Fair is foul

Fair: now there's a great word. Everybody loves things to be fair. Fair play is so ingrained in our cultural consciousness that our national leaders feel compelled to examine baseball players over the perceived lack of it. Fair is a good thing.

One would be excused, then, for thinking that something called the "Fairness Doctrine" would be rather uncontroversial. Unfortunately, what that phrase describes is one of the more unsettling ideas to come down the pike in recent years-not just bad, but downright disturbing.

So what exactly are we talking about here? The so-called Fairness Doctrine was a rule that the Federal Communications Commission used to apply to any medium in which channels were limited, especially radio. The rule mandated that when controversial issues of public interest were discussed on a station, that station had to make an effort to show both sides of the debate. Sounds harmless enough, but the legal terms were squishy and indeterminate enough that broadcasters often shied away from controversial issues altogether. Fear of a fine from a law one's never sure one's broken can work wonders in suppressing criticism.

This situation changed in the late 1980s, when the FCC decided that the doctrine was an unhelpful restriction on free speech and announced that it was no longer in effect. Talk radio exploded. All over the nation, pundits began to host their own shows, while the most skillful at blending opinion and entertainment built huge national followings via syndication. Hooray for public discourse, right?

Here's the catch: Talk radio skewed right, and hard. There's never been any clear explanation for why this occurred; it's apparently just one of those situations where a message perfectly fits medium, like President Barack Obama's did with Internet videos. It is clear, however, that it wasn't for lack of opportunity on the other side of the spectrum.

The textbook example is Air America, which launched in 2004 to great fanfare, and then failed so hard you'd think it was a bank. Although it had initially grown rapidly, building up a network of over 100 stations, by 2006 the company had to file for bankruptcy. The listeners just weren't there.

Why is this important now? Because the people who don't like the things that get said on talk radio have achieved more power in this country than at any time since the doctrine's revocation, and they're itching to get that particular thorn in their side removed. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois mentioned last year that he thought the doctrine needed to be revived, and, in recent weeks, he's been joined by his colleagues Debbie Stabinow of Michigan and Tom Harkin of Iowa. Former President Bill Clinton dropped the F-bomb just last week, calling for more "fairness" in broadcasting. The irony in the fact that each of the last three made their statements on talk radio seems to have been lost on them.

Now, I don't have any illusions that readers of The Chronicle are great fans of right-wing talk radio, or that they're chomping at the bit to oppose the Democratic Congress many of them voted for. I'm not asking you to shed tears for Rush Limbaugh. But I think the idea of a government using the law to silence its critics is repulsive enough to get a reaction, no matter what your stance on Proposition 8 or the stimulative effect of public works programs. And that is exactly what we're dealing with here.