DETROIT – Ernie Harwell, the legendary Detroit Tigers broadcaster, told me back in the 1990s that he knew Rush Limbaugh long before he had become famous as the ultimate radio “shock jock,”
“He used to be the guy who brought the hot dogs to our broadcast booth when the Tigers were in Kansas City,” he said.
That was back around 1979, when Limbaugh, after having essentially flunked out of college, was doing a stint as promotions director of the Kansas City Royals. He later got into radio, where he was a pioneer at saying racist, sexist and offensive things.
“Take that bone out of your nose and call me back,” he once told a black caller. “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals look like Jesse Jackson?” he asked. He was equally nasty about women who wanted equal rights, who he called “Feminazis.” He proclaimed that “feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society.”
There was probably no more polarizing figure in media. When Limbaugh, who had just turned 70, died of cancer last month there were a torrent of stories blaming him for ruining political discourse, helping coarsen our culture, and paving the way for a President of the United States who behaved the way he did.
True enough. But it wasn’t really Rush Limbaugh’s fault.
It was Ronald Reagan’s.
Genial, folksy Ronald Reagan created Rush Limbaugh and all the other nasty right-and-left-wing imitators spawned in his wake.
President Reagan may not have meant to, but he did, and here’s how: Reagan destroyed the Fairness Doctrine, a rule the government had for many years that required all over-the-air broadcasters (meaning radio and television) to devote some time to issues of public interest, and to present both sides of those issues.
How could they legally do that? Simple: Congress and the courts long ago declared that the airwaves are public property, like the national parks. WSPD radio in Toledo broadcasts at 1370 AM and 92.9 FM, but the station does not own those frequencies.
The federal government does. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) leases the right to broadcast at those frequencies to iHeart Media, which owns the station, generally for eight years at a time. The stations have to periodically renew their licenses.
Broadcast licenses are often lucrative “licenses to make money,” and back in the day, the FCC expected something in return. The stations had to provide programming in the public interest, which usually meant news. They also set standards of decency and fairness.
That made sense to most people, because there are not enough “places on the dial” for every person, even every group, to have their own frequency. For many years, few people objected to the Fairness Doctrine. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that the Fairness Doctrine was both constitutional and essential to democracy.
Stations that didn’t follow the rules were hit with stiff fines and could lose their licenses, and a few sometimes did. Rush Limbaugh, as we knew him, would not have been tolerated on the air in 1986.
But in 1987, Reagan, nearing the end of his second term in office, decided we didn’t need the Fairness Doctrine any longer, and he had appointed FCC commissioners who agreed.
However, Democrats and Republicans in Congress strongly disagreed. They overwhelmingly passed a bill that made the Fairness Doctrine, which had just been a policy, federal law. But in June 1987 Reagan vetoed it, saying it was “antagonistic to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment.”
Congress tried to override his veto, but fell just short. Less than two months later, the FCC voted to abolish the Fairness Doctrine.
That opened the floodgates. The next year a savvy executive signed a controversial radio host who was working at a small radio station in Sacramento to a nationwide syndication contract.
The disc jockey’s name was Rush Limbaugh.
Others followed. It soon became possible to listen to radio or watch certain TV stations all day long without ever being exposed to more than one point of view.
Now, it is important to remember two things: The Fairness Doctrine never applied to print — magazines or newspapers. That’s because they are produced with entirely private resources.
Then, too, there’s no limit on how many newspapers there can be – theoretically, everyone could publish one. Nor did the Fairness Doctrine apply to cable TV, because it is not broadcast over the public airwaves, but via privately owned coaxial cables.
Liberals sometimes say that if the Fairness Doctrine hadn’t been abolished, right-wing outlets like the Fox Network could not exist, but that is dead wrong. They could, and probably would.
But we would not have had Rush Limbaugh calling a feminist law student a “slut” and a “prostitute” for saying contraceptives should be included in health care coverage.
Could the Fairness Doctine, now dead for three decades, ever be reinstated? Theoretically, yes. But there seems to be almost no support for doing so. Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) introduced a bill to do so in 2019, but it went nowhere.
U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) came out in favor of reinstating it in 2009, but President Barack Obama wasn’t interested.
The world has changed a lot, and the Fairness Doctrine is probably dead. But if Reagan or anyone else really thought back in 1987 that its repeal would be good for democracy, the evidence seems clear that they were very wrong.
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