The FCC’s denial of two complaints against Milwaukee radio...
The FCC’s denial of two complaints against Milwaukee radio stations WISN (AM) and WTMJ (AM) is the final death throes of the fairness doctrine offshoot “Zapple doctrine,” said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post Friday (http://bit.ly/1m7stPD).…
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The Zapple doctrine required that stations giving airtime to supporters of one political candidate had to provide similar time to supporters of the opposition. Media Action Center had filed complaints against WISN (http://bit.ly/1j4neR8) and WTMJ (http://bit.ly/Rxm4lp) for violating the Zapple doctrine and the First Amendment by not giving Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s opponents the same airtime given to the Republican’s supporters. In orders released Thursday, the Media Bureau rejected both arguments. “The Commission cannot exercise any power of censorship over broadcast stations with respect to content based programming decisions,” said the bureau of the First Amendment argument. The bureau also has no basis to enforce Zapple, the orders said. Since August 2011, the fairness doctrine has been defunct and rules springing from it are “obsolete,” the order said. “Given the fact that the Zapple Doctrine was based on an interpretation of the fairness doctrine, which has no current legal effect, we conclude that the Zapple Doctrine similarly has no current legal effect,” the orders said. So “stations don’t have to worry about on-air statements made by an opinionated talk show host giving rise to equal opportunities to those who favor the candidate opposed by the host,” Oxenford said.