Why have radio and television never been granted the same First Amendment freedoms that we have always accorded the printed word? In this fascinating work, Lucas A. Powe, Jr., examines the strange paradox governing our treatment of the two types of media. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

Unlike newspapers, TV and radio broadcasting is subject to government regulation in the form of the FCC and the Fairness Doctrine, which requires stations "to devote a reasonable amount of broadcast time to the discussion of controversial issues" and "to do so farily, in order to afford reasonable opportunity for opposing viewpoints." In this provocative book, Fred W. Friendly, former president of CBS News examines the complex and critical arguments both for and against the Fairness Doctrine by analyzing the legal battles it has provoked.

American television and radio broadcasters are uniquely privileged among Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensees. Exalted as public trustees by the 1934 Communications Act, broadcasters pay virtually nothing for the use of their channels of public radiofrequency spectrum, unlike many other FCC licensees who have paid billions of dollars for similar digital spectrum. Congress envisioned a form of "social contract" between broadcast licensees and the communities they served. In exchange for their free licenses, broadcast stations were charged with providing a platform for a free marketplace of ideas that would cultivate a democratically engaged and enlightened citizenry through the broadcasting of public interest programming. Few, other than the broadcasters themselves, would dispute that this public trustee doctrine has been a dismal failure. In exchange for the tens of billions of dollars of advertising revenue generated by their licenses, commercial television and radio broadcasters air very little - and some air none - of the kinds of locally oriented public affairs, political, educational, and cultural programming traditionally considered public interest fare. Congress and the FCC have failed to correct the mismatch between the proven profit-making power of public trusteeship and its anemic returns for the American people. To the contrary, Congress and the FCC, captured by the broadcast industry they regulate, have continued to subsidize commercial broadcasters constructively by awarding them new lucrative digital channels at no cost to them, while lifting ownership concentration limits and eliminating or failing to enforce the few remaining public interest programming requirements. This Article begins by surveying the history of the public trustee doctrine, its First Amendment contradictions, and the legislative and regulatory failures and frustrations that have bedeviled the pursuit of a "free marketplace of ideas" on the nation's airwaves. It then explores the First Amendment's public forum doctrine as an alternative justification for government regulation of the public spectrum, reasoning in favor of the government's proactive creation and maintenance of public speech fora. After examining the Internet both as a public forum and as the sort of free marketplace of ideas that the broadcast spectrum was expected - but failed - to create, this Article argues that an affirmative public forum doctrine supports a requirement that broadcasters subsidize broadband Internet access in low-income and underserved communities.

Why have radio and television never been granted the same First Amendment freedoms that we have always accorded the printed word? In this fascinating work, Lucas A. Powe, Jr., examines the strange paradox governing our treatment of the two types of media. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

"A thoughtful, provocative, and timely account of the meaning of a free press in the United States." -- American Journal of Political Science Most Americans consider a free press essential to democratic society -- -either as an independent watchdog against governmental abuse of power or as a wide-open marketplace of ideas. But few understand that far--reaching public policies have shaped the news citizens receive. With contributions from leading scholars in the fields of history, legal scholarship, political science, and communications, this revised and updated edition of Freeing the Presses offers an in-depth inquiry into the theory and practice of journalistic freedom. In addition to a new foreword by Regina G. Lawrence and afterword by Laura Stein, Freeing the Presses presents fresh and timely analyses of the complexities of news media and politics.

American Broadcast Regulation and the First Amendment: Another Look is a history of federal regulation of U.S. broadcasting. In this book, Tillinghast explores the paths by which the broadcasting industry reached its current state of affairs and hypothesizes about the possibilities and dangers broadcasting presents for the future. The book explains how two important broadcast law cases, NBC versus U.S. and Red Lion Broadcasting Co. versus FCC, affect the industry and our First Amendment rights. Tillinghast also covers two major victories in the movement to deregulate broadcasting -- the elimination of the fairness doctrine in 1987 and the adoption of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 -- and calls for restoration of a revised fairness doctrine.