Stuff You Should Know - How the Fairness Doctrine Worked

Episode Date: July 4, 2019

Back in the day, broadcasters were bound by law to provide contrasting opinions on political matters. Why? Because of the Fairness Doctrine. What happened to it? Listen in and find out.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, come see us, because we're coming to see you. Specifically, if you live in Chicago on July 24th, we're gonna be at the Harris Theater, and the following night, we're gonna be

at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto, and that's just the beginning. That's right, we're also going to our beloved Wilbur Theater, which we own, in Boston, on October 29th, and then our first visit to Portland, Maine at the State Theater on August 30th. Yep, that's going to be followed in October. We're gonna take a little break,

because that's a lot of touring. In October on the 9th, we're gonna be at the Plaza Live in Orlando, and then on October 10th, we're gonna be at the Civic Theater in New Orleans. That's right, and in October, we're gonna round it all out at the Bell House in Brooklyn for three shows, October 23rd, 24th, and 25th.

Yep, so go to sysklive.com for tickets and information, and we will see you starting this July in Chicago. Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. ["How Stuff Works"] Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chook Bryant, and there's Jair Dog, the Rowland of all time over there,

and this is Step You Should Know. Wow. I gotta pep it up a little bit, you know? Is that what that was? Oh, you gotta screw it up a little bit. That's what I meant to say. Speaking of screwing up, Chicago, Illinois is screwing up. It is.

I was trying to think about this, like which approach should we take? Should we just outright lie and say, like there's very few tickets left, so you better go get them now? No. Or should we shame them and say there are plenty of tickets left, a disappointing amount of tickets left?

I think we should just be honest and not shame them, but express our disappointment. Nothing works better than disappointment. You know, Chicago, we really expected a little more from you than this. So if you're confused about what we're talking about, probably because you haven't heard, and that's our fault, about our live shows coming up,

all around the country to cities we've never been to before. Yeah, yeah, we've never been to Orlando before. We've never been to Portland, Maine before. That's right, but we are going to Chicago again because we thought Chicago loved us on July 24th at the Harris Theater. Right.

And then Toronto, the next night on July 25th, they're buying a lot of tickets. They love us up there. Yeah, at the Danforth. And then Boston, August 29th, Portland, Maine, August 30th, Orlando and New Orleans, October 9th and 10th, and then Brooklyn the 23rd through the 25th of October.

Three night run at the Bell House in Brooklyn, which is going to be great. That's right. But again, Toronto, you're doing great guys. Keep it up. Chicago, you could stand to step it up a little bit. You got a little bit of time, but why wait, you know? Yeah, I mean, the seats are only going to get worse.

True that, Chuck, true that. So just go to SYSK Live for our touring home on the web. Thanks to our buddies at Squarespace. Oh, yeah. And now let's talk about the fairness doctrine. Okay. We actually need to, if this were, say, pre-1987, we would need to have Jerry come in and say,

so here's all the reasons why you shouldn't buy tickets to stuff you should know live if we were going to follow the fairness doctrine. But it's not until 1987. And as a matter of fact, I wonder how podcasting would, how this would apply or have applied to podcasting if it had still been around, or if podcasting would have been one of those things that kind of grew up

around the fairness doctrine. Who knows, but it's a fascinating, what are those called when it's an impossible, sure, there's another word for it. When it's something that just can't possibly happen, kind of like speculative fiction or something like that. I can't remember. But, you know, since podcasts don't fall under the FCC, then that would have mattered.

Oh yeah, I guess that's true, huh? Yeah, we could, if we wanted to right now, we could say every curse word, every awful thing in the world under the sun. We elect not to do that, everyone. I heard a radio DJ the other day say, I know you want to curse so bad right now. This is why we're getting a podcast.

And I was like, yeah, I guess we could curse, but I like that we don't, Chuck. I do too, and if you want to hear me curse, just A, you can come to a live show. True, true, yeah. Because it happens a little bit, or B, you can just join me over at Movie Crush. I cussed a lot over there.

Yeah, I think at first people were like, and then now I think people go listen in part to hear you curse, they like to hear that blue street coming out of that video. They like to hear the real me. Oh, I'd like to think that both sides are the real you put together. Well, for roughly two and a half hours a week,

this is the real me. Do you find it difficult not to curse on the show? No, I mean, I'm fully used to it by now, but definitely I'm not as fully freewheeling as I normally am. Yeah, I guess I should say, I don't want to give the impression that I'm like some Flanders type or whatever. I curse pretty routinely myself in regular life,

but I guess I find it kind of comforting just knowing that there's a safe space where I don't say the F word a lot. You should start another podcast, just called Filth, Florin, Filth with Josh Clark. Okay, that's a pretty good idea. But none of this has to do with the 1920s, except for the fact that people did not curse

on the radio back then either, because there weren't a lot of people on the radio in the 1920s. No, actually early 1920s, that is. Right, pre-November 1920, there was not much going on on the radio aside from Morse code, some ham radio operators. And remember, we did a pretty good episode on ham radio.

Love those hams. If I remember correctly, yeah. Well, one of the things I remember about that ham radio episode is that there was a kind of a whole hacker, anarchic ethos surrounding the early days of radio. It's just a total free for all. You can broadcast on whatever station you wanted to

and get in arguments with the government. If you wanted to, who cared? There was not a lot of ways to trace anybody. So there was a lot of anything goes mentality among the early ham radio operators. But that was basically all you would hear is people saying like, hey, how's it going? Kind of thing, maybe some heavy breathing.

And then in November 1920, a station called KDKA actually organized itself. And the first broadcast that it put out was reading the election results from the James Cox, James Cox. Oh my gosh, I almost just violated FCC rules. All this dirty talk, talk. James Cox, Warren Harding, 1920 presidential election.

It was the first commercial licensed radio broadcast in the world, I think. Yeah, I think that's a great trivia question. If someone were to say what city hosted or whatever was part of the first commercial radio broadcast, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the follow up would be and what did they broadcast? The presidential election outcome,

which was a big deal because it's weird to think about in 1920 that people all over the country were waiting for that morning paper to come out, except in Pittsburgh, they knew. Right, they did know. And not everybody in Pittsburgh, just the people who had basically built their own radios because that was the radios that were around.

They were hard. They're like eight people in Pittsburgh. Pretty much, pretty much. But the fact that this happened and word spread pretty quickly. Yeah, some people in Pittsburgh knew the election results because they were listening to the radio. And they ran around yelling that out and said we heard it on a radio

and everyone's like, these people lock them up. Yeah, and also other little known fact, the first song played on the radio was Radio Killed the Newspaper Star. Did you just make that up or did you have that prepped? I just made it up. Okay, good job. Thank you, man.

I'm glad I got like that grudging good job because there was almost contempt in that first initial laugh. Well, because off the cuff, that's a great joke. But if you workshop that over a few hours, then no, no, no. When's the last time I workshopped a joke? I don't know. You don't let me in your workshop anymore. No, I keep it a closely guarded secret.

So, okay. So here's the point. This is the reason we're even talking about that first broadcast is because that was November 1920. By 1924, I think in 1920, there were like 20,000 radios. 1924, there were one and a half million radios in the United States.

By 1930, no, 1940, 83% of every household in America had a radio. And so there was this massive transition from distributing news and making sure everybody was up to date on all the information they needed to be like a smart voter or hold like political or social or cultural opinions. That transition moved from newspapers, from print,

which still hung around. Sure. But over to radio, radio became much more prevalent as far as the spread of information to an increasingly large number of people went in the United States in a very short time, in like 20 years. Yeah, so in the 1940s, the FCC, and there's some background to all this that we'll get to,

but we haven't even really said what the fairness doctrine is yet. No, no. Finally, in 1949, the U.S. government said, you know what, we need some help here. We're a little bit worried that, jeez, somebody could, some private citizen who's wealthy could go and buy all the radio stations

and essentially propagandize the news. Right. And there's nothing we can do about it. Yeah, so basically what they said was this, there is one thing we can do about it. We can flex our muscle as the government and specifically say, you broadcasters can't do that. That's right, via something called the fairness doctrine,

which had the overall goal of basically, and it's very kind of cute to look back at this time period, but its initial goal was to make sure that all the information on the radio waves was good information and true and fair and enriching, and there's only so much space on a radio dial. So, and this is very critical that there were a limited number of frequencies available.

Yeah, it's frequency scarcity, I think. Yeah, let's just put a pin in that because that's a very big deal is how this weighed in the favor of the fairness doctrine and then also kind of helped kill it in some ways. Sure. But basically the very progressive view that public interest outweigh private interest

and the public has a right to really good information over the free speech of the broadcaster even. Yes, so you just hit it right on the head. That is the crux of the fairness doctrine and it seems like, okay, depending on your viewpoint, either like the most vile idea ever or just a completely sensible idea. And the reason that it can present these two

totally different opinions is because this idea, the fairness doctrine, sits right at the heart of the difference between the right and the left, between conservatism and libertarianism and liberalism. And it is, it comes down to this, like if you have to promote public intercourse, like people understanding, not doing it in public, but I mean like discourse, public intercourse.

So yeah, I guess doing it in public. If you're going to promote public discourse and protect it as a government saying like it's the role of government to say, we need to make sure that the quality of the information that's getting out there is protected. And that we have to do that, we have to limit what broadcasters can say.

We have to curtail free speech to people on the right, like right there, full stop, that's a problem, that's an issue, it has fatally flawed because you are curtailing the free speech of somebody, whether it's NBC or Joe Schmoe who wants to say something on the radio, it doesn't matter, you're curtailing free speech and therefore that is wrong.

The people on the left say, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a privilege to broadcast on the radio and in order to protect the larger public and its interests, we have to curtail that free speech of the very narrowed moneyed interests that can afford a license to broadcast. And there's no way to reconcile the two, you can't. You have to choose a side,

you have to form an opinion one way or the other and whatever you choose is your larger view of whether you're a liberal or whether you're conservative. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it fell along those lines back then and still does today, even though the fairness doctrine isn't around, the ideology is.

Well, it keeps getting brought out and kind of forced along a like an angry parade route in order to kind of say like, look, look what the government's capable of doing, look at the overreach they really wanna do, don't let them do it again with X. Right. So it is, it's a huge flashpoint

and it's understandable why it seems like so kind of limp and bureaucratic and boring, but when you dig into the history of the whole thing and even the contemporary idea behind it, it's a huge flashpoint politically in the United States. Yeah, so it had a couple of main components and then within that a couple of big, big rules, very important rules.

The first, the components were, they were known together as the fairness rule, which is private broadcasters must report on matters of public interest. Like it's a responsibility of you as a broadcaster. That's right. And private broadcasters must cover opposing perspectives regarding that public interest.

That's a big one. That's a big one. And then the little rules there, the personal attack rules said that if you're a broadcaster and you are gonna run a negative story on somebody or something, prior to that, you have to let these people know or this organization know and give them time to respond on the air.

And then the political editorial rule, which is private broadcasters that air editorial programming that endorses a political candidate must inform other candidates and offer them time to respond on air, not to be confused with the equal time rule. That's different. Yeah, the equal time rule is why debates

have, are supposed to have all candidates because you're supposed to, if you give one candidate a time, air time to say, hey, here's my platform, you're supposed to give all other candidates the equal amount of time. And that political editorial rule kind of, it's close to it and it follows in the same tradition and principle, but really the personal attack rule

and the political editorial rule that were part of the fairness doctrine, that's just like the foundation of good journalism, basically. It was not, they're not radical ideas. That's a good point. So the idea though, that public or that private broadcasters have to talk about issues and then have to air opposing viewpoints, that is kind of controversial

because it's saying like, we, the government are saying, you have to do this, this is your responsibility. And the idea that the government even has control over airwaves is in dispute. But it actually dates pretty far back and we'll talk about the background, the backstory behind the fairness doctrine after a message. How about that?

It sounds good. So we'll get back to you. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

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Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me

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Okay, Chuck, so there's one thing to really understand what we're talking about here. Initially, we were talking about radio waves, and then eventually TV waves, and then that eventually turned into the internet. But all these things, especially something like airwaves for radio and TV, these exist naturally, right? Yeah.

There's not like a government factory that produces radio waves. And then the government can say, well, we produce these so we can divvy them up. That's what you think, man. That's a, it's an artificial idea that the government can say, we regulate these airwaves

because it's citizens listening to the stuff that's broadcast on the airwaves, and it's private companies broadcasting on the airwaves using equipment that's manufactured by other private companies. So the government is insinuating itself and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is too important to leave to the market.

We have to regulate this in some ways, and we're going to do that. And the whole thing actually started with the Titanic to tell you the truth. The Titanic ship? The Titanic ship, the very one ship. That's right. Leading up to the Titanic, radio was being used

and quite a bit in maritime communication. In fact, we even passed the Ship Act of 1910, which required ships leaving the United States to have radio equipment, to know how to use it, and sort of laid out some basic broadcasting standards. But what they didn't do was say, all right, we're going to assign radio frequencies, and we're going to like reserve a channel

for emergencies only. This kind of stung them because a couple of years after that, a little boat called the RMS Titanic. The ship, the Titanic? It wasn't a little boat. It was a ocean liner. Sure. I used to know the difference between ocean liner

and a cruise ship. I think ocean liners are transatlantic. Is that the deal? I've never heard the difference. I think that's the deal. I just figured it was one and the same or something. No, I think an ocean liner specifically can cross two different continents.

Yeah, I guess a cruise ship could just hug the coast or something like that. I think that's the difference. But I might be making all that up. I got you. So the Titanic sank. There was a lot of radio traffic going on as the disaster breaks out, obviously.

So even though this, in Newfoundland, they heard very early on and picked up this distress call, they couldn't really get it out because everything was all clogged up. Yeah, there are a lot of ham radio operators screwing things up at the time. That's right. And that's what prompted the Radio Act of 1912,

which was sort of the beginnings of the foundation of what would eventually become the fairness doctrine. Because what it did was it established spectrum allocation and the FCC basically said, hey, listen, if you want to broadcast, you can't just broadcast. You got to come to us and get a license. Yeah, initially it was the Commerce Department that was issuing licenses.

And then came the Radio Act of 1927 that formed the Radio Commission and they started handling licenses. But not only did they start saying, okay, you're a broadcaster, here's your license. This is the frequency that you can broadcast on. Prior to that, that was around in the Radio Act. That was the Commerce Department that did that.

But there was no way to police it. And so if you were, say, NBC Radio, and there were a bunch of people broadcasting on your frequency at 7 p.m., you'd just switch to, yeah, well, no, you'd just switch to a different frequency and start broadcasting. And so there was no way to police it.

Well, with the Radio Act of 1927 and the creation of the Radio Commission, there was a way to police it because you could have your license revoked. And if you kept broadcasting, guys would come to your house and kidnap your family. Yeah, but the really important thing, and this is how it, not your family,

the really important thing was that it established what we talked about before, which is spectrum scarcity. There's only so much space now. If everyone has to apply for a license, he wants to broadcast, it was very key in the setup. And then, like I said, eventual downfall of the fairness doctrine. Yeah, because it says this, like, okay,

here's the full spectrum, the radio spectrum that we can broadcast on. And we're going to carve it up and each person gets a specific frequency to broadcast on. That means that there's a finite number of frequencies, so there's a finite number of licenses, which means that not everybody can have a license to broadcast, which means that the people

who do have that license to broadcast have a very important privilege afforded to them. And because it's a privilege, because the government has insinuated itself and said, we're doling out these privileges, we've decided, we, the government, have decided that you have a responsibility to present fair and balanced reporting

to the public, including basically all sides of an issue. Like you have a responsibility that supersedes your right to free speech as a broadcaster. That was, that's what spectrum scarcity created. Right, the 1927 Radio Act, while it did establish that, it kind of made some errors, basically, in how they set it up. There were a lot of misspellings.

Yeah, there were a lot of misspellings, but they would say, basically, to the broadcasters, you have to air content in support of, quote, public convenience, interest, or necessity, end quote. But they didn't really define what that was. Which, by the way, I looked at it, I was like, what does public convenience mean? Apparently, in the UK, it means a public toilet,

and that's the only definition I could ever find for it. So somebody just made that up. You had to air content about public toilets. Right, nothing. That would be great, actually. Like that part from Naked Gun. It's just nothing but the sounds of people peeing. But this is a big problem, because if something isn't clearly defined,

then it can't be enforced. Right. So in 1934, they knew that this was a problem. This was, how many years later? Like, seven years later. And they said, you know what? We need to issue another act, because we're the federal government.

And so the Federal Communications Act replaced the Radio Act. The FCC was born, replaced the Radio Commission. And the FCC said, all right, the first thing we gotta do is define what this public interest thing is all about. Right, because not only does it make it difficult to enforce, it makes it difficult to follow. So like, even if you're a broadcaster,

and you're like, I totally agree with this. I do have a right and a responsibility. What's this public convenience thing again? Like, how do I do this? What am I supposed to be doing? It was like, I don't know. And if it's not defined, yeah, you can't enforce it. You also can't follow it if you wanna follow it.

So there was just too much gray area. And so the FCC, when this was created, this idea of, okay, we're gonna set about defining this stuff and really generating this idea of what it means to be a responsible broadcaster. It happened at a really liberal time in America's history. Right after the New Deal had really kind of come along and changed the complexion of America pretty dramatically.

And liberalism and progressivism had really set in and was entrenched in the fabric of American politics. And so there was this idea that the best way to prevent broadcasters from asserting an overbearing influence on public discourse because they had the loudest voice, because they had the radio licenses, right? Was to just say, you guys can't editorialize at all.

And this became known as the Mayflower decision or the Mayflower doctrine. It was a 1941 FCC ruling that basically said, you know what, you guys have to basically be neutral in that you can't say anything. You can't present any particular side. If we find out that you guys are promoting, say the policy agenda or the favorite politics

of like your station owner or your parent company or something like that, you're in trouble. And that was kind of like the line that they drew, no editorializing whatsoever. That's right. And that really sort of laid the groundwork in a big, big way for the fairness doctrine, even though the fairness doctrine sort of undid that.

You did. And said, well, you can editorialize, but you just have to do it on both sides. Right, you have to present, present, present, present both sides. And like on the one hand, that was a gift to the broadcasters, right? They were saying, okay, you can use your own voice.

You can state your own opinion. You can support your own political candidate, but you have to give airtime to the other political candidate. You have to give airtime to people with an opposing view of what you just said. So it was kind of like a compromise, but it was also a weakening of the progressivist agenda, I guess.

And the broadcasters did not like it for sure, because again, they were still sort of confused about what does public importance mean? We're not even sure, you know, everything's decided and applied on a case-by-case basis, in other words. Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah, in other words, if somebody just files a complaint,

basically, they will take up that complaint and hear that complaint, but it wasn't some like big sweeping thing. No, but it was also, Chuck, so that means that it's capricious and arbitrary, basically applying the rule on a case-by-case basis, rather than a sweeping regulation. But it's also a weakness,

because it means that the FCC is saying, we'll leave it to you, the broadcasters, to police yourselves. We're only gonna act when somebody complains. Yeah, so what happened in a lot of cases was some radio stations were like, you know what, I'm not even gonna go there, and I'm gonna avoid controversy all together,

because I don't think we pointed out, it wasn't just about politics. It was basically covered controversial issues in general. And this will play a big part, like everything from climate denial to the anti-vax movement in the 1980s. They all had to have equal time under the fairness doctrine, and a lot of people point to the fairness doctrine

as how these movements got jump-started to begin with, because they didn't put those opinions in context. They were just like, they didn't say this is very scientifically valid, and now here's the opposing viewpoint, which has no science to back it up. Right, exactly. And the fact that they didn't do that,

they were airing on the side of caution over editorializing, but also probably they were trying to make sure that everybody was not offended. They didn't offend either side, because they didn't wanna be boycotted with advertising too. Or find. Sure. So that was a big problem with the fairness doctrine,

is that it was ill-defined, it opened the door for opposing viewpoints that put them on equal footing or equal ground with other viewpoints that were scientifically backed, which created what's called the false balance problem. And then there was opposition to it, to basically the fairness doctrine from the outset, not just the broadcasters who thought

they didn't want any kind of restriction on their speech. But also interestingly, it represented a loophole to combat advertising too, which I think the FCC hadn't thought of, but they said, yeah, this actually applies when it came up. There was a ruling in 1967 that found that cigarette advertising qualified as a presentation of one viewpoint

of a controversial subject. Basically, cigarette smoking's great, go smoke some cigarettes. And so some consumer groups petitioned the FCC and said, hey, we should be able to give the opposing viewpoint, don't smoke cigarettes, it's bad for you. And the FCC said, you're absolutely right. And advertisers were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

this is a big deal. And now they jumped in to back up the National Association of Broadcasters, which was opposed to the fairness doctrine in general. Yeah, and it also, that kind of thing, if advertising counts that opens the doors, and it did for, and we'll get to this more specifically later,

but if a power company wanted to do an ad about their great new nuclear power plant that they were gonna build, like a liberal group can come forward and say, no, no, no, that's not an ad. I know they're paying for airspace, but that means we need to talk about the ills of nuclear power.

Right, right. And I mean, even if it wasn't the opposing group could say we get free airtime to say that this is the opposite of that. And so if you're a broadcaster, especially if you're in like a successful market, that 15, 30, 60 second spot is important. You don't wanna give that away,

but it may also, you may have like an interest in whatever the other group is protesting. So just on that, in that respect as well, you don't really wanna air the opposing view. The problem with the fairness doctrine if you're libertarian or conservative is that it said you have to do that. You have to air the opposing view.

The FCC says so. That's right. So you gotta think this is gonna end up in court at some point. Sure. And it did quite a few times over the years, not surprisingly. And for about a 20 to 30 year period,

US courts basically supported the FCC in fulfilling this mandate. There were some real highlights in 1969. There were a couple of big court rulings that affirmed this enforcement. One was Red Lion Broadcasting Company, Incorporated, the FCC. It's a little mouthy.

It is. So this one was sort of two cases in one. The Supreme Court was able to kill two birds. One case was an FCC appeal of a lower court ruling. They said this, you know, the personal attack and political editorial rules those two big rules were unconstitutional. And the second was a broadcaster appealing

of a lower court ruling that said the FCC's application of those rules was constitutional. So you said, all right, you guys, let's just combine this into one thing and we'll hear the case. And in the latter one, there was an investigative journalist named Fred Jay Cook and he filed a complaint.

And like we said, it was case by case stuff. So this complaint made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Fred Cook filed a complaint against Red Lion Broadcasting who owned WCGB because they had a broadcast with Reverend Billy James Hargis that claimed that Cook, who was an author and wrote a very kind of salacious expose about the FBI. And this Reverend said, you know what,

this author worked for the communist and he attacked Jay Edgar Hoover. And it turns out they didn't contact Cook to give him that equal chance to respond. And they denied him his demand for that. And it made it all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said, you know what, Red Lion, you're wrong, you gotta do this.

Right, so and since the Supreme Court ruled that Cook could have equal airtime, this is like, I think 12 years or nine years later. And I could not find anywhere if he actually took them up on it or not. But the whole thing was just like a, it was an ad hominem attack and attack on him on Cook because Cook had written a book against Barry Goldwater,

who was a presidential candidate at the time. And the people who ran Red Lion didn't like it. So they attacked Cook, but he, so they, in this ruling though, and this is the whole point, not that Cook got his time, it was airtime, but that the Supreme Court ruled that the FCC applying this fairness doctrine

was good and fine and constitutional, which is a big deal. They ruled that the FCC could constitutionally exercise this fairness doctrine, which is, that was just enormous. Yeah, it was a very, very big deal. The other big kind of landmark case was that same year, the office of communication of the United Church of Christ

at all, the FCC, another scintillating title. There was a US appeals court who overturned the FCC's decision not to consider a petition to revoke the license of Lamar Broadcasting, WLBT. So these citizens got together, civil rights groups, and they were like, you know what, this station is awful.

They are, first of all, they're not covering the civil rights movement, and they're flat out racist and segregationist. And so we're gonna petition this, and the FCC denied the petition in 1964 and said citizens don't have the standing to file a petition like this. Which is pretty surprising because, you know,

the citizens are the ones the FCC have always been like fighting for. Right, it was a little... Hinky? Hinky is the word that we used to use. So the petitioners appealed, and in 1966, yeah, 66, the court of appeals for DC said, you do have standing to petition

the FCC to revoke a license, because that's all about protecting the public interest, which is what the FCC was supposed to be doing in the first place. So get back to work. And finally, in 1967, the FCC revisited that petition, rejected it again. Right.

Because they said, hey, this station has actually kind of taken some steps since then, and we think they're doing the right thing. Petitioners still weren't happy. They appealed that, and in 1969, the FCC actually revoked Lamar Broadcasting's license. They did, as far as I could tell, Lamar Broadcasting was the one and only company

to lose their license under the fairness doctrine. Like permanently, yeah. Right, they never got it back, and chuck a little cherry on top, because Lamar Broadcasting lost the license of WLBT in Jackson, Mississippi. It was up for grabs, and it was taken by a majority black-owned group

that took over the station at that point. Nice. Isn't that nice? Yeah. So things seem to be going smoothly for the fairness doctrine. What could go wrong? Well, we'll tell you what could go wrong

after a break. How about that? Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. like poltergeist. So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there

when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Okay Chuck, so one thing that I've learned is, it's not necessarily like the Supreme Court is, their decisions are final forever. They kind of shift and move over time, over long enough periods of time. And the Fairness Doctrine is a really good example of that, because in the 60s, the Supreme Court ruled pretty clearly that FCC was constitutional,

but by the end of the 70s, the Supreme Court started to side with broadcasters instead. The winds of change kind of blew through there. And there was one case in particular that the Supreme Court heard in 1979, that signaled a real change for the Fairness Doctrine and the FCC applying it. And it was a case that involved WJIMTV in Lansing, Michigan,

which is owned by a guy named Harold Gross. Yeah, so the complaint here was that he, or the station rather, via Harold Gross, had abused their broadcasting power to the detriment of the public. So what he did was, he denied airtime to political rivals in some cases. In other cases, he censored coverage of local businesses

that they didn't advertise with them. Yeah, he was accused of clipping, which is taking, like when a network delivers a show, it has commercial breaks in it, he would have his editors go through and add even more commercial breaks, which we're not supposed to do. That was a big one.

Didn't cover the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance because he didn't like Jimmy Hoffa's politics, even though it was a national and a local story. Yeah, so in 1975, a hearing by the FCC said, you violated the Fairness Rule, we're taking your license, buddy, but he appealed it and this time he won the appeal. And like you said, this was a big shift

in the way things were being thought about as far as the Fairness doctrine went. Hey, one more thing about Harold Gross before we move on, this guy. He was such a businessman that when he started his TV station in 1950, WJIM, he was actually one of the first 108 license holders to broadcast on TV.

But he wasn't sure that TV was gonna stick around, that it was gonna take off as a technology. So he built the WJIM facilities so that it could be converted into a motel if TV didn't go anywhere. So the original WJIM TV station had a pool out back. What is it now, do you know? What is what?

The building. The pool, I don't know. I looked up to see if there was anything recent about it and I didn't find any new stuff. But I saw a picture of the station and there's definitely a pool out back in the 50s. It's got a nice perk. I guess so.

I wonder if he let anybody swim in it or not. I don't know. Maybe if you advertised, he would have let you. So this was the mid to late 70s and then things really, really started changing in the 1980s because that whole thing about, remember when we said, putting a pin in Spectrum Scare City, that was no longer a problem.

By the mid 1980s, there were more than 10,000 radio stations, 1,300 TV stations, about 1,700 newspapers. And the whole sort of drumbeat was like, wait a minute, there's not a problem here anymore with scarcity. We should be able to do what we want because you told newspapers from the very beginning that their free speech was protected and they could do whatever they want.

Why are we any different? Yeah, that's a really big point that a lot of people pointed to over the years is why does this just apply to electronic media? Like the print media literally has an editorial page where they come out with positions on candidates and all this stuff. Why doesn't it apply to them?

And for years and years and years, it was any schmo can basically go get a newspaper printed. The radio's different because of that Spectrum Scare City, but yeah, as the satellite people came along and as cable came along, that just kind of went out the door. So Spectrum Scare City going away and the fact that the newspaper industry,

the print media was not regulated anywhere near the same way, really kind of removed any remaining foundation for the fairness doctrine to stand on. Yeah, so in 1985, the FCC kind of got their gears turning and said, you know what, we think this is, we want Congress to review this basically. We're gonna institute a public comment period even

and we think we should abandon the personal attack rule and in this case by case thing. Right, and yeah, and they did this for like two years. And while the FCC is holding like these public hearings on it, Congress at the same time was saying, well, we don't really want the fairness doctrine to go away. And not just the left, there was a bipartisan supported bill

that got passed in Congress to codify the fairness doctrine, but it was vetoed by Reagan. And so after that, that was basically it for the fairness doctrine. Yeah, the FCC voted unanimously to just get rid of it. They did, and so they didn't actually get rid of it. They just stopped enforcing it or some parts of it. They kept enforcing, I think the personal attack

and political editorial provisions up until like 2000 for like another 13 years. But the idea that you had to promote opposing viewpoints on your television station or your radio station, that went away starting in 1987. And a lot of people say that really changed the American media landscape big time. Yeah, I mean, it's depending on who you are.

I was gonna sit back and watch. I know, I'm trying to dance around this. Depending on who you are, you probably have a very strong opinion about the fairness doctrine one way or the other. Or you may think it was a mixed thing. It was definitely a flawed policy. I think everyone agrees that it wasn't perfect,

but the legacy is really complex. Getting rid of it basically opened the door for what we have today, which is a degraded new standard minority viewpoints that aren't necessarily covered and how polarized we are. Because people dug in and they said, all right, I'm gonna start my super conservative radio stations and then people said,

I'm gonna start my super conservative liberal website and radio shows. And liberals are gonna listen to theirs and conservatives are gonna listen to theirs and never the tween shall meet. Right, right. And so especially if you have like each side promoting a viewpoint or an agenda

to the detriment of the other side, there's like the middle ground is lost, which I mean, some people, I know some people aren't very hip on centrism these days anyway, but I mean, you can keep a pretty decent sized society together when you kind of follow a centrist axis upward and onward. And I think that to me, the fairness doctrine showed that.

I mean, like I don't think it's a big surprise where I fall on whether the fairness doctrine was a good idea or not, but I just don't think it's, like I can see saying all these people out here need good information and it's probably not going to just get out there on its own if we, the government don't step in and say,

here's how we need to get good information out. And I think the current media landscape is just complete proof positive of that, that if you just don't, if you just let it all go free for all, then you end up with what we have, that this is what the market offers us. Echo chambers.

Echo chambers, polarization and a huge division in the country without anybody saying, well, wait, wait, wait, yes, over here, you guys are right, over here, you guys are right. And things are really messed up. But also, what about this other stuff? We kind of all agree on this part. And what about this part?

Yeah, we have a lot of common ground here. No one's talking about that. And that used to be the role that the media played before. Yeah, I mean, one thing we can say is without the fairness doctrine, we may not have gotten any of these majority viewpoints in the 1940s and 50s and 60s. People might not have been as well-informed,

except maybe via newspaper about the civil rights movement, women's rights movement, how bad smoking is, about nuclear power plants. Like all of these things that were sort of in the shadows were now had a guaranteed platform. But like we mentioned earlier, because they didn't really,

they had to give these opposing viewpoints. He also could have possibly borne the anti-vax movement and the climate denial movement and stuff like that. So it was flawed, to be sure. Sure. Yeah, from what I understand, like any Democrat to the right of Ralph Nader, which is almost everybody says, yes, fairness doctrine,

what a terrible idea, terrible idea. It was officially repealed in 2011. And if you'll think back, that was under the Obama administration. So the Obama administration's FCC was the one that officially took the fairness doctrine off of the books, removed it. Yeah, but I mean, that was a purge.

That was just like, there's a bunch of rotten food in the fridge and why has no one thrown it out yet? Yeah, but it was also pretty symbolic, you know? It was a symbolic act, whether they intended it or not. But the idea that it was removed by a Democratic lefty president's administration is, I don't know, it's saying something, I think.

Yeah, here's where we are today though. There was a poll, a Gallup poll just last year in 2018 that's found Americans don't trust the news. Right. They guessed, let me see, 62% of what they hear is biased, 44% is inaccurate and 39% is misinformation. That's, those numbers seem low to me.

That's not a great place to be in as a country though. No, it's a terrible place, it's a scary place. Like how is this country still together, you know? Yeah. But the other thing is we're gonna get so much guff because we didn't come out and just stay completely down the middle. But I mean, I wanna say, like I understand

where people on the right are coming from with this. Like, ideologically, this is censorship and the prohibition of the exercise of free speech. And that is one of, that is a core founding value of conservatism and libertarianism. So like I can understand how you'd look at the fairness doctrine and be like, this is government overreach in its worst examples, you know?

Yeah, but it's like, it wasn't like state run radio, you know? No, no. It wasn't like the government, the federal government propagandizing their agenda. Right. But yeah. They're saying like, hey, you can say this viewpoint.

Right. You also have to show the other viewpoint. To me, that's almost impossible to argue with. Yeah. And I think don't newspapers of high standing still on their editorial page kind of print the two opposing opinions side by side? Yeah, that's what op ed stands for

is opposite the editorial page. So the editorial page will be the newspaper's opinion, their editorial board. And then on the literal opposite page is the basically the opposing opinion of that. Yeah, it's just a high journalistic standard. Right. But this is the government saying this.

Newspapers do this on their own, I guess just out of tradition, whereas electronic media is a little more wild westy than that. That's right. So here we are today, pretty interesting times we live in and it's all because the fairness doctrine went away. Anyway, thanks for listening to this episode

of stuff you should know. If you want to know more about the fairness doctrine, just go outside and see how you like things. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this the sound of our voices. Or I'm sorry, let me say this, the color of our voices. Oh yeah, I know what my voice is, color. This is good.

In fact, yours isn't even color. This is more of a feel thing. Okay. So, hey guys, listen to the episode on Perfect Pitch. You mentioned that synesthetes are often good candidates for having perfect pitch. I fall into the category of being someone who possesses both.

I've been serious about my musicianship since my earliest recollections in life. And that's when I began involuntarily hearing all the individual musical notes in their own unique, unchanging colors. For example, the sound of the note F, I should have brought in, dude, I bought one of those little, what do you call it?

A pitch pipe. I bought a pitch pipe. Why didn't you bring it in? No, I should have brought it in. The one note harmonica. I should have bought two. I'm gonna buy you one. I would love it.

Can you have it engraved too? Sure. Okay. So the sound of F for Allison has never not caused a rush of the color orange to sweep over her from head to foot. I also hear people's individual voices and colors. What's unique about voices to me,

they're incredibly textured in and of themselves. You guys have voice colors and textures. I love mine, read mine. Josh's voice, anytime I hear it, sounds like suede. If suede could make a sound, painted medium to dark brown with a tiny hint of Easter egg purple. That's your voice.

That is a lovely combo, if you ask me. Chuck's voice, on the other hand, has zero fuzz to it at all. Chuck's voice is very metallic, almost shimmery, like you're gazing upon a deep blue-green body of water and you can see straight to the bottom. Nice. That's a nice voice right there, Chuck.

These are both great voices. Yeah. I'm very happy that, I mean, who knows what could have come out of this email. The ears smells like puke. And your sounds like nails on a chalkboard. The end. I've come to find out that no two voice colors

are exactly the same, kind of like thumb prints and snowflakes. A person's voice color does not morph into something else, either, if they suddenly start speaking in another language. And it also has nothing to do with his or her particular personality type. So they're not saying you're smooth like Suede

on, like, as a person. Oh, yes, clearly. I think. But that I'm shimmering as a person. Sure. The point of the matter, I delight in hearing both of your voices nearly every day. As I tune into the show,

it's become a staple in my daily existence. Keep on being wonderful. That is from Allison, who is at our Salt Lake City show. Awesome. And she interacted with us from the crowd. That's great. Thank you for interacting with us, Allison. We appreciate that.

It's illegal at our shows, but I think I asked a question and she answered it. It's against the rules. That's what they say. Well, thanks, Allison. That was one of the more interesting emails we've ever received, frankly. If you want to be like Allison

and go to one of our live shows, you will never regret it for a single moment in your entire life. Go to sysklive.com and get tickets, especially Chicago. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Allison did too, you can go onto our website, stuffyshouldknow.com,

follow our social links there, or you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen

to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with a Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts.