their rationale and decision could change if the scarcity issue was no longer an issue. With the exponential increase in avenues for viewpoints available to even rural America, through cable channels and the internet, the scarcity argument is arguably no longer viable. Indeed, courts in ....
the 1990's expressed as much when the "personal attack rule" which was not repealed in 1987 with the rest of the Doctrine was challenged in court. The FCC stopped enforcing that rule due to the court requirements to justify the rule. And that's huge because it was the personal attack rule ...
Also, note that Trump in his way is calling for the Doctrine as it is misunderstood and would apply it ever broader. He would claim that the Doctrine required NBC to air a conservative Saturday Night Live or conservative late night hosts. He'd never win in a protracted lawsuit, but even the ...
presence of a Doctrine would give him enough to get past the motion to dismiss stage and incur high legal costs for stations. They'd do what CBS did with Colbert (for different reasons) for all their shows: neuter them completely.
That is, indeed, an irony -- Trump is demanding laws that would act as people falsely *believe* the Fairness Doctrine acted, but, for *some* reason, they aren't happy when Trump does it.
Yep. One additional thing that just occurred to me. The existence of podcasts which can be downloaded to a phone automatically and listened to offline is probably the death of any type of Doctrine coming back to radio stations. Almost everyone has a smart phone and podcasts are largely ...
free through various streaming platforms. And there as many, many podcasts representing a myriad of viepwpoints. You'll find for more left/liberal content on podcasts that can be found on AM radio, even on stations that are open to such shows.
The idea that anything like the FD could exist in an age when most media is asynchronous and user-selected is ridiculous. As it was, most "responses" or "divergent viewpoints" were dumped at odd times, but if people WERE watching at those times, they'd sit through them.
How does that work for YouTube, TikTok, blogs, or Bluesky? Will they force "different viewpoints" into your feed? You will still scroll/skip past them, and I guarantee anything that forced them into the middle of other content would spawn 1000 hacks and workarounds.
