The Federal Communications Commission’s new report on the “Information Needs of Communities,” is an interesting piece of work for anybody who thinks about what “freedom of the press” means. You might wonder what business the FCC (News - Alert) (News - Alert) in this arena in the first place, and the simple answer is that the FCC allocates over the air spectrum.
It might be hard to find anybody who has serious disagreement with the notion that the FCC, or some similar body, must oversee and coordinate use of spectrum resources. But there are lots of people who might seriously question the wisdom or authority of the FCC to do anything related to newspapers, which are a subject of some discussion in the report.
To be sure, the FCC has to allocate broadcast TV and radio spectrum, and has, rightly or wrongly, insisted on imposing content regulation on media outlets using that spectrum. That is a troublesome issue for those who study the implications of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which generally is invoked as a cloak protecting the right of a media outlet to express its views without government control.
The issue is muddied because the FCC and courts also have limited media rights in the content area in numerous ways. There have been rules about children’s programming, or public interest programming, obscenity and pornography when media use broadcast spectrum, for example.
One of the best treatments of the implications of regulation of print media, broadcast and cable TV, and other new forms of electronic media, in terms of the implications for protection of “freedom of press,” are contained in MIT (News - Alert) (News - Alert) Professor Ithiel de Sola Pool’s marvelous book, Technologies of Freedom (Dr. Pool died in 1984).
For example, long before anyone else had envisioned what we now refer to as "cyberspace," Pool argued that networked computers will be the printing presses of the twenty-first century."
The quick summary is that Prof. Pool argued there was fullest freedom in the print sphere, restricted freedom in the broadcast domain, and a degree of freedom in between print and broadcast for the cable TV medium. Since he was writing long before the World Wide Web and Internet, he didn’t devote as much detailed attention to regulatory regimes for Web media.
But Dr. Pool’s approach always was to argue for extending “press” style freedoms--the print media being the “most free” of all media--to all electronic media.
It isn’t clear what Prof. Pool might have thought about apparently serious efforts by some to involve the federal government in funding of newspapers, as some have proposed. It seems hard for me to conceive of him supporting such moves, as funding would lead to control, and likely regulations Pool always opposed as limiting freedom of speech.
When he writes of “technologies of freedom,” de Sola Pool meant it. Rather than imposing more “broadcast” style regulation on other media, he would have argued for freeing media from those constraints, and using the “print” model of freedom in the electronic sphere.
Those of us who were profoundly influenced by Dr. Pool’s work in our college years might be shocked by the very idea of getting the government involved in funding of print media. Benevolent intentions aside, freedom of the press means first, and foremost, the freedom of the media to criticize the government.
Only the naive will believe taking government money will not lead to restrictions on the appetite and ability to conduct such free inquiry and free speech. The FCC report wisely seems to step away from the notion of government-funded media.
Gary Kim (News - Alert) (News - Alert) is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Gary’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Stefanie Mosca
