Make The Public Airwaves Serve The Public Again

Dave Johnson, HuffPo: Restore The Fairness Doctrine!

I'd go further than this. I think that as a condition of being granted a license to broadcast, television stations should have to give political candidates free access to the PUBLIC airwaves.

Who profits from our current system of paid political advertising? Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox. GE, the owner of NBC. Etc., etc. It's basically a huge money-redistribution system. Corporations put money into political campaigns, and much of that money ends up in the pocket of the owners of the corporate media. Another corporate shell game.

Right now, the only way to get your message out in a political season is to pay for it. But why must that always be so? Can we imagine a new system, where broadcasters have to make available a certain amount of time for free to political candidates? Why not? We already regulate broadcasts by fining them for allowing people to say unimportant things like "fuck". Why not regulate broadcasts by requiring them to allow the most important of all speech, our political discourse, on the public airwaves for free?