Take off your hat, crank up a dirge, and get out the shovel, for it’s time to put the last bit of dirt over the Fairness Doctrine. It’s dead.
The FCC killed it on Monday. Buried it.
“Our extensive efforts to eliminate outdated regulations,” explained FCC Chairman Julias Genachowski, “are rooted in our commitment to ensure that FCC rules and policies promote a healthy climate for private investment and job creation.”
A total of 83 regulations were deleted in the efficiency-minded campaign.
And it’s nice to hear of it. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving … target.
Actually, it’s been a score of years since the old dinosaur of speech regulation “fell into desuetude,” as President Grover Cleveland might have put it. (Ol’ Grover was not exactly a punchy writer.) And hurray for its death and burial — let’s hope it shall not rise from its coffin, like Dracula in a cheap horror flick.
For the “Fairness Doctrine” was an attempt to regulate speech rather than let speech remain free. It helped further solidify the two-party system in America, and the very idea that there were only “two sides” to any political question … when it is obvious that a whole spectrum of possibilities exists for nearly any proposal or issue.
The Founding Fathers were right: Congress should “make no law” abridging the freedom of speech.
Interestingly, the regulation received its death blow not from Congress, but from the Federal Communications Commission.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.