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• Thursday, January 15, 2009 11:32 AM

  New role for government?

  Prof. Paglia,

  Your analysis and discussion of the fairness doctrine missed an important aspect of the rationale for its existence. Back in the day (pre-internet days) the fairness doctrine was premised on “spectrum scarcity.” As radio became popular, the multiplicity of stations meant a drastic increase in harmful interference. To promote and to fully exploit the scarce spectrum as a resource, broadcasting licenses were granted. With this license (which granted a temporary ability to use a specific portion of spectrum free from interference by other broadcasters) came certain public interest obligations, chief among them was the “fairness doctrine.” In your column you lamented the “gradual disappearance of small, quirky local shows due to the trend toward national syndication.” “Broadcast localism” was another public interest obligation imposed on license holders. I describe this history to show that talk radio is not solely a creature of the marketplace, it was largely a creature of specific and well thought-out government policies. With the abolition of most of the public interest obligations in the past decades, talk radio has morphed into the bland and strident diet we have today.

  I wonder (and hope) if we are coming to the end of the “government is bad” meme that seemed to have gained ascendancy with the election of Reagan. For ~30 years we’ve held as an article of faith that government is the repository of the 3rd and 4rth raters and that it should not be trusted to do anything. I think this contempt for government led to a lot of the excesses in terms of torture, unlawful war, the vast increase in surveillance and the collapse of several significant sectors of our economy we’ve witnessed recently. Hopefully, the terms of debate can be enlarged in the coming years; so that we might have some discussion on the proper role of government in regulation of certain economic activity and in promoting a more civil society. Ahistorical and incomplete descriptions of things like the “fairness doctrine” do not help to promote such a discussion.

  I’ve followed your thinking since I read Sexual Personae in the early 90s. I acknowledge that you are an opinion maker and a thought leader and I think generally you do a pretty good job. But sometimes it seems that in order to make what seems like a commonsense point, you gloss over much nuance and detail. Yes, color me a humorless liberal. I can’t help it … my dad was CEO of Westinghouse Broadcasting during its heyday. Do you listen to KYW or WINS (you give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world). He took the partnership between business and government very seriously and I think it made the world a little better place.

  Thank you Ma’am for your attention to this matter!

  BH

  —BrianinSF Read BrianinSF's other letters
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