FCC OPENS HEARINGS ON FAIRNESS

What’s fair is foul to conservative FCC Chairman Mark Fowler, who, on Thursday, carried on with his four-year effort to repeal radio and television’s fairness doctrine.

“I philosophically oppose content regulation of the electronic press,” Fowler said, as he and the four other members of the Federal Communications Commission opened two days of hearings here examining whether the controversial fairness regulation should be repealed.

The five-member panel heard from a battery of witnesses, most of whom supported efforts to do away with the FCC rule requiring radio and TV broadcasters to cover controversial issues of public importance and to provide reasonable opportunities for the presentation of contrasting viewpoints on the issues.

Printed media have no such mandated requirements, and the federally licensed electronic press has long contended that the FCC rule relegates it to second-class journalistic status.

An opponent of the fairness regulation long before he joined the FCC in 1981, Fowler said the commission’s hearings were an effort to develop “a record of how a democracy goes about to regulate the content of radio and television.”

Later, Fowler commented that “it might be that the common man is not as dimwitted or as stupid as proponents of the fairness doctrine implicitly believe.”

Despite the preponderance of support for repeal in the FCC’s hearing room, contrasting viewpoints were expressed. Some witnesses endorsed the rule and others argued that the FCC has no legal authority to change the three-decade-old regulation.

Among those arguing for repeal were noted First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams and retired CBS News commentator Eric Sevareid.

Arguing against repeal were, among others, former FCC Chairman Charles Ferris and Phyllis Schlafly, president of the Eagle Forum and a leader in the anti-abortion movement.

The hearings are part of a 10-month-old FCC inquiry on the fairness doctrine. The inquiry is part of Fowler’s overall reassessment of broadcast regulation in light of recent developments in First Amendment and communications law as well as technological changes that have overtaken print and electronic media since the doctrine was adopted.

For most TV viewers, the results of the fairness doctrine are most clearly seen in editorial replies by groups or individuals disagreeing with a stated position of a station. Advertising, especially as it relates to issues such as nuclear power, abortion or (in the 1960s) cigarettes, has been the target of fairness-doctrine complaints. Under the terms of the doctrine, stations often are required to make free or reduced-cost time available to persons wishing to discuss controversial issues.

“Freedom of expression is imperiled by the doctrine,” argued attorney Abrams, representing NBC. “The very existence of the fairness doctrine threatens our most deeply rooted notion of a free society.”

Joining in the chorus of speakers making similar claims, Sevareid argued that the fairness doctrine is a weapon pointed at American broadcast media.

“We are now in a position of a kind of legal chaos,” Sevareid said. He pointed to the increasing numbers of libel suits filed against the news media, as well as government efforts to withhold information from reporters and to punish persons who pass information along to the media.

“It’s the power of government that’s to be feared, not the press,” Sevareid said.

Significantly, the FCC’s examination of the need for a fairness regulation has come as some unlikely quarters of the public have attempted to expand and strengthen the regulation.

“Controversial issues make strange alliances,” quipped Commissioner James Quello, noting that representatives from the ends of the political spectrum tended to support the rule while the more centrist voices cried for repeal.

The most recent and noteworthy such effort was made by the Central Intelligence Agency in a dispute with ABC News. Last November, the agency filed a fairness complaint against the network (the first ever by a federal agency), charging ABC with deliberate distortion of the news. In January, the FCC staff dismissed the CIA complaint on procedural grounds, and the agency has yet to decide whether it will appeal that decision before next week’s deadline.

Ferris, a Democrat who chaired the FCC during the Administration of former President Jimmy Carter, defended the regulation as a public responsibility that broadcasters have in exchange for their lucrative licenses to operate. He said that the real inhibitions on radio and TV news had nothing to do with the FCC rule but are the natural results of a commercially supported broadcast system.

“The real chill isn’t regulatory; it’s economic,” Ferris said. “Advertisers don’t want controversy.”