Show The right to be informed Senator William D D is placing a bill before this Congress to limit the powers of the Federal Communications Commission Doctrine arly in regard to the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time rule He states that his concern is the power of the FCC to deny the renewal of a license to a radio or TV station station- or network if that licensee fails to abide by the Fairness Doctrine or the Equal Time rule To Senator this power of the FCC amounts to an infringement of the First Amendment right of freedom of the press Originally the FCC had responsibility only in technical areas such as allocation of frequencies power output of stati stations ns and directivity of antennas In the last and early the Congress discovered that tha t some licensees were abusing their freedom They were for example allowing some candidates to speak but denying that right to others They were also stumping for favorite bills and blocking out counter-arguments counter from opponents The Congress corrected these abuses by establishing the Equal Time rule and the Fairness Doctrine The former insures that all bona fide political parties would have equa equal opportunity to take their case to the public The latter protects the publics public's right to hear all viewpoints on controversial issues of national importance As the Congress expressed it t they wanted to insure a market marketplace marketplace pIa place ce of ideas The Congress knew that tha tour our democratic system could not continue to work unless the people the electorate were sufficiently well informed informed informed in in- formed of all sides of controversial issues to make sound judgments The Supreme me Court 1 8 s h held ld that hat t tie the e Fairness Doctrine not does does not conflict c with First Amendment freedoms In thinking about the freedom of the press it is important to understand that the Founding Fathers were concerned with censorship by the government They wanted to make sure that the press was not controlled by the government that it would remain freeto free freeto freeto to criticize the government But the FCC does not censor programs in the name of the Equal Time rule or the Fairness Doctrine It does not review programs after the fact to see whether a licensee has abused its power It simply looks into complaints by the public of abuse of power by radio or TV licensees The FCC therefore is concerned with protecting the publics public's right to know to be informed Its effect is to prevent censorship or biased programming by radio and TV It is always potentially unfair to question the motives of an individual But the fact is that if Senator bill to repeal the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time rule is passed by the Congress the result could be that radio and TV stations will censor all but one political party and TV networks will carry carryon on scale full-scale propaganda on behalf of their favorite national policies The basic right of the public to be informed would be lost and our democracy would be in je jeopardy pardy |