This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, January 28th, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown following a large social media purge of right-wing accounts

that companies accused of dealing primarily in falsehoods

and actively promoting violence, a new call is emerging from the left to revive and expand

the fairness doctrine that federal policy used to regulate the contents of

radio and television broadcasts years ago. Paul Matzco is author of The Radio Right. He details

the fairness doctrine and why those who want to bring it back

should be wary. The hot takes have been fast and furious on the internet regarding specifically and sort of I feel like out of nowhere

the fairness doctrine first it was the complaints about the various I don't want to call them foe news networks because I don't think they're even

purport to be news networks, which are just sort of commentary networks, I suppose, from the

right that have been presenting and sort of extending the ideas about the

election overturning election fraud that Donald Trump alleged and then going beyond that a lot of people have said hey

we used to have this thing called the fairness doctrine and it worked pretty well

and so to you someone who's written a book about the Fairness Doctrine, and in particular how

right-wing radio used it essentially as a as a tool what do you make of these takes that we

got to bring this back? Yeah it's a it's an interesting it's a myth that

won't die.

When people think of the fairness doctrine,

people who think fondly of a period

when the fairness doctrine ostensibly was applied,

they have this kind of hazy notion that once upon a time

broadcasting was this fair, balanced, equitable, truth-telling space and that was all because of the fairness doctrine.

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