Opinion ID: 283109
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the commission's authority under the public interest standard of the communications act.

Text: 43 A fundamental question, of course, is whether the Commission's ruling, though not expressly forbidden by statute, is within the scope of its delegated authority. The ruling originated in response to a 'fairness doctrine' complaint and held that the fairness doctrine applied to cigarette advertising. But in its opinion affirming the ruling, the Commission also asserted that it 'clearly has the authority to make this public interest ruling' under the public interest standard of the Communications Act and relied upon 'the licensee's statutory obligation to operate in the public interest.' 30 44 Last year in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 31 we upheld the fairness doctrine in the face of arguments that it was unauthorized and unconstitutional. Since then, in Radio Television News Directors v. FCC, 32 the Seventh Circuit has held that the Commission's personal attack rules violate the First Amendment and, in so doing, has cast some doubt on the constitutionality of the underlying fairness doctrine. 33 These issues are now to be resolved by the Supreme Court. 45 In part for this reason, we do not think protracted discussion of the fairness doctrine will materially advance our inquiry. It is clear to us that, even if incorporated into the fairness doctrine, the ruling before us is to all intents a novel application. In only one instance has the Commission previously held the advertising of a consumer product subject to the rule that broadcasters' presentations of controversial public issues must be fair and balanced. 34 The narrow issue presented by the facts of that case was whether a station in the temperance belt which advertised alcoholic beverages could, consistently with the principles now known as the fairness doctrine, refuse to accept anti-liquor advertising from temperance groups. 35 The case has not been followed in the twenty years since it was decided. It is not in any event a clear precedent for a ruling which instructs stations to broadcast opposition to their paid commercials regardless of whether opponents buy-- or even request-- such broadcast time. In addition, except for the personal attack rules struck down by the Seventh Circuit, 36 we know of no case in which the Commission has so specifically defined the stations' duties under the fairness doctrine. 37 46 We also note that elsewhere the Commission has been hesitant to invoke the fairness doctrine where a controversial issue is raised only by implication. 38 Finally, the Commission itself concluded that its main point would be lost if the legal debate concentrated too intensely on the 'specifics of the fairness doctrine.' 39 47 None of the novel aspects of the ruling, of course, precludes an extension of the fairness doctrine at this time. But the extension must, like the doctrine itself, find its authority in the public interest standard. Thus, whether the ruling is viewed as a new application of the fairness doctrine or as an independent public interest ruling, the ultimate question is the same. Moreover, in view of the constitutional attack on the doctrine, the specific question of greatest long-term importance may be whether the cigarette ruling can stand on its own feet. 48 In fact, we think the best statement of the Commission's holding and retionale is contained in the summary paragraph introducing the 'Conclusions' section of its opinion: 49 There is, we believe, some tendency to miss the main point at issue by concentration on labels such as the specifics of the Fairness Doctrine or by conjuring up a parade of 'horrible' extensions of the ruling. The ruling is really a simple and practical one, required by the public interest. The licensee, who has a duty 'to operate in the public interest'    is presenting commercials urging the consumption of a product whose normal use has been found by the Congress and the Government to represent a serious potential hazard to public health. Ordinarily the question presented would be how the carriage of such commercials is consistent with the obligation to operate in the public interest. In view of the Legislative history of the Cigarette Labeling Act, that question is one reserved for judgment of the Congress upon the basis of the studies and reports submitted to it.    But there is, we think, no question of the continuing obligation of a licensee who presents such commercials to devote a significant amount of time to informing his listeners of the other side of the matter-- that however enjoyable smoking may be, it represents a habit which may cause or contribute to the earlier death of the user. This obligation stems not from any esoteric requirements of a particular doctrine but from the simple fact that the public interest means nothing if it does not include such a responsibility. 40 50 The fairness doctrine, we think, serves chiefly to put flesh on these policy bones by providing a familiar mold to define the general contours of the obligation imposed. 51 The attack on the alleged statutory authority for this 'public interest' ruling takes two forms: (1) a general denial that the Commission has any authority to supervise the content of broadcasting under the public interest standard; and (2) an argument that any delegation of the power to make ad hoc public interest determinations of this kind is invalid for want of adequate limiting standards. 52
53 Nothing in the Communications Act of 1934 41 expressly grants the Commission any general authority over programming. The most relevant provisions go no further than to authorize it to grant and renew broadcast licenses according to the dictates of the 'public interest, convenience, and necessity.' 42 A case could be made, as an abstract proposition, that this licensing power is limited to policing the traffic over the airwaves to prevent interference between stations and perhaps to assure a minimum level of technical competence. If the question were res nova, that case would receive substantial support from the Supreme Court decisions requiring a clear mandate for regulatory activity which brushes closely against sensitive constitutional areas. 43 54 But the argument was in fact made and rejected long ago in National Broadcasting Company v. United States. 44 Justice Frankfurter, speaking for the Court, said in part: 55 'An important element of public interest and convenience affecting the issue of a license is the ability of the licensee to render the best practicable service to the community reached by his broadcasts.' Federal Communications Comm. v. Sanders Bros. Radio Station, 309 U.S. 470, 475, 60 S.Ct. 693, 697, 84 L.Ed. 869, 1037. The Commission's licensing function cannot be discharged, therefore, merely be finding that there are no technological objections to the granting of a license. If the criterion of 'public interest' were limited to such matters, how could the Commission choose between two applicants for the same facilities, each of whom is financially and technically qualified to operate a station? Since the very inception of federal regulation by radio, comparative considerations as to the services to be rendered have governed the application of the standard of 'public interest, convenience, or necessity.'   The avowed aim of the Communications Act of 1934 was to secure the maximum benefits of radio to all the people of the United States. To that end Congress endowed the Communications Commission with comprehensive powers to promote and realize the vast potentialities of radio.    56 These provisions, individually and in the aggregate, preclude the notion that the Commission is empowered to deal only with technical and engineering impediments to the 'larger and more effective use of radio in the public interest.' 45 57 In fact, neither courts nor Commission have thought it had to make its decisions among competing applicants blindfolded to the content of their programs. 46 Both the old Radio Commission and the FCC have likewise refused to renew licenses on the basis of past programming not in the public interest, 47 and this Court affirmed such a refusal as long ago as 1931. 48 If agency power to designate programming 'not in the public interest' is a slippery slope, the Commission and the courts started down it too long ago to go back to the top now unless Congress or the Constitution sends them. But Congress has apparently specifically endorsed this understanding of the public interest. 49 And whatever the limits imposed by the First Amendment, we do not think it requires eradicating every trace of a programming component from the public interest standard. 50 58 The power to refuse a license on grounds of past or proposed programming necessarily entails some power to define the stations' public interest obligations with respect to programming. It is this power to specify material which the public interest requires or forbids to be broadcast that carries the seeds of the general authority to censor denied by the Communications Act 51 and the First Amendment alike. But elementary canons of administrative and constitutional law prevent the Commission from terminating a license without giving reasons or from condemning a station's overall programming as inimical to the public interest without identifying the offending material and particularizing the public interest. And if the Commission must explain its view of the public interest when it denies or revokes a license, it may surely give advance notice of its views by way of an official ruling which is subject to judicial review. Indeed, in some cases fairness to the stations may require some advance warning of their responsibilities. 59 Thus, in applying the public interest standard to programming, the Commission walks a tightrope between saying too much and saying too little. In most areas it has resolved this dilemma by imposing only general affirmative duties-- e.g., to strike a balance between the various interests of the community, 52 or to provide a reasonable amount of time for the presentation of programs devoted to the discussion of public issues. 53 The licensee has broad discretion in giving specific content to these duties, and on application for renewal of a license it is understood the Commission will focus on his overall performance and good faith rather than on specific errors it may find him to have made. 54 In practice, the Commission rarely denies licenses for breaches of these duties. 55 Given its long-established authority to consider program content, this general approach probably minimizes the dangers of censorship or pervasive supervision. 60 In other areas, however, the Commission has on occasion imposed more specific duties or found specific programs or advertisements to be contrary to the public interest. 56 Such rulings must be closely scrutinized lest they carry the Commission too far in the direction of the forbidden censorship. But particularity is not in itself a vice; indeed, in some circumstances it may serve to limit an otherwise impermissibly broad intrusion upon a licensee's individual responsibility for programming. 61
62 Thus, in the context of the Communications Act as it has long been understood, we do not think that public interest rulings relating to specific program content invariably amount to 'censorship' within the meaning of the Act. 57 However, there is high risk that such rulings will reflect the Commission's selection among tastes, opinions, and value judgments, rather than a recognizable public interest. Especially with First Amendment issues lurking in the near background, the 'public interest' is too vague a criterion for administrative action unless it is narrowed by definable standards. 58 63 The ruling before us neither forbids nor requires the publication of any specific material. But as an extension of the fairness doctrine it is an unusual limitation of the licensee's discretion. And as an independent public interest ruling it requires independent support. We cannot uphold it merely on the ground that it may reasonably be thought to serve the public interest. 64 Whatever else it may mean, however, we think the public interest indisputably includes the public health. 59 There is perhaps a broader public consensus on that value, and also on its core meaning, than on any other likely component of the public interest. The power to protect the public health lies at the heart of the states' police power. It has sustained many of the most drastic exercises of that power, including quarantines, condemnations, civil commitments, and compulsory vaccinations. Likewise, public health concerns now support a sizable portion of the civilian federal bureaucracy. The public health has in effect become a kind of basic law, both justifying new extensions of old powers and evoking the legitimate concern of government wherever its regulatory power otherwise extends. 65 The Radio Commission, predecessor to the FCC, assumed with judicial approval and without question that broadcasting of specious medical information was not in the public interest. 60 In the Communications Act of 1934, Congress transferred the Radio Commission's authority to license in the 'public interest, convenience and necessity' to the FCC, 61 which has also ruled specific controversial health claims to be not in the public interest. 62 Given the premise that the 'public interest' may include some of the content as well as the technical quality of broadcasting, we are satisfied that it includes the public health. But were there any initial doubt, in the absence of evidence to the contrary we think Congress must be deemed to have acquiesced in the determinations to that effect of both Commissions on a matter of such basic and universally recognized importance. 66 The public health standard removes much of the vagueness and over-breadth attending the standard of the public interest. But we are not prepared to say that the Commission is authorized to condemn every broadcast which might, without arbitrariness or caprice, be thought to pose some danger to the public health. Even the relatively precise concept of the public health is murky at the fringes, and in some cases what is concededly optimal health may be a less important public value than other conflicting interests. Finally, the Commission itself has no special expertise to make it the appropriate arbiter of controversies over whether particular broadcasting is dangerous to health. 67 But the ruling on cigarette advertising is vulnerable to none of these objections against a broad mandate to the Commission to consider the public health. 63 The danger cigarettes may pose to health is, among others, a danger to life itself. As the Commission emphasized, it is a danger inherent in the normal use of the product, not one merely associated with its abuse or dependent on intervening fortuitous events. It threatens a substantial body of the population, not merely a peculiarly susceptible fringe group. Moreover, the danger, though not established beyond all doubt, is documented by a compelling cumulation of statistical evidence. The only member of the Commission to express doubts about the validity of its ruling had no doubts about the validity of its premise that, in all probability, cigarettes are dangerous to health: 64 68 Cigarette smoking is a substantial hazard to the health of those who smoke which increases both with the number of cigarettes smoked and with the youthfulness when smoking is started. Cigarette smoking increases both the likelihood of the occurrence and the seriousness of the consequences of various types of cancer, of cardiovascular failures and of numerous other pathologies of smokers. These conclusions are established by overwhelming scientific evidence, by the findings of Government agencies, and by Congressional reports and statute.    The evidence on this subject is not conclusive, but scientific evidence is never conclusive. All scientific conclusions are probablistic    Furthermore, law does not and cannot demand conclusive proof. Even in a capital case, the law requires only proof beyond a reasonable doubt.    The evidence as to the dangers of cigarette smoking to the smoker is clearly beyond a mere preponderance and approaches proof beyond a reasonable doubt. 65 69 Finally, the Commission expressly refused to rely on any scientific expertise of its own. 66 Instead, it took the word of the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee, 67 whose findings had already been adopted in substance by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 68 the Federal Trade Commission, 69 and the Senate Commerce Committee, 70 and had in addition been recognized and acted upon by Congress itself in the Cigarette Labeling Act. 70 In these circumstances, the Commission could reasonably determine that news broadcasts, private and governmental educational programs, the information provided by other media, and the prescribed warnings on each cigarette pack, inadequately inform the public of the extent to which its life and health are most probably in jeopardy. The mere fact that information is available, or even that it is actually heard or read, does not mean that it is effectively understood. A man who hears a hundred 'yeses' for each 'no,' when the actual odds lie heavily the other way, cannot be realistically deemed adequately informed. Moreover, since cigarette smoking is psychologically addicting, the confirmed smoker is likely to be relatively unreceptive to information about its dangers; his hearing is dulled by his appetite. And since it is so much harder to stop than not to start, it is crucial that an accurate picture be communicated to those who have not yet begun. 71 Thus, as a public health measure addressed to a unique danger authenticated by official and congressional action, the cigarette ruling is not invalid on account of its unusual particularity. It is in fact the product singled out for special treatment which justifies the action taken. In view of the potentially grave consequences of a decision of continue-- or above all to start-- smoking, we think it was not an abuse of discretion for the Commission to attempt to insure not only that the negative view be heard, but that it be heard repeatedly. The Commission has made no effort to dictate the content of the required anti-cigarette broadcasts. It has emphasized that the responsibility for content, source, specific volume, and precise timing rests with the good faith discretion of the licensee. 71 72 The cigarette ruling does not convert the Commission into either a censor or a big brother. But we emphasize that our cautious approval of this particular decision does not license the Commission to scan the airwaves for offensive material with no more discriminating a lens than the 'public interest' or even the 'public health.'