Questioning the constitutionality of the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine”
History has shown us that it takes as much government influence to protect free speech as it does to deny it. The government sometimes seems like a spinning top; one moment it is denying a form of free speech and another it is protecting a different form of free speech. For a large part of the last century the government, more specifically the FCC, had a policy called the Fairness Doctrine, this policy forced the media to be unbiased and give fair and balanced reports on political issues. The Fairness Doctrine ended under the Reagan administration in 1987, but supporters are looking to revive the decades old policy. This creates an interesting question, does the government forcing balanced political speech infringe on the media’s right to free speech or is it just another way to keep the media from controlling the information available to the population of America at large?
