American TV stations were supposedly being freed...

American TV stations were supposedly being freed of prior constraints when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) summarily repealed its 38-year-old Fairness Doctrine in 1987. The rule, which required stations to give balanced treatment of “controversial issues of public importance,” supposedly inhibited them from tackling troublesome hot potatoes.

In fact, says a new study, those uninhibited stations now give less time to public affairs than they did before the rule was thrown out. Comparing programming aired on commercial stations in 1988 with a similar period in 1979, Essential Information, a public-interest research group, found a 51% decrease in the amount of time devoted to “issue-oriented public affairs” material.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who founded the group, says, “This study refutes FCC predictions that repeal of the Fairness Doctrine would remove an impediment to presenting issue-oriented public-affairs programming on television.”

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and his telecommunications subcommittee have begun marking up legislation to restore the Fairness Doctrine and make it law. Markey says the study “underscores the importance of Congress reinstating the Fairness Doctrine as soon as possible” and reveals the “intellectual bankruptcy” of the FCC’s rationale for killing it.

Both the House and Senate voted to make the doctrine law in 1987, but President Reagan vetoed the bill. Reagan and his FCC clung to the idea that marketplace forces would compel stations to do their civic duties, but the record shows they have cut back on the kind of public-minded programming that benefits the community.

At the same time, the fallout from deregulation has been an epidemic of trashy, gutter-minded tabloid TV shows like “A Current Affair,” “Geraldo” and “The Reporters.” Some stations actually consider these to be public-affairs programming. They sometimes deal in affairs, but that’s about as far as it goes.

For its Fairness Doctrine study, Essential Information looked at programming on 217 TV stations in 50 markets from January through April of last year and compared it with a similar period nine years earlier. Jim Donahue, the staff researcher who wrote the report, says that local TV Guides were used to gather programming data because the FCC no longer requires stations to file their program logs.

Donahue says that the FCC couldn’t care less about the public interest and that its decision to repeal the Fairness Doctrine was “based totally on ideology to enhance corporate interests rather than the interests of the audience.”

Sally Lawrence, speaking for the FCC, was not impressed by Donahue’s findings. “This report is nothing short of outrageous,” she said. “There is nothing in my data file that corroborates this study.” Lawrence claims networks and local stations are doing more public-affairs programming, not less.

The very day that the study was released, FCC Chairman Dennis Patrick was at the White House submitting his resignation. The resignation had nothing to do with the study. The Bush Administration is expected to name a successor who has a less fanatical ideological agenda--and someone who thinks the job of a regulatory agency is to regulate, not stand back and watch.

In other words, kinder and gentler television may be on its way.

Some aspects of the doctrine remained in force after 1987, mainly those concerning ballot issues such as referendums and propositions. A report released in February by the Public Interest Research Group found many stations unaware that such provisions were in effect. Of those that acknowledged such a requirement, the study found, 98% “agreed to present opposing points of view” on such issues as California’s voter crusade to cut insurance rates.

But among stations that considered all Fairness Doctrine obligations to be extinct, only 56% were willing to give time to opposing viewpoints.

“This conclusion stands as powerful evidence that the Fairness Doctrine works,” the report said.

Sources on Capitol Hill say the new, revived Fairness Doctrine should reach the House floor by the end of April. The Supreme Court may be asked eventually to rule on its constitutionality, though it upheld the principle behind the doctrine in its landmark Red Lion decision in 1959.

Donahue says no TV network sent reporters to cover the press conference at which the results of the study were revealed. He called one network to tell it of the report on the Fairness Doctrine and the response he got was, “the what Doctrine?”