The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America
by Mehrsa Baradaran · 7 May 2024 · 470pp · 158,007 words
capitalism. But neoliberals had endless funds and a plan of attack targeting every cultural and political institution. With assistance from the Federal Communications Commission’s fairness doctrine, which mandated all media to present “both sides” of controversial issues, the message got out. Powell’s media strategy of deploying articulate defenders of the
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and the Descent into Depression (R. Posner), 296–97 Fair Housing Act (1968), 16, 122 fairness, xxii, 134, 172, 173, 175, 196, 203, 233, 328 fairness doctrine, 93 Falwell, Jerry, 186, 187 Fama, Eugene, 233–34 family foundations, 89 family policies, 177–78 family values, 177, 188 Fannie Mae, 268, 295 Fanon
A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America
by Bruce Cannon Gibney · 7 Mar 2017 · 526pp · 160,601 words
Buckley/Vidal in a fair and balanced way (in the original legal sense, not the Fox News sense). The FCC enshrined this ideal in the Fairness Doctrine, enacted in 1949.15 By 1974, the FCC found that it had never had to enforce it because broadcasters had voluntarily complied with the “spirit
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1987, FCC chairman Marc Fowler—himself a (Canadian variety) Boomer, and so oblivious that he dismissed TV as “a toaster, with pictures”—formally abolished the Fairness Doctrine.17 The elimination of the Doctrine permitted the rise of ideologically driven channels, preaching to their respective choirs, a project completed in the 1990s when
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highly knowledgeable on matters of current events, the mechanics of government, etc.18 The warping effects of all these problems, from the collapse of the Fairness Doctrine to the limitations of TV and its presentation of the news, could be seen in the Boomers’ avatar Donald Trump. Like many of his generation
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to conform the news to his preexisting conceits. The spectacle of The Donald bullying Fox in the crudest terms alarmed certain audiences, but after the Fairness Doctrine collapsed, that event was exceptional only in that an individual informed a network of his preferences directly, rather than the network divining those preferences through
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newer technologies like social networking foster narcissism among the young, and perpetuate the sort of media group-think that prevailed after the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine, nothing quite as bad as television seems to have arrived, though it will be years before we can reach a definitive conclusion. For now, newer
The Cigarette: A Political History
by Sarah Milov · 1 Oct 2019
that equal airtime be given to anti-tobacco messaging to counteract the voluminous airtime devoted to selling cigarettes. His argument was creative and bold: the Fairness Doctrine—an eighteen-year-old policy that required broadcasters to present equal airtime to views of public importance—meant that anti-smoking messages be given free
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1966, the young lawyer wrote to his local TV station, WCBS-TV, New York, informing it that it was not discharging its duties under the Fairness Doctrine. He argued that that the station was required to make available free airtime to “responsible groups” who could counter the implicit message of TV commercials
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outmatched by the tobacco industry. Banzhaf’s letter made clear that commercials were his real object, as he wanted to “establish the applicability of the Fairness Doctrine to cigarette advertising.” Congress may have exempted advertising from even weak labeling requirements, and it may have neutered the FTC’s ability to regulate the
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client was the broad, unspecified notion of “the public.” In a 7-0 decision, the FCC ruled in Banzhaf’s favor. “We hold that the fairness doctrine is applicable to advertisements,” the Commission wrote. This was a dramatic ruling, one that vastly expanded the obligations of broadcast licensees, and multiplied the effects
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of the meager resources of public-health organizations. The FCC rejected the broadcasters’ assertion that the Fairness Doctrine applied only to programming. The Commission instead reiterated that the privilege of a broadcast license implied a reciprocal duty by the licensee of “the right
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steady balance of tobacco’s iron triangle. In politics as in engineering, four-legged structures wobble where three legs stand still. The man behind the Fairness Doctrine petition had no idea his letter would open a new front in the quest for public health. This was not because of any aw-shucks
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free time on radio and television,” contended Walter Jones, a representative from North Carolina’s Coastal Plain. “Logic will demand the unlimited extension of the ‘fairness doctrine’ to a virtually endless list of products.”105 In siding with Banzhaf’s and the FCC’s conception of the public interest, the D.C
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reference to the recent passage of the Nader-endorsed Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966. Other commercial interests were alerted to their stake in the Fairness Doctrine ruling. Advertising Age speculated darkly that “other Mr. Banzhaf’s [sic], concerned about the hazards of driving high powered motor vehicles, or eating high cholesterol
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had been part and parcel of industry’s success in a mixed economy might no longer be as reliable as once assumed. Objectors to the Fairness Doctrine ruling needed no warnings about the fickle nature of state support. Suddenly astute students of history, they frequently invoked Prohibition to denounce government intervention in
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energies was Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), which he operated from his law school office. ASH was initially organized to assist Banzhaf in the Fairness Doctrine fight, and he secured star sponsorship for the group, which lent it the legitimacy necessary to solicit money for the part-time legal battles of
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can move forward in this field of equal time [in broadcasting],” Moss said in support. Even a don of Madison Avenue lavished praise upon the Fairness Doctrine ruling. Emerson Foote, the former Chairman of the Interagency Council, spoke about tobacco commercials and praised Banzhaf by name. Foote’s endorsement was significant. The
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not a radical. For all of his criticism, his approach relied upon using—not resisting—the power of mainstream institutions.135 Banzhaf had characterized the Fairness Doctrine petition as a “legal loophole that might allow me a large output for a small amount of input.”136 For Banzhaf, the system was not
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system.”138 The substance of Banzhaf’s FCC petition was similarly restrained. For in the Fairness Doctrine, Banzhaf had found a glitch in a regulatory system philosophically wedded to the notion of consent and choice. The Fairness Doctrine ruling derived from the idea that citizens could make a more informed choice about smoking if
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to do so. During its early years, ASH’s agency-focused actions reaffirmed this paradigm of consent. Banzhaf monitored television stations for compliance with the Fairness Doctrine ruling. If he found that a station was slack in complying with the three-to-one ratio, he would inform the FCC. The FCC never
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it an ovum,” one public interest lawyer rather crassly explained, “and Banzhaf provided the sperm.”141 ASH also made sure that the networks discharged their Fairness Doctrine obligations in the spirit of fidelity to the principle of informational parity and informed consent. In response to an ASH complaint, the FCC ruled that
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, up from 44 percent a decade earlier.144 The FCC-mandated counteradvertising was not entirely responsible for this turnabout—though smoking rates fell during the Fairness Doctrine years.145 The gritty messages seemed to stick, with nearly half of those surveyed “recalling at least one of the cautionary broadcast messages.”146 Meanwhile
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a ceiling on just how high that cost could rise. The comparisons between the post-MSA Truth Campaign and the free airtime secured under the Fairness Doctrine are less flattering once we remember that modern anti-tobacco advertising is not freely given: it has to be purchased with MSA funds. And if
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, 2018). 101. In editorials objecting to the ruling, comparisons to Nazi Germany and Orwell’s dystopian 1984 abound. See Hill & Knowlton, “Editorial Comment on FCC ‘Fairness Doctrine’ Ruling,” July 21, 1967, Liggett & Myers Records, UCSF Library, https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/jykd0014. 102. FCC, Federal Communications Commission Reports, 949. 103
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, 279–285. See also specific agencies advertising: American agricultural exports and, 85–95; class identity and, 231–232; consumerism and, 13, 81–85, 109–118; Fairness Doctrine and, 136–139, 147–151; First World War and, 22–23; gender and, 28; health claims and, 109–112, 125–128, 132, 138, 142; Labor
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, 38, 54–56, 58, 61–65, 69–71, 76, 84, 107 FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), 145, 164–170 Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act, 292 Fairness Doctrine, 136, 138–139, 141–144, 147, 149 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, 280 FAMRI (Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute), 286 Farm and Ranch
Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown
by Philip Mirowski · 24 Jun 2013 · 662pp · 180,546 words
“Take Back the American Dream” motif, they would propose “reforms” dating back to the 1980s, such as the Tobin tax on financial transactions, or a “fairness doctrine” for political ads, or an ineffectual public financing scheme for election campaigns. Mostly in the heat of Occupy, disputations over the crisis and financial sector
Fantasyland
by Kurt Andersen · 5 Sep 2017
not so much alarmed as amazed and thrilled. Just before the Clintons arrived in Washington, the right had managed to do away with the federal Fairness Doctrine, which had been enacted to keep radio and TV shows from being ideologically one-sided. Until then, big-time conservative opinion media had consisted of
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two magazines, William F. Buckley’s biweekly National Review and the monthly American Spectator, both with small circulations. But absent a Fairness Doctrine, Rush Limbaugh’s national right-wing radio show, launched in 1988, was free to thrive, and others promptly appeared, followed at the end of Clinton
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obliged to pursue and present some rough approximation of the truth rather than to promote a truth, let alone fictions. With the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, a new American laissez-faire had been officially declared. If lots more incorrect and preposterous assertions circulated in our most massive mass media, that was
The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era
by Gary Gerstle · 14 Oct 2022 · 655pp · 156,367 words
act made sure that no single media company became too powerful or too biased in its political views. Indeed, in 1949, the FCC adopted the “Fairness Doctrine” stipulating that a media company (radio or TV) that aired controversial views had to attempt to make “facilities available for the expression of contrasting viewpoints
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declined to do so, it would be subject to FCC sanctions and could even be taken off the air. Though never easy to enforce, the Fairness Doctrine compelled private media to strive for objectivity in their news reporting. It was grounded in a belief that public regulation of the broadcast media was
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the “mad monk of deregulation” (because of his intense and unswerving dedication to freeing up the communications market), Fowler laid out a case for the Fairness Doctrine’s repeal in a detailed 1985 FCC report. In 1986, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit (on which Scalia and Bork were sitting
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,” meaning that the FCC could repeal it anytime, regardless of whether it had congressional approval to do so.43 As FCC head Fowler edged the Fairness Doctrine toward extinction in 1987, concerned bipartisan majorities in Congress scrambled to stop him, incorporating its principles into a piece of legislation known as the Fairness
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in Broadcasting Act. This bill would have compelled the FCC to continue to abide by Fairness Doctrine principles. But Fowler had Reagan in his corner and had already persuaded the president to veto the legislation when it arrived on his desk for
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our Constitution. It is, in my judgment, unconstitutional.”44 The Fairness in Broadcasting Act died with that veto; the Fairness Doctrine ceased to guide FCC oversight shortly thereafter. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was a major neoliberal victory. It freed radio and television stations from an obligation to present news that strove for
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-year scorched-earth odyssey across the terrain of American media and politics. Limbaugh’s talk radio show went into national syndication only months after the Fairness Doctrine’s repeal. His defiantly unbalanced political commentary and his delight in provoking outrage among his liberal critics made his show one of the most popular
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a pillar of the Reagan counter-establishment. Limbaugh himself always believed that the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine had made his rise and influence possible. He cleverly labeled efforts across the next two decades to restore the Fairness Doctrine as the “Hush Rush” movement. When the rare caller challenged him on his biases, Limbaugh
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radical elements of the GOP. It constantly poked its finger in the eyes of its opponents and of the legions mourning the passing of the Fairness Doctrine, by declaring its own approach to the news as “fair and balanced.”46 In fact, cultivating controversy through unbalanced reporting was its raison d’être
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revolution that began in the 1980s would have forced any political order, Republican or Democrat, to adjust to its imperatives. But the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, and its justification by reference to the freedom of the press guarantees lodged in the First Amendment, made meaningful public regulation of powerful media institutions
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broad terrain. The Reaganite neoliberals overhauled legal thought and judicial appointments to make sure that their policies would survive challenges in American courts. Jettisoning the Fairness Doctrine allowed them to open new fronts in the war for public opinion. And the elaboration of a neo-Victorian moral code relocated responsibility for well
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national broadcasting companies. The same rules were applied to the television networks that grew out of the radio networks in the 1950s and 1960s. The Fairness Doctrine that prevailed from the late 1940s to the late 1980s and that required a broadcaster to give equal time to both sides of a political
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, threatening to swamp the carefully regulated world of network TV and its three major providers with hundreds of new channels. Reagan’s FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine in the late 1980s, arguing that the new age of communication had made it possible not only for everyone to speak but also for everyone
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to be heard; regulation no longer served the public interest. Tellingly, the Clinton administration made no effort to restore the Fairness Doctrine when it moved into the White House in 1993. To the contrary, it wanted to accelerate the IT revolution already under way by modernizing the
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, 2. 41.Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement. 42.Quoted in Julian E. Zelizer, “How Washington Helped Create the Contemporary Media: Ending the Fairness Doctrine in 1987,” in Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Media Nation: The Political History of News in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
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Press, 2017), 178. See also Anna Cardoso, “The Rise of the Right-Wing Media and the Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in the USA” (undergraduate dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2019). 43.Cardoso, “Rise of the Right-Wing Media,” 34–35, 43. 44.Ronald Reagan, “Veto—S
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the President of the United States Returning Without My Approval S. 742, The Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987, Which Would Codify the So-Called Fairness Doctrine,” June 19, 1987 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1987). 45.“Kucinich Revives ‘Hush Rush’ Movement,” Rush Limbaugh Show, May 19, 2011, https://www.rushlimbaugh.com
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Station: Creating American Television, 1948–1961 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Julian E. Zelizer, “How Washington Helped Create the Contemporary Media: Ending the Fairness Doctrine in 1987,” in Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Media Nation: The Political History of News in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
…
Press, 2017), 176-189; Anna Cardoso, “The Rise of the Right-Wing Media and the Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in the USA” (undergraduate dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2019). 59.See, in particular, Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1922) and The Phantom
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Public (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1925). 60.On the Fairness doctrine, see Zelizer, “How Washington Helped Create the Contemporary Media,” and Cardoso, “The Rise of the Right-Wing Media and the Repeal of the
…
Fairness Doctrine in the USA.” 61.One of the key promoters of this vision was cyber-utopian (and longtime lyricist for the Grateful Dead) John Perry Barlow.
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, 275–76, 277 European roots of neoliberalism, 9 European Union (EU), 177 evangelical Christians, 2. see also Falwell, Jerry Facebook, 172–73, 279, 292–93 Fairness Doctrine (1949), 125–28, 139–40, 166–67 Fairness in Broadcasting Act, 126–27 Fallows, James, 66 Falwell, Jerry, 12–13, 120–21 fascism, 10, 29
The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It
by Jonathan Zittrain · 27 May 2009 · 629pp · 142,393 words
of compelled speech would not be unprecedented. For much of the twentieth century, the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine forced broadcasters to air controversial public interest stories and provide opposing viewpoints on those issues. See Steve Rendall, The Fairness Doctrine: How We Lost It and Why We Need It Back, EXTRA!, Jan./Feb. 2005, http
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facial recognition technology, 214–15 fair use defense, 115, 121–22 FBI, 110, 113, 118, 187 FCC (Federal Communications Commission): and AT&T, 21, 26; Fairness Doctrine, 323n135 Federalist Papers, 317n67 FIDOnet, 25–26, 27, 29, 237 Fifth Amendment, 112 file sharing, illegal, 111–12, 197 filtering systems, 46, 111, 114–15
The-General-Theory-of-Employment-Interest-and-Money
by John Maynard Keynes · 13 Jul 2018
producing results directly opposite to those intended. Thus, the weight of my criticism is directed against the inadequacy of the theoretical foundations of the laissez-faire doctrine upon which I was brought up and which for many years I taught;—against the notion that the rate of interest and the volume of
Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris
by Richard Kluger · 1 Jan 1996 · 1,157pp · 379,558 words
was concerned about or wanted to change then, smoking would not have been on it,” Banzhaf recalled. But he was aware of the FCC’s “fairness doctrine,” requiring broadcasters to allow free time to state opposing views on matters of public controversy dealt with on the air. While the doctrine was almost
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eager to see if he could put his new legal learning to practical application, Banzhaf wrote to the FCC for a pamphlet explaining how the fairness doctrine worked and then fired off a letter in December to WCBS-TV in New York, the station that had carried the football telecast with the
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have outlawed cigarettes, Geller conceded, but its not having done so on pragmatic grounds did not affect the FCC’s statutory power to impose the fairness doctrine on tobacco products. Hyde and all his colleagues agreed. Early in June 1967, WCBS-TV received a three-page letter from the FCC stressing in
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that he did not have the skills, time, or money to go up against the big law firms attacking the commission’s application of the fairness doctrine to cigarette ads, Banzhaf kept after the Interagency Council. He was granted an audience by Emerson Foote, who found the young man “too brash” and
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the public learn too much about the hazards of smoking for the good of the tobacco industry and the economy.” Regarding the applicability of the fairness doctrine, the judge added: [W]here, as here, one party to a debate has a financial clout and a compelling economic interest in the presentation of
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would concede the cumulative effectiveness of the estimated $75 million worth of free airtime that the public-health forces were granted under the FCC’s fairness doctrine. “I never heard anyone in the industry who said, These [antismoking] ads are ruining us,’” recalled Rimer’s counterpart then at the Tobacco Institute, William
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the lowest quarter could continue to be advertised; and antismoking commercials being carried gratis in prime time by the stations could therefore, because of the fairness doctrine, continue, albeit on a reduced basis. It was a tempting offer to Magnuson, Pertschuk, and especially Daniel Horn at the Clearinghouse on Smoking and Health
#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media
by Cass R. Sunstein · 7 Mar 2017 · 437pp · 105,934 words
to insulate themselves from competing positions and concerns. Fragmentation is correspondingly less likely. Group polarization also raises more general issues about communications policy. Consider the “fairness doctrine,” now largely abandoned, but once requiring radio and television broadcasters to devote time to public issues and allow an opportunity for opposing views to speak
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view. If one view was covered, the opposing position would have to be allowed a right of access. When the Federal Communications Commission abandoned the fairness doctrine, it did so on the ground that much of the time, this second prong led broadcasters to avoid controversial issues entirely and to present views
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in a way that suggested a bland uniformity. Subsequent research has indicated that the commission was right. The elimination of the fairness doctrine has indeed produced a flowering of controversial substantive programming, sometimes involving extreme views of one kind or another; consider talk radio.36 Typically this is
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regarded as a story of wonderfully successful deregulation, and in general that is correct. The effects of eliminating the fairness doctrine were precisely what was sought and intended. Those effects are indeed good, and they should be celebrated. But if we attend to the problem of
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fewer controversial positions than for them to hear a single such view, stated over and over again. I do not suggest or believe that the fairness doctrine should be restored. Law professor Heather Gerken has rightly drawn attention to “second-order diversity”—the kind of diversity that comes when society consists of
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speech on the subways. In the technical language of First Amendment law, this form of regulation is “content based” but “viewpoint neutral.” Consider the old fairness doctrine, which required broadcasters to cover public issues and allow speech by those with opposing views. Here the content of speech is highly relevant to what
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competition to do more and better, and enlisting various social pressures in the direction of improved performance. I have referred several times to the old fairness doctrine, which required broadcasters to cover public issues and allow a right of reply for dissenting views. We have seen that this doctrine was repealed largely
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was amply justified, it has had a downside insofar as it has increased fragmentation and hence polarization. But whether or not we think the old fairness doctrine was defensible, a disclosure requirement—tied to coverage of public issues and diversity of views—would be a far less intrusive way of accomplishing the
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held that government has the authority to subject television and radio broadcasters to a kind of must-carry rule in the form of the old fairness doctrine, requiring attention to public issues and an opportunity for diverse views to speak.14 At the same time, the Court firmly rejected the idea that
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technological reasons, and hence are more properly subject to governmental controls. Now that the scarcity rationale is so much weaker, the continued viability of the fairness doctrine is exceedingly doubtful. If the Federal Communications Commission tried to reinstate the doctrine, the Court would probably strike it down. The Court has nonetheless upheld
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.For a work that offers an affirmative answer to the question in its own title, see Thomas W. Hazlett and David W. Sosa, “Was the Fairness Doctrine a ‘Chilling Effect’? Evidence from the Postderegulation Radio Market,” Journal of Legal Studies 26, no. 1 (1997): 279–301. 37.See Heather K. Gerken, “Second
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; cybercascades and, 119, 134–35; deliberative democracy and, 228; disclosure policies and, 215, 218–23; diversity and, 18, 23, 214; evaluating market of, 53–54; fairness doctrine and, 84–85, 207, 221, 227; FCC and, 84, 179, 198, 219–20, 227; fewer shared experiences and, 144–46; filtering and, 6, 28 (see
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; terrorism and, 236, 242, 245 diversity: blogs and, 231; of cities, 12; communications options and, 18, 23; Daily Me and, 255; epistemic value of, 49; fairness doctrine and, 221; ideological, 123; institutions and, 37; polarization and, 69, 85–86; public forums and, 37–38; real-world interactions and, 13; religious, 38; republicanism
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; sovereignty and, 53; spreading information and, 11, 15, 138–39, 146, 149, 154–55; terrorism and, 237, 240–42, 245–46; time spent viewing, 124 fairness doctrine, 84–85, 207, 221, 227, 272n36 falsehoods: rumors and, 103, 108–11, 125, 236–37; spreading information and, 11, 23, 135, 155, 250; terrorism and
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, 259, 266n14; cybercascades and, 57, 98, 127, 132, 135; democratic debate and, 230; Democrats and, 10; e pluribus unum and, 51–52; extremism and, 7; fairness doctrine and, 84–85, 207, 221, 227; feelings and, 16; heterogeneity and, 51, 135; improving situation of, 213, 221, 230; niches and, 23; partyism and, 10
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, 85–89; entreprenuers of, 238; extremism and, 7, 67, 69, 72, 74, 76, 78, 86, 88; Facebook and, 64, 71–72, 82–83, 86, 89; fairness doctrine and, 84–85, 207, 221, 227; filtering and, 60–62, 64, 66, 71, 79, 82; fragmentation and, 5, 7, 64, 77, 83–86, 89, 221
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); Democrats and, 10 (see also Democrats); Dennis v. United States and, 248; echo chambers and, 10, 122; Facebook and, 2–4, 82–83, 122–24; fairness doctrine and, 84–85, 207, 221, 227; fascism and, ix, 80; federalists and, 45, 48–49; filtering and, 24–26, 60–62; freedom and, 24–26
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, 109 radicalization, 45, 74–75, 235, 237, 241–42, 244–46 radio: advertising and, 28; bias and, 64; citizens and, 165–66; consumers and, 33; fairness doctrine and, 84–85, 207, 221, 227; freedom of speech and, 196, 202; improving, 213, 215, 220–23, 225, 227; must-carry rules and, 226–29
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, 197–99, 202, 204–5, 210–11, 221, 226; educational programming for children and, 170, 181, 197–99, 202, 204–5, 210–11, 221, 226; fairness doctrine and, 84–85, 207, 221, 227; filtering and, 1, 25–26 (see also filtering); First Amendment and, 196–99; forms of neutrality and, 207–10
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