This article is part of The Poynter 50, a series reflecting on 50 moments and people that shaped journalism over the past half-century — and continue to influence its future. As Poynter celebrates its 50th anniversary, we examine how the media landscape has evolved and what it means for the next era of news.
The walk from his Federal Communications Commission office to the commission meeting room felt particularly long for Dennis Patrick on Aug. 4, 1987.
That was the day that Patrick, then FCC chairman, and his colleagues unanimously voted to repeal the Fairness Doctrine, a policy that had mandated broadcast networks to fairly present differing viewpoints on controversial issues.
Patrick remembers how quiet it was as he walked to the meeting that day with one of his aides.
“Finally he said to me, just before I opened the door to enter the commission meeting room, ‘Mr. Chairman, are you sure you really want to do this? You are going to have hell to pay,’” Patrick recalled. “And I said to him, ‘We are going to do the right thing, and I’m sure that we will have hell to pay.’”
In making the controversial decision to repeal the Fairness Doctrine, Patrick and his colleagues abolished a decades-old rule that had governed how Americans received the news. In doing so, they inadvertently laid the groundwork for a landscape in which partisan media thrived. While liberal media benefited from the change, conservative talk radio — driven by Rush Limbaugh, among others — surged in popularity.
Rooted in the media world of 1949 and eventually backed by Congress in 1954, the Fairness Doctrine mandated broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance.
Although intended to keep the public informed at a time when there wasn’t a wealth of news sources, the effect of the doctrine was that many broadcasters avoided controversial issues entirely because they wanted to steer clear of lawsuits and the FCC’s ire, according to Kim Zarkin, a professor of communication at Westminster University in Utah who has researched the FCC for three decades. “It was always an imperfect tool,” she said.
Appointed to the FCC by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, Patrick readily admits that he didn’t want to deal with the Fairness Doctrine. But then again, as far as Patrick could tell, nobody else did either.
“No one wanted to deal with this issue because it was very, very politically controversial,” Patrick told Poynter from California, where he now lives.
After years of litigation, a court remanded the issue to the FCC to decide whether the policy was constitutional. The commissioners didn’t have a choice, so the quintet embarked on a monthslong inquiry process that Patrick said was designed to be as neutral as possible.
That period featured significant pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, according to Patrick. “There was an enormous amount of pressure to leave well enough alone and uphold the doctrine,” Patrick said.
That’s because the policy appeared to benefit incumbent lawmakers, according to Patrick, who said they used the doctrine like a cudgel to intimidate their enemies and prevent negative coverage.
In a word, Patrick said the entire process was “painful.” But despite the pressure, he said the decision was an easy one. “The First Amendment is unequivocal,” he said. “I’m very proud of the fact that not just myself, but my colleagues, stood up and were willing to do what was constitutionally required.”
Although lawmakers cared a great deal about the fate of the Fairness Doctrine, the average American didn’t appear to even know what it was, according to Zarkin. Nevertheless, its repeal was felt widely and swiftly — most prominently through “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” which was nationally syndicated from 1988 until Limbaugh’s death in 2021.
“Limbaugh was birthed from repealing the Fairness Doctrine,” Zarkin said. A show like Limbaugh’s — aggressively right-wing and often responsible for spreading falsehoods and conspiracy theories — would never have been possible in a world in which the Fairness Doctrine still reigned.
To Zarkin, his show set the stage for the polarized media environment now gripping the United States, where even basic facts can be fodder for disagreement. “I don’t know that in ’87 people could have predicted where we are now,” she said.
The broader boom in right-wing talk radio — personalities like Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North — was likewise facilitated by the end of the Fairness Doctrine.
“If the Fairness Doctrine had not been repealed, modern talk radio would not have emerged,” Portland-based conservative radio host Lars Larson told Poynter. “The Lars Larson Show,” which has broadcast since 1997, exists because of the doctrine’s repeal, he said.
It’s impossible to say for sure what would have happened if the Fairness Doctrine had stayed in place.
Perhaps, some analysts argue, the repeal only accelerated a polarized landscape that would have been brought about anyway by the internet and streaming platforms like Spotify and Rumble. Others, like Zarkin, think the repeal created the appetite for that kind of partisan content in the first place.
As for Patrick, he agrees the repeal had a dramatic impact. But he also thinks the division was there all along.
“It’s not the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine that created the division,” Patrick said. “It just allowed us to see how divided we are.”
As someone who was in college at the time the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, it was not a bad idea overall. It imposed a restriction that was not applied to print media, based on the fact that back then broadcasting was analog and the barrier to entry was high. But even with the growth of cable TV, the scarcity argument was wearing thin, and there was still the belief represented by Mill and Milton that truth would always prevail in an open debate.