[rhino369]

The fairness doctrine was hardly ever envoked. Attempting to apply it to a situation like this would not be constitutional. The fairness doctrine was found constitutional when it required a rebuttal to a direct personal attack during an era when there were only 3 stations. But this situation is different.

It was never applied to a sitation where a network required "must run" content. At best, the fairness doctrine would require at least some dissenting opinion on the issue. The Supreme Court, in upholding the fairness doctrine, said it should never be used to limit speech. That's what critics want to do here, punish Sinclair for running content.

Arguably, the fairness doctrine is no longer constitutional at all. The court's reasoning relied on there being limited channels. That is no longer true. Even on broadcast, there are 20 channels available. If democrats don't like Sinclair, they can go start their own network. When you consider all the other sorts of media available, its just not credible to argue that there is a legitmate concern that people cannot be both sides of an issue.

[Shendare]

>The fairness doctrine was hardly ever envoked.

I (a layperson) don't really follow this. It sounds to me like "while the rules were in effect, they were rarely broken".

>an era when there were only 3 stations. But this situation is different.

Lots of station numbers, run by just a handful of owners:

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/07/who-owns-what-on-televis...

[gh02t]

OP's point was that Fairness Doctrine was never a hard and fast rule because the FCC was hesitant to actually enforce it due to free speech concerns. Broadcasters were generally willing to cooperate, but they got lots of wiggle room. Plus it was vague and easily sidestepped.

I worry it could do more harm than good nowadays if reinstated. Suddenly anti-vaxxers and people who think climate change is a hoax would have to be given more coverage, for example.

[jlarocco]

> >The fairness doctrine was hardly ever envoked.

> I (a layperson) don't really follow this. It sounds to me like "while the rules were in effect, they were rarely broken".

It means that the FCC rarely enforced the fairness doctrine unless it was being blatantly abused.

> Lots of station numbers, run by just a handful of owners:

> http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/07/who-owns-what-on-televis....

The fairness doctrine doesn't make sense any more because anybody with a phone can publish their opinions to a global audience. It made sense at the time because media was centrally controlled and very expensive to produce.

[beckler]

If a majority of broadcast stations were owned by a single company, and that single parent company enforced censorship and strong bias about one or multiple issues, would that not be considered an instance of limited channels?

Sure the number of channels is higher, but the amount of information spread is not.

[philwelch]

The fairness doctrine may not have been invoked or enforced, but stations still did things, to remain in compliance, that they stopped doing afterwards. In particular, right-wing talk radio exploded almost immediately after the repeal of the fairness doctrine.