Rules for media threaten free speech.

• Position: FCC

THE MAN WHO served as NBC TV's legal counsel for 25 years and author of Government Control of News: A Constitutional Challenge warns that the Federal Communications Commission is poised to resurrect broad censorship rules that were revoked in 1987 because of their chilling effect on free speech and the television press. Corydon B. Dunham says the Localism, Balance and Diversity Doctrine eventually could affect news on the Internet. The FCC reportedly is planning to transfer the broadcast spectrum used by local television to the Internet to make it the nation's primary communications platform, and the agency has started to regulate the Internet.

The Fairness Doctrine was comprised of the rules by which the Federal government regulated TV journalism. Similar rules had governed radio news since 1934 and were applied to TV in 1949 by the FCC.

"TV was a powerful new medium and there were only a few broadcast stations in many communities. It was thought that this gave unusual power to station and network owners," Dunham explains. "The government justified the Fairness Doctrine as a way to ensure stations aired opposing viewpoints on issues."

Yet, what was touted as an attempt to encourage robust discourse became a tool censoring the news, Dunham contends. "If a complaint was made about a view that had been broadcast, the FCC investigated. If it concluded that a view should be changed, it ordered that. If it concluded other views should be presented, or even related issues, it ordered that."

Failure to comply could result in no license renewal, renewal for a shorter period of time, or a "negative record" applied at renewal time. In 1987, the FCC unanimously revoked the Fairness Doctrine, with court approval, after finding it had deterred news reporting on controversial issues, and had been used repeatedly to suppress viewpoints and help some officials pursue their own political objectives.

After two decades of failed attempts in Congress to revive the Fairness Doctrine, support began building anew. In 2008, the FCC released a new proposed body of rules for TV news--the Localism, Balance aid Diversity Doctrine.

"It has many of the same characteristics of the old Fairness Doctrine and can be expected to have similar results," Dunham relates. "News broadcast by television stations would have to meet government...