The Fairness Doctrine: Informing the Public, or Infringing Upon Them? By Sam Marks On 2 November 1920, the first commercial radio station in the United States was established. That same evening, from a factory rooftop in Pittsburgh, Albert Sindlinger of KDKA read aloud the results of the 1920 U.S. Presidential Election. ‘Nobody had any comprehension of the significance of what was going on’, said Sindlinger when recounting the evening. The ‘couple hundred listeners’ to Sindlinger’s broadcast would lead the trend on what would become, by the end of the decade, the first electronic mass medium. Broadcast radio took off in the United States throughout the 1920s. Six months after the foundation of KDKA, radios were in both high demand and in high supply. By 1922, there were 500 AM radio stations operating across the country and a future 1947 survey showed that more than 80 per cent of Americans were radio listeners. News and entertainment were never so easily accessible to the wider public. As consumption of radio grew significantly throughout the 1920s, a “Golden Age of radio” emerged, stretching from the 1930s to the 1950s. Radio’s golden age brought about new types of programming that would reach the demands of the wider, more expansive audience. Play adaptations, mystery serials, quiz shows, comedies, sports, cooking shows, soap operas, variety hours, kids programming, and weather broadcasts all accompanied the news as staple aspects of daily programming. When President Calvin Coolidge’s second inaugural address was broadcast over radio on 6 December 1925, politics also became a staple in American radio. Across the country, Americans could now enjoy a shared, common experience. Prior to the radio boom of the 1920s, the only significant regulation of radio was the Radio Act of 1912 which required radio stations to be licensed to broadcast legally, but which did not anticipate the popularity radio would gain throughout the next decade. Following the rise of broadcasting, the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) was established. Stations were now required to act ‘in the public interest, convenience, or necessity’ to obtain broadcasting licenses. In 1934, the Federal Communications Commission superseded the FRC, taking on the federal powers of regulating radio. Throughout the 1930s, the Great Depression ravaged the country economically. The debilitated economic climate gave rise to broadcast evangelism: the practice of Christian preachers using the radio, and later television, to spread their faith. These broadcasts became extremely
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popular, especially in the Midwest and South, where listeners flooded evangelists with donations to keep their programs on-air. In addition to religious views, notorious televangelists often espoused anticommunist, antisemitic, and segregationist views. Many also funded their programming by selling so-called “miracle cures” for a variety of ailments, despite the lack of any scientific evidence to back up their claims. The influence of these broadcasters led to the FCC implementation of policies to curb the polarizing climate of modern radio. This regulation culminated in the Fairness Doctrine. In 1938, Lawrence J. Flynn challenged the licenses of Boston stations WAAB and WNAC. Flynn argued these stations aired one-sided editorial attacks towards politicians that the owner, John Shepherd III, opposed. Though Flynn failed to gain the licenses for these stations, the FCC banned radio editorials in the 1941 Mayflower Decision. In 1949, the FCC repealed the Mayflower Doctrine in favor of the Fairness Doctrine. Two key regulations were now placed on radio stations. The first was the “fair coverage rule”: radio stations needed to ensure coverage of controversial issues was sufficient and gave fair representation to opposing views on those issues. The second regulation was the right to reply: citizens must be given airtime to reply to issues aired on the radio. These regulations raised the standards stations had to follow, significantly hindering the power of both preachers and biased programmers. The regulations under the Fairness Doctrine carried over to television as it gradually overtook radio as the mass media in the 1950s. In a similar fashion to 1920s radio, television brought a new wave of communication that was heavily popularized across the country. The prominence of television in America is still present today, with a 2011 survey showing that 97 per cent of American households own a television set. With the general expansion of mass media, including the explosive popularity of the internet as a broadcasting tool, more polarizing broadcasters utilizing these new communication technologies followed. Democratic Party affiliates used the Fairness Doctrine to try and combat farright viewpoints. The goal of these attacks was to make it too costly for right-wing broadcasters to be aired, so stations would not contract them. Groups like the National Council for Civil Responsibility consistently took the spearhead against far-right
