The Fairness Doctrine, which allows Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to interfere in broadcasters’ programming decisions, was established in the early 1930s and finally cast aside during the Reagan administration. Since then, media diversity has blossomed impressively, notably through the proliferation of talk radio programs.

This increase in diversity proves that the original point of the Fairness Doctrine was government control over political speech, and that it was quite effective. Little wonder, then, that Democrats tried to reinstate it in the current congressional session. Fortunately, their effort was soundly defeated, as James Gattuso reports at National Review Online:

Victory was fast and shockingly easy. The battle over the Fairness Doctrine ended last week when the House of Representatives voted 309-115 against allowing the Federal Communications Commission to re-impose the regulation on broadcasters. The vote almost certainly means that the long-dead rule will not be revived anytime soon. That’s good news. But the celebrations should be tempered: the real battle over media regulation is still to come, and won’t involve the words “Fairness Doctrine.”

Given its manifest effectiveness at suppressing free speech, it should not surpise us that a gang of leftist Democrats tried to reinstate the doctrine during this session. It was defeated when Republicans went on the offensive in correctly characterizing it as a blatant assault on freedom of speech, which it obviously was.

All of this means that the Democrats will return to the issue with much less obvious suppressive measures, as Gattuso points out: 

The odd Dennis Kucinich aside, few on the Left ever seriously thought the Fairness Doctrine could be reinstituted. Last week’s win was mostly over undefended ground. But the Left has been very active in promoting a number of much more subtle “reforms” meant to alter what broadcasters do and say.

These approaches were detailed in report jointly released last month by the liberal advocacy groups Free Press and the Center for American Progress. Entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Talk Radio,” many conservative commentators mistakenly assumed the report endorsed the Fairness Doctrine. Far from it: The authors dismiss the doctrine as “ineffective.”

Instead, they propose an alternative agenda, including:

• Strengthened limits on how many radio stations on firm can own, locally and nationally;
• Shortening broadcast license terms;
• Requiring radio broadcasters to regularly show they are operating in the “public interest;”
• Imposing a fee on broadcasters who fail to meet these “public interest obligations” with the funding to go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The goal of the reforms is the same as the Fairness Doctrine: to reduce the influence of conservative talk radio. Limiting ownership, the authors believe, will eliminate many of the owners who favor conservative causes. Public interest requirements can be defined almost any way a regulator wants—up to and perhaps even beyond that required by the old Fairness Doctrine. And the proposed fee provides regulators with a quite effective stick to compel compliance—as well as to direct funds to more ideologically compatible public broadcasters.

As Barry Goldwater would have noted, eternal vigilance is required in this fight to keep our media relatively free.