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An unfair Doctrine: democrats try once again to 'hush Rush,' and many others.

Article Excerpt
RUSH LIMBAUGH remembers the days when the Fairness Doctrine ruled the world of radio. There was a moment in 1972, he recalls, when as a young disc jockey at WIXZ, an AM station in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, he criticized coverage of the Democratic response to Richard Nixon's State of the Union address. The State of the Union is a constitutionally mandated report, Limbaugh told listeners, but there's nothing in the Constitution about any opposition-party response. So why were the networks covering it as if it were equal to the president's speech?

It was a reasonable question, something one might hear on dozens of programs today. But it wasn't something you could say on the air in 1972. "I got a scathing phone call on the hotline during the commercial break," Limbaugh recalls, referring to the direct phone line from station management to the broadcast studio. "And then I got a follow-up memo. They said these types of things, if they are on this radio station, will appear in editorials, written and recorded by management." The station's executives, worried about running afoul of the Fairness Doctrine, laid down the law: Mere on-air personalities weren't supposed to discuss issues of importance. "I had to button my lip about it," Limbaugh says.

Ask any radio veteran--not just the nation's most successful talk-show host--and he'll probably have a similar story about the bad old days of the Fairness Doctrine. From the earliest years of radio until 1987, when the Doctrine was repealed, the federal government rode herd on what broadcasters could and could not say about controversial issues. If a radio host took a strong position on the air, he might find himself under investigation by officials of the Federal Communications Commission, who would carefully examine his words to determine whether they passed government standards of fairness. If they didn't, the government might require his station to offer free air time to people with other views, or it might punish the owners in a number of ways, including the revocation of their license to be on the air. The whole process was a blatant violation of First Amendment rights--what journalist or commentator today would stand for it?--but it was the way things worked in broadcasting for more than 50 years.

And now it might be coming back. After the Doctrine was repealed, there was an explosion of talk and information on the radio, and today the business is dominated by Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Bill Bennett, and a long list of other conservatives. Their commercial success, along with the failure of a number of liberal talk-radio ventures, has led some influential people in Washington to argue that the Fairness Doctrine should be revived.

"I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they're in a better position to make a decision," Illinois...