Fairness Doctrine Update

Jillian Bandes | August 14, 2009 4:00 PM

I reported on the installation of a new "diversity czar" that threatened to institute the same principles in the now-defunct "Fairness Doctrine." Turns out, this new Czar, Mark Lloyd, is adamantly in favor of instituting a policy where the total operating costs of a private radio company would be taxed, penny for penny, to pay for public radio stations. In 2006. Lloyd wrote Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America, in which he stated:

Federal and regional broadcast operations and local stations should be funded at levels commensurate with or above those spending levels at which commercial operations are funded...This funding should come from license fees charged to commercial broadcasters. Funding should not come from congressional appropriations.

CNS