Beyond the Fairness Doctrine

[Commentary] The fairness doctrine is still dead, and it probably will stay dead even if Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) becomes president. But there's a host of other broadcast regulations that Obama has not foresworn. In the worst-case scenario, they suggest a world where the FCC creates intrusive new rules by fiat, meddles more with the content of stations' programs, and uses the pending extensions of broadband access as an opportunity to put its paws on the Internet. At a time when cultural production has been exploding, fueled by increasingly diverse and participatory new media, we would be stepping back toward the days when the broadcast media were a centralized and cozy public-private partnership. Such threats might not rile up the red-state base the way the fairness doctrine does, in part because it's far from clear that the GOP would be any better.