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Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commn.

Supreme Court of the United States
(1969)
ELI5:

Rule of Law:

Due to the scarcity of broadcast frequencies, the government may require a broadcast licensee to provide a right of reply to individuals personally attacked during a broadcast without violating the First Amendment. The public's right to receive suitable access to social, political, and moral ideas is paramount to the broadcaster's right to absolute editorial control.


Facts:

  • Red Lion Broadcasting Company operated radio station WGCB in Pennsylvania.
  • On November 27, 1964, WGCB broadcast a program by Reverend Billy James Hargis.
  • During the broadcast, Hargis made several personal attacks against author Fred J. Cook, claiming Cook was fired for making false charges, worked for a Communist-affiliated publication, and had attacked the FBI and CIA.
  • After learning of the broadcast, Cook demanded free airtime from WGCB to respond to the personal attacks.
  • Red Lion refused to grant Cook's request for free reply time.

Procedural Posture:

  • After Red Lion refused to provide reply time, Fred J. Cook filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
  • The FCC issued a declaratory ruling that Red Lion had failed to meet its obligations under the fairness doctrine and ordered it to provide reply time to Cook.
  • Red Lion, the petitioner, sought review of the FCC's order in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
  • The D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC's order, finding the fairness doctrine and its application constitutional.
  • In a separate proceeding, the Radio Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) challenged newly codified FCC regulations on personal attacks and political editorials in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
  • The Seventh Circuit held that the FCC's regulations were an unconstitutional abridgment of free speech.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in both cases to resolve the conflict between the two circuit courts.

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Issue:

Do the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) fairness doctrine and its component 'personal attack' and 'political editorial' regulations, which require broadcasters to offer reply time to individuals who are personally attacked or to political candidates opposed in an editorial, violate the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and press?


Opinions:

Majority - Mr. Justice White

No, the FCC's fairness doctrine and its regulations do not violate the First Amendment. Because broadcast frequencies are a scarce public resource that the government must allocate, licensees can be required to operate as public fiduciaries and share their frequency with others to ensure the public has access to a diversity of viewpoints. The court reasoned that unlike print media, where anyone can theoretically publish, the limited nature of the broadcast spectrum justifies government regulation to prevent a few licensees from monopolizing the marketplace of ideas. The First Amendment's primary purpose is to protect the public's right to receive information from diverse and antagonistic sources, a right which is paramount to the broadcaster's individual right to speak without restraint. Therefore, requiring a licensee to provide a right of reply to a personal attack is a constitutional method of furthering this public interest.



Analysis:

This landmark decision established the 'scarcity doctrine' as the constitutional basis for regulating broadcast media more strictly than print media. It cemented the legal theory that broadcasters are not owners of their frequencies but are public trustees who must operate in the 'public interest.' This ruling validated a wide range of content-based regulations by the FCC for several decades, creating a fundamental distinction in First Amendment jurisprudence between the rights of broadcasters and those of publishers. While the FCC later eliminated the fairness doctrine on policy grounds in 1987, Red Lion remains the key precedent upholding the constitutionality of such government-imposed access and content-balancing schemes for broadcast media.

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