HOUSE OK’S FAIRNESS DOCTRINE

The House of Representatives, by an overwhelming vote, approved legislation Wednesday that would make the 38-year-old Fairness Doctrine a federal law.

By a count of 302-102, the House endorsed earlier Senate approval of a measure that requires radio and television stations to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance.”

The controversial legislation, which was opposed by the Reagan Administration, now goes to the White House amid speculation that the President may exercise his veto power.

Passage of the bill, which had more than 70 sponsors in the House, was supported by a wide and diverse coalition including public interest and religious groups, conservative and liberal political organizations, labor organizations and individuals ranging from consumer advocate Ralph Nader to conservative activist Phyllis S. Schlafly.

“The vote sends two powerful messages--one to the American public and the other to President Reagan,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass).

“It tells the public that Congress is back and that the public-interest standard will be restored to communications policy,” Markey said, “and it tells President Reagan that he can no longer gut the concept of broadcasters’ public-interest responsibilities.”

Markey, who heads the telecommunications, consumer protection and finance subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said that he believes a Reagan veto would go against fundamental fairness and responsibility in broadcasting and could easily be overriden by Congress.

“The margin of the vote we had today is veto-proof,” Markey said. “The President would be extremely ill-advised to veto this bill.”

Broadcasters, who had staunchly opposed efforts to codify the policy set in 1949 by the Federal Communications Commission, immediately criticized the House action and threatened possible legal action.

“We regret the House saw fit to join the Senate in voting to legislate government intervention in the presentation of controversial issues by broadcast journalists,” said Edward O. Fritts, president of the National Assn. of Broadcasters.

“Broadcasters are committed to fairness,” he said in a statement issued after the vote, “but we believe government second-guessing of the content of news and public-affairs programming is unconstitutional. If the Fairness Doctrine becomes law, we will immediately challenge its constitutionality in court.”

House passage of the measure came after more than three hours of debate, and after the defeat of one amendment that would have removed radio broadcasters from provisions of the Fairness Doctrine.

“The Fairness Doctrine is not a censorship doctrine,” said Markey, who was bringing his first piece of legislation to the House floor in his role as telecommunications-subcommittee chairman.

The policy, he added, “only requires broadcasters to do what any good broadcaster would do anyway--address important issues in a fair and impartial manner.”

At the same time, he added, the Fairness Doctrine does “prevent broadcasters from censoring the rest of us--those who don’t have broadcast licenses.”

Markey and other supporters argued that the Fairness Doctrine does not permit the Federal Communications Commission to interfere with broadcasters’ editorial judgments, only to ascertain whether broadcasters are doing a fair and reasonable job of presenting varying viewpoints of controversial issues.

Proponents of the legislation also argued that broadcasters should not be treated like newspapers under the First Amendment because they are granted a license to use a scarce public resource--the public airwaves.

They also maintained that the doctrine was in jeopardy of being abolished by the deregulation-minded Federal Communications Commission.

“This legislation is not hostile to broadcasters,” said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, adding that it “simply keeps in place something that has been there for a long time.”

Opponents of the measure agreed with broadcasters’ arguments that the doctrine has a “chilling” effect on broadcasters by unfairly restricting their First Amendment freedoms and their efforts to tackle controversial subjects while interjecting government into programming content.

Rep. Thomas J. Tauke (R-Iowa), who voted against the bill, said that the scarcity issue that prompted enactment of the Fairness Doctrine no longer is a valid argument today in a nation that has 10,000 radio stations, 1,300 TV stations and 7,300 cable-television systems.

“Scarcity certainly doesn’t exist among the electronic media,” Tauke said.

Rep. Bill Green (R-N.Y.) proposed an amendment to exempt radio broadcasters from the Fairness Doctrine because of the large number of radio stations. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 333 to 71.