fairness doctrine

fairness doctrine, U.S. communications policy (1949–87) formulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that required licensed radio and television broadcasters to present fair and balanced coverage of controversial issues of interest to their communities.

The origins of the fairness doctrine lay in the Radio Act (1927), which limited radio broadcasting to licensed broadcasters but mandated that the licensees serve the public interest. The Federal Communications Act (1934) supplanted the Radio Act and created the FCC, the chief regulatory body governing the U.S. airwaves, with a mission to “encourage the larger and more effective use of radio in the public interest.”

While the fairness doctrine had its origin in the Radio Act and subsequently the Communications Act, they are not identical. For example, the iconic standard for broadcasters to give “equal time” for political candidates is rooted in the Communications Act and not explicitly part of the fairness doctrine.

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In 1949 the commission promulgated a report, In the Matter of Editorializing by Broadcast Licensees, that interpreted the public interest provisions of the Radio Act and the Communications Act as a mandate to promote “a basic standard of fairness” in broadcasting. Licensees had the duty to devote airtime to fair and balanced coverage of controversial issues that were of interest to their home communities. Individuals who were the subject of editorials or who perceived themselves to be the subject of unfair attacks in news programming were to be granted an opportunity to reply.

In 1959 a portion of 1934 Act was amended to provide exceptions to the mandate of equal airtime for office seekers. The revised law recognized some exceptions to the equal airtime mandate but held that such exceptions did not annul licensees’ obligation to provide equal airtime and balanced coverage of “conflicting views on issues of public importance.”

The fairness doctrine was never without its opponents, however, many of whom perceived parts of it as an infringement of the right to freedom of speech enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution. In 1969 the doctrine survived a challenge in the Supreme Court case Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, in which the court found that the FCC had acted within its jurisdiction in ruling that a Pennsylvania radio station had violated the fairness doctrine by denying response time to a writer who had been characterized in a broadcast as a communist sympathizer.

In 1985, however, the FCC decided that the doctrine had a “chilling effect” upon freedom of speech. At about that time, representatives of cable and satellite television networks challenged the applicability of the doctrine to their industries.

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In 1987 the FCC formally repealed the fairness doctrine but maintained both the editorial and personal-attack provisions, which remained in effect until 2000. In addition, until they were finally repealed by the commission in 2011, more than 80 media rules maintained language that implemented the doctrine.