Applying The Fairness Doctrine To Public Schools

Applying The Fairness Doctrine To Public Schools

Democrats are talking about bringing back the Fairness Doctrine as a way to bring "balance" to talk radio. Air America tried to do that--and the left discovered that there was no market for hard left talk radio--even in big cities.

Now, I'm not generally impressed with talk radio. I wasn't impressed with it back when the left dominated the field back in the 1960s. If I could somehow force Americans to read for information, I would be much happier. Even liberal newspapers and magazines like the Washington Post and Newsweek do a better job than liberal broadcast media of covering multiple perspectives--perhaps because you can read a lot more words per minute than you hear.

But if the Fairness Doctrine is such an important technique for making sure that broadcast radio is "fair" and presents both sides of an issue--why not apply the same law to public schools, K-12 and universities? In both cases, the theory is the same: the airwaves belong to the public; so do the public schools. Broadcast misinformation is bad for democracy; ditto for teacher misinformation. And as much as I agree that talk radio leans to the right, it is nothing like the manner in which the educational system leans so hard to the left that it can't even get off the floor.

What would be the practical effects of applying the Fairness Doctrine to education? If you are teaching American history, for every hour you spend teaching about slavery, the Fairness Doctrine would require that you bring in a representative from one of the neo-Confederate groups to present their perspective. If you teach about the Holocaust, someone presenting the "Holocaust didn't happen" perspective (or perhaps, "the Holocaust was a good thing" perspective) would get the same amount of time with your students. Indeed, you might end up having to decide whether to split the time among these two groups, or give each of them the same amount of time that you spent teaching that the Holocaust was a bad thing.

If you are a biology teacher, and you teach about evolution, then this question of fairness gets even more interesting. The Young Earthers will demand equal time (and in geology class, too!); the Old Earth Creationists will insist that the Intelligent Design crowd really aren't on the same side (and this is true), so they will demand equal time. And the Intelligent Design crowd will demand equal time. Can you see why the biology teacher might decide just to skip the whole evolution unit?

And this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do. The Fairness Doctrine would require that for every hour of conservative talk radio which makes money selling advertising space, the radio stations would need to run an hour of left-wing talk radio--and lose piles of money. In practice, it would make conservative talk radio so unprofitable that talk radio would largely disappear. And that's the goal: to shut down what has become the only significant counterweight to the left's domination of broadcast radio and television.