Leveling the Media Playing Field
As the 10 Republican presidential candidates debate this week on their favorite cable network—Fox News—Capitol Hill Democrats are planning a new drive for access elsewhere, on talk radio and local broadcast TV.
The goal? To level the media playing field in time for the 2008 election.
Talk radio has long been a crucial power base for conservatives and Republicans; local TV stations are not.
They shy away from public-affairs programming altogether, and yet they rake in ever-larger wads of cash on political advertising.
Democrats have two media-access goals.
One is to prod local broadcast television and radio stations to renew their atrophied commitment to producing and airing their own public-affairs programming—shows that Democrats think would at least give them a chance to be heard. Some Democrats want to require stations to give free time for campaign debates, and even free campaign advertising as part of the stations’ “public-service” licensing requirement.
The Democrats’ more ambitious (and longer-range) goal is to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine.”
The Fairness Doctrine
For decades, the doctrine effectively kept partisan shows (the Rush Limbaughs of the world) off the airwaves by requiring radio and television stations to make comparable time available—free—for opposing views.
The doctrine was abandoned in 1987; Limbaugh hit the syndicated national airwaves the next year.
A soon-to-be-released study, commissioned by groups allied with the Democrats, finds that conservative dominance of the radio airwaves is growing.
According to researchers, more than 85 percent of talk-radio programming leans to the right—at least by the researchers’ definition.
Leaders of the industry, such as Limbaugh, contend they are merely acting to counter the dominance of what he calls the “drive-by” mainstream media. But on radio, it’s hard to tell who is driving by whom—and conservatives are the mainstream.
Talk radio has become big business, and taking on major broadcasting companies is not something Democrats—or any politicians—are all that eager to do.
Among Democratic presidential candidates, only Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio regularly talks about the issue—when he is asked about it on the road. I surveyed the leading contenders on the topic, and got only silence as a response.
But some senior House Democrats are interested, I am told, and Kucinich himself is planning to hold hearings on the question of whether the broadcasters are properly fulfilling their public-service obligations under federal communications law.
On the Senate side, Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has quietly been urging the party leadership to take up the same question.
A misuse of public airwaves?
The Democrats are moving carefully in public, but in private they fret at their lack of clout—and at what they see as a misuse of the public airwaves. Limbaugh’s rebuttal is simple: that Democrats and liberals just can’t make the sale in the marketplace.
As for the new efforts to review broadcast rules, “I don’t think it’s ever going to succeed,” Limbaugh told his listeners this week. But that didn’t keep him from sounding an alarm. The Democrats are pursuing a “pure Stalinist tactic,” he declared, “to silence or shut people like me up.”
There’s little chance of that.
The Democrats just want to sound some alarms themselves. Former talk show host Al Franken, now running for the U.S. Senate in his home state of Minnesota, has his own suggestion for reform.
“You shouldn’t be able to lie on the air,” he told me. “You can’t utter obscenities in a broadcast, so why should you be able to lie? You should be fined for lying.”
Federal fines for lying on the air? As a way to fill the federal treasury, it makes perfect sense.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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