PANEL OK’S FAIRNESS DOCTRINE

Signaling its intent to start a new era of government regulation of the nation’s radio and television stations, the House telecommunications subcommittee approved a bill Thursday that would put the force of law behind the Federal Communications Commission’s Fairness Doctrine.

The measure that would codify the FCC regulation requiring broadcasters to cover controversial issues and to present opposing points of view must pass the full Energy and Commerce Committee before being presented to the House for a vote. The House bill was introduced by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the energy committee.

A similar measure passed the Senate, 59-31, April 21.

“This is kind of the first harbinger that Congress is back in the business of regulating the telecommunications business,” said subcommittee aide Larry Irving. “We’re not going to abrogate policy to the FCC anymore.”

The bill was approved on a voice vote over the objections of some members who said it violates the First Amendment right of broadcasters.

FCC Chairman Dennis Patrick had no comment on the subcommittee vote. A spokeswoman for National Assn. of Broadcasters President Edward O. Fritts said the organization was launching a “full court press” to fight the bill.

In hearings before the subcommittee last month, Fritts, whose trade organization and lobbying group represents most of the commercial radio and TV stations in the country, called the doctrine an “unconstitutional governmental intrusion” into broadcasting.

The FCC made a widely publicized but largely unsuccessful effort in 1985 to do away with the doctrine because of what the commission said was the regulation’s “chilling effect” on broadcast journalists. The doctrine was formulated in 1949 to guarantee that broadcasters who were given licenses to use the public airwave would cover controversial issues and present contrasting views.

Subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said requirements of the regulation, which has been attacked by broadcasters as well as by members of the Republican-dominated FCC, are “not a terribly onerous burden.”

Markey said broadcasters have a responsibility to the public because they have been granted exclusive use of the electromagnetic spectrum, “a scarce public resource.”

“All the Fairness Doctrine requires broadcasters to do,” Markey said, “is what any good journalist would do anyway--address important issues in a fair and impartial manner.”

As a signal of new regulations to come, however, Thursday’s vote by the subcommittee--which grabbed national attention last week with hearings on the effect that recent business changes in the TV industry have had on network news--marks a major change in the six-year era of government deregulation of broadcasting, personified by former FCC Chairman Mark S. Fowler.

During Fowler’s tenure, the commission initiated scores of deregulatory moves, including rollbacks of rules relating to broadcast-station ownership, operating requirements and financial reporting.

Andrew Schwartzman, head of the Washington-based public-interest group Media Access Project, called the subcommittee’s vote an “indication that Congress is going to take legislative action to redo what the FCC undoes.”

First on the subcommittee’s agenda, said aide Irving, is a review of the “anti-trafficking” rule that, before the Fowler commission, limited the buying and selling of radio and television licenses. The FCC’s lifting of the anti-trafficking rule has been credited with opening the way for the wave of mergers and acquisitions that have swept through the broadcasting industry over the past two years.

That the subcommittee will hold hearings and propose anti-trafficking legislation by late this month or next is “pretty much a certainty,” Irving said.

Last week’s hearings on network news operations led to Thursday’s vote, Irving said. “This is the other shoe dropping.”