness Doctrine, and that’s why the radio stations periodically update you on the news, as part of the original requirement under the Fairness Doctrine that they’re still doing as a tradition.”

“Number two; if they were going to give ‘opinion,’ they had to tell both sides. You couldn’t have had a FOX News under the Fairness Doctrine. You couldn’t have had a Rush Limbaugh. You could have had Rush 4 hours a day, but then they would have had to put somebody else on, a counter-availing voice, for the next 4 hours. You couldn’t have Rush and his dittoheads 24 hours a day on the same station. Rush Limbaugh got started in 1988, the year that Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine.”

“Number three; they had to avoid corporate consolidation. Congress wanted to make sure that people in Kansas could get crop reports, that people in North Dakota could get tornado warnings, that people in the South could get country music, that you wouldn’t have programming and content dictated by a couple of corporate epicenters in remote areas of the country… and that part of the Fairness Doctrine, incidentally, strengthened in 1945, FORTIFIED, BECAUSE THEY SAW (the Congress saw) WHAT HITLER HAD DONE IN EUROPE, and other fascist governments had done, where they had allowed these corporate consolidations, and they had given these contracts and special favors to the media, and they had co-opted the media and got them on their side. And so anyone who criticized them was either muzzled or was branded as unpatriotic. And they said (in 1945) that we can’t let this happen in our country, so they strengthened that part of the Fairness Doctrine.”

To see the rest, watch Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., “How the News Media Fails Us,” on brasschecktv or YouTube