The Fairness Doctrine

Congress never voted to repeal the Fairness Doctrine. The American people never opposed the idea of balanced media reporting. Yet now the whole country suffers a large partisan divide because of the Doctrine’s repeal in 1987. Was the Reagan administration too cowardly or lazy to take the time to apply this doctrine of fairness to new media platforms? They already had the knowledge that the fairness concept worked well for the existing platforms.

Or was Reagan just a radical politician that lost the 1964 presidential nomination because of his extreme right-wing views and now used his television fame to win the Presidency and impose his ideological extremism on the American people.

Factually, the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine.  But Reagan had appointed most of the members of the FCC.

The need for media fairness was lauded by Congress for thirty-eight years. History may show that our elected representatives were right to demand media fairness. It is too bad that an admired President chose to overrule the will of the people. That action directly, or indirectly, has led to the rise of ideological extremism that threatens the government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’.