Static Ahead for Unfettered Talk Radio : The eminently unfair ‘fairness doctrine’ is sneaking back as a political tool.

The Democrats’ self-anointed censorship brigade is at it again. They attacked TV violence in the name of public health. Now they’re attacking talk radio in the name of fairness.

By slamming TV for airing shows like “Cops” and movies like “The Dead Pool,” they attracted headlines, cameras and Republican allies. But their other censorship campaign, which has also drawn some GOP support, has been sneakier--and for good reason. Lawmakers aiming at TV say they’re trying to protect the public. Now they’d like to put Rush Limbaugh out of business to protect themselves.

For 42 years, radio and television were ruled by the so-called fairness doctrine, which required stations to broadcast opposing viewpoints on public issues. The Federal Communications Commission abolished the rule in August, 1987. Former radio broadcaster Ronald Reagan had vetoed an attempt to write the doctrine into statute, and George Bush threatened he would do the same.

Now, almost without notice, a fairness doctrine provision has passed the Senate as part of campaign-finance reform. Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.) are pushing it in the House. President Clinton supports it.

The end of the fairness doctrine marked the beginning of talk radio’s golden age. In 1989, talk-show hosts, unconstrained by regulation, waged an unrelenting, though ultimately unsuccessful campaign against the congressional pay raise. Last year, Jerry Brown built his presidential campaign by giving out his 800 number on talk radio, and Bill Clinton saved his New York primary chances with an adept performance on the Don Imus show.

And, of course, there is Limbaugh, with his 4 million daily listeners, his bestselling book and his ability to jam the Capitol Hill switchboard by suggesting that his armies of “dittoheads” call to protest the Clinton tax increase. Limbaugh, like Imus, succeeds because he is strongly opinionated, somewhat vulgar and deliciously unfair.

The fairness doctrine sounds eminently reasonable on paper. The federal government would require broadcasters to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance.” Stations that failed to comply with regulators’ interpretation of this vague provision could lose their licenses or pay fines of up to $250,000 per offense. Radio stations, with their diverse niche markets, are far more vulnerable than mass-market television broadcasters.

In practice, the fairness doctrine can be a powerful tool to destroy editorial independence and silence dissenting voices. In the Kennedy Administration, for instance, the Democratic National Committee used the doctrine to levy what amounted to punitive taxes on conservative radio stations by making them give away air time to pro-Administration editorials.

“Our massive strategy,” admitted Bill Ruder, an assistant secretary of commerce at the time, “was to use the fairness doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue.”

The Johnson Administration pursued the same strategy, notably to intimidate broadcasters who took issue with a book critical of Barry Goldwater. The Administration’s campaign led to the Supreme Court decision that the fairness doctrine didn’t violate the 1st Amendment.

The Nixon Administration made harassing unfriendly broadcasters a major activity. “During one 30-day period, there were 21 specific presidential directives asking staffers to consider responses to unfair news reporting,” wrote Thomas W. Haz-lett, a former FCC chief economist.

Clinton Administration officials aren’t likely to be any more scrupulous about protecting free speech and editorial independence. Indeed, given the Administration’s troubles with talk-show listeners--the outpourings against Zoe Baird, gays in the military--it’s hard to imagine that the Clintonites wouldn’t use the law to muzzle their enemies.

Some simple interpretations of “fairness” would do the trick. The FCC could require stations, as it has in the past, to balance viewpoints on an issue-by-issue basis; simply having both liberal and conservative hosts would not suffice. And it could require that stations balance audience size--for example, putting Limbaugh on at 3 a.m. until his numbers dropped to a drive-time norm.

The first option means airing lots of unpaid responses. The second means cutting off popular but controversial hosts. In both cases, regulators can pick and choose where to attack, favoring their friends and punishing their enemies. And they can destroy utterly the freedom of speech that has made talk radio such a vital medium.