Former General Counsel for FCC Says Pelosi Has Picked Next Partisan Political Battleground in Resurrecting ‘Fairness Doctrine’ Argument: Not Just About Equal Time for Left and Right, But About Government Manipulation of Free Marketplace of Ideas

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Bruce Fein, former General Counsel for the FCC and architect of the repeal of the “Fairness Doctrine” by the Commission during President Ronald Reagan’s administration, says Speaker Pelosi has picked the next partisan political battleground in resurrecting the “Fairness Doctrine.” Fein elaborated: “The doctrine is not about a balanced presentation of conflicting viewpoints, but about suppressing ideas over the airwaves disliked by detractors to promote a political agenda.” A Democrat-Republican divide over the matter is predictable, a mirror image of the present liberal-conservative divide in broadcast news and talk shows.

In Fein’s regular Tuesday column for The Washington Times, Fein insists the “ensuing 19 years [since the repeal] not a crumb of evidence has surfaced suggesting that controversial subjects have been shortchanged in the broadcasting marketplace of ideas.”

Mr. Fein maintains that “government should not be in the business of evaluating programming content” and “government regulation cannot be consistent with the First Amendment guarantees of a free press as they have evolved.”

Even if the Fairness Doctrine were resurrected by Congress or the Federal Communications Commission, their handiwork might be overruled by the Supreme Court under the First Amendment, according to Fein. It would be possible that the Court would find “governmental intrusion on the editorial control of broadcasters unconstitutional.”

Mr. Fein was General Counsel of the Federal Communications Commission under President Ronald Reagan and is author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle of our Constitution and Democracy. He is part of Bruce Fein and Associates and The Lichfield Group in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Fein is available for comment

SOURCE The Lichfield Group