Court Opinion

ID: 9466164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:07:11.910186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:34.690291
License: Public Domain

J. SKELLY WRIGHT, Chief Judge,
concurring:
This court today affirms a decision of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that dismissed a fairness doctrine complaint filed against CBS, Inc. and its owned and operated stations.1 The complainant, petitioner here, is the American Security Council Education Foundation (ASCEF), “a nonprofit educational institution whose purpose is to improve public understanding of facts and issues relating to the national security of this country.”2 The gravamen of ASCEF’s charge against CBS is that broadcasts of the CBS Evening News during 1972 possessed a decidedly “dovish”3 slant on matters pertaining to “national security.” 4 To remedy this perceived shortcoming, AS-CEF asked the FCC to require CBS to afford a reasonable opportunity for the presentation of contrasting views on national security.5
The FCC, in dismissing the complaint, decided inter alia that ASCEF had failed to make out a prima facie case under the fairness doctrine6 because “national security” was not defined with sufficient precision in the complaint to allow for a reasonable response from CBS.7 A divided panel of this court disagreed and ordered that the FCC demand from CBS a response to the *453complaint.8 Because, in my view, the panel was inattentive to the First Amendment values at stake in this case,9 incorrect in its determination that national security is a sufficiently precise issue to make out a prima facie case,10 and indifferent to the shortcomings of the ASCEF study that underlay the complaint,11 I concur in this court’s en banc decision to affirm the FCC. I write specially, not to detract from Judge Tamm’s opinion, but to lend emphasis to certain of his arguments.
I. THE FIRST AMENDMENT BACKDROP
Under the fairness doctrine,12 a broadcaster is required to present coverage of issues of public importance and, on those issues of public importance that are controversial, to see to it that the coverage fairly reflects differing viewpoints.13 When the FCC receives a complaint alleging that a broadcaster has ignored its obligations under the fairness doctrine, the Commission must first decide whether the charge is sufficient to require a response from the broadcaster.14
In making this determination, the FCC must exercise its discretion with great care and with due regard for First Amendment interests.15 If the Commission were to serve merely as a conduit for all charges made against broadcasters under the fairness doctrine, an unfortunate and unacceptable burden would be placed on communications.16 Broadcasters, aware that the slightest perceived transgression of the doctrine might trigger a demand for a resource-consuming response on their part, would be loath to run the risk.17 Timidity might well supplant curiosity as the operative journalistic ethic in radio and television coverage of public events.
To preclude the possibility of such a chilling effect, and the consequent undermining of the First Amendment interest in the public’s “suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences” 18 provided by broadcasters, the FCC has constructed a formidable procedural barrier, but one that is not insurmountable to complainants with legitimate fairness doctrine claims.19 The barrier is the traditional and time-tested device of the prima facie case,20 one element of which is the identification of an issue of sufficient specificity to allow for a direct and efficient response from the broadcaster. The re*454quirement that complainants make out a prima facie case before the FCC will demand that the broadcaster respond is a sign of humility; it represents a conscious shrinking back, as it were, by a government agency whose regulatory domain overlaps that of the First Amendment.21
Petitioner, however, portrays the requirement of the prima facie case in a different light. Rather than a safety screen around protected speech constructed by a responsible governmental organ, imposition of the requirement in this case is labeled “administrative fiat.”22 Because petitioner conceives of its study of the CBS Evening News as “the most thorough scientific analysis of a network news operation ever undertaken by anyone at anytime since the advent of television,”23 it apparently cannot fathom how its complaint could fail to meet the FCC’s procedural test. ASCEF’s logic is simple: because its study was good, the procedural test that it flunked must be bad. The argument is not original; it has been employed throughout the ages by students claiming adequate preparation who have nonetheless failed an examination.
I am not oblivious, nor is this court, to the pathos surrounding petitioner’s observation that the substantial time and resources devoted to the study have gone largely for naught.24 Indeed, as I shall argue below,25 there is a place under the fairness doctrine for the type of extensive study petitioner attempted to undertake here. Yet just as academic excellence cannot be compromised by the plaintive cries of errant students, speech cannot be regulated in accordance with the demands of a well-meaning foundation that has expended substantial resources on a study that, whatever its merits otherwise, was ill-conceived in terms of the requirements of the fairness doctrine.26
II. NATIONAL SECURITY AS AN ISSUE
ASCEF’s study that formed the basis of its fairness complaint found that the CBS Evening News did not adequately portray differing viewpoints on national security during 1972. The FCC, in dismissing the complaint, largely relied on the lack of specificity in the notion “national security.” The amorphousness of national security, argued the FCC, defies any attempt to cast the notion with sufficient specificity to make out a prima facie case under the fairness doctrine. Further, to require CBS to respond to such an ill-defined charge would, as shown above, threaten to chill future communications.
It is difficult to dispute the FCC’s conclusion, although my dissenting colleagues manage to do so. That “national security” means different things to different people is incontestable and, in this fairness doctrine context, fatal to petitioner’s complaint. To some, national security means devoting the bulk of our national resources to creating the ideal society — one, that is, whose economic dynamism and social amenities are attractive to citizens of foreign powers and thus likely to channel the currents of world ideology in our direction. To others, this is nonsense: national security translates literally into military superiority. Still others take a more discriminating view and seek to arrive at a secure compromise *455between domestic improvements and military might.27 And within each of these conceptions of national security there is a sufficient number of allocational configurations to correspond to the multiplicity of individual visions of a “secure” nation.28
Thus the possibilities surrounding national security are endless. The term is not susceptible to the gross reductionism of a “viewpoint analysis,” such as that employed by petitioner,29 that is cast in the finite mold of more, less, or the same.30 If petitioner’s world is populated by “hawks,” “sparrows,” and “doves,” 31 the real world, as I understand it, is an aviary of inexhaustible variety.
One need not rely exclusively on ordinary usage to underscore the indeterminacy of national security. A cursory glance at petitioner’s papers before this court also illustrates the point. ASCEF’s complaint before the FCC, for instance, described national security variously in terms of “the basic conflict relationship and the relative military balance between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.”; 32 “Soviet and Chinese political and military objectives”; 33 and “domestic foreign policy.”34 Its brief on appeal, moreover, refers in places not to the national security issue but to “national security issues.”35 Whether or not this apparently conscious wavering is acceptable to the large number of academicians who commented favorably on the ASCEF study and whose names surfaced conspicuously in petitioner’s argument is irrelevant.36 Of rele*456vanee is the undeniable truth that such sloppiness is not to be countenanced in the First Amendment context, a context that requires even state legislatures and the Congress of the United States to act with specificity and to avoid vague or overbroad incursions that could possibly chill speech.37
I should hasten to point out that the insufficient specificity of national security is not only a patent defect, as ordinary usage and petitioner’s usage in this case attest, but a latent one as well, in the sense that national security by its very nature simply cannot be reduced to a definable core. National security is not, to be sure, a mere shibboleth. Nor is it a trite codeword. Codewords ex hypothesi have a single meaning to those with access to the code. Rather, national security defies precise definition because it is preambulary in nature.38 And like all preambulary language, it is aspirational; different people rely on it and use it in different ways. Preambulary terms defy reductionist attempts at specificity because each such term represents a cluster of ideas, not all of which are in harmony and some of which may well be in rank discord. However commendable preambulary vagueness is in its proper context, to attack protected speech with such vagueness is as unthinkable as attempting to enforce a preamble as positive law.
III. THE ASCEF STUDY
The ASCEF study that underlay the fairness complaint itself merits comment. We have already seen that the notion around which the study was constructed — national security — is too indeterminate to support a prima facie case under the fairness doctrine. In addition, there are methodological deficiencies that render the present study useless for purposes of a fairness doctrine complaint.
The study of the CBS Evening News during 1972 aimed to achieve objectivity by imposing an analytical trichotomy on the content of the news broadcast. The trichotomy was constituted of three “viewpoints.” In the words of the study,
Viewpoint A holds that the threat to U.S. security is more serious than perceived by the government or that the United States ought to increase its national security efforts; Viewpoint B holds that present government threat perception is essentially correct or U.S. military and foreign policy efforts are adequate, and Viewpoint C holds that the threat to U.S. security is less serious than perceived by the government or that U.S. national security efforts should be decreased. * * * [39]
The central finding of the study was that Viewpoint A was significantly underrepresented in the CBS Evening News, and Viewpoint C overrepresented.40
*457The inherent flaw in this breakdown of viewpoints is readily apparent, and has been examined by the majority opinion. In a two-party system such as ours, it is absurd to cast the position of the sitting government as a “norm” from which departures presumably ought to occur in equal numbers to the left and right.
Consider the chronological context of the present study. In 1972 President Nixon was opposed in his bid for reelection by a man, Senator McGovern, of largely opposite views on major issues.41 It can be assumed that CBS devoted much of its news coverage to the election. If the network gave equal coverage to both camps, it would likely have meant that Viewpoint B and Viewpoint C would have been equally represented, and Viewpoint A largely unrepresented — -precisely the “biased” result detected by the ASCEF study. Yet CBS, in this event, would in fact have been doing its job fully in accordance with the Supreme Court’s admonition in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC that “[i]t is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.” 42 The public, that is to say, would have received fair and balanced election coverage; yet CBS would have run afoul of ASCEF’s study and, if petitioner and the dissenters would have their way, afoul of the fairness doctrine as well.
The centerpiece of ASCEF’s tripartite viewpoint analysis — the equation of the Nixon Administration’s statements with the terra firma of the American political center — -is thus empirically unsound. How the analysis can lead to the “objective” results purveyed by petitioner is therefore unclear. Had 1972 been the final year in the first administration of Hubert Humphrey, whom President Nixon defeated in 1968, the results of ASCEF’s viewpoint analysis might well have been demonstrably different even had public events and the consequent news coverage been strikingly similar.
In addition to the unrealistic and rigid analytical framework imposed on the content of the CBS Evening News, the study contained another disturbing feature. To examine the fairness of CBS’s coverage of national security, ASCEF of course had to decide which news items were and which were not of relevance to national security. ASCEF’s attempt to particularize this amorphous concept not only further illustrates the extent to which national security does not lend itself to the specificity required to make out a prima facie case, but also reveals another basic methodological flaw in the ASCEF study.
The attempt at particularization began with the identification of the constituents of national security, which, in ASCEF’s view were (1) U.S. military and foreign affairs, (2) Soviet military and foreign policy, (3) Chinese military and foreign policy, and (4) Vietnam.43 Even assuming that ASCEF was correct in confining national security to foreign and military considerations, one can nonetheless detect problems. In this era of triangular diplomacy — the basic premise of which from the American standpoint is that improved relations with China can reflect favorably on our position vis-á-vis the Soviet Union, and vice versa 44 —who is to say that ASCEF’s four constituent elements of national security correctly reflect the realities of world politics? If the CBS Evening News, for example, had broadcast a favorable report on discipline in the Chinese army, would this necessarily have merited the Viewpoint C characterization it doubtless would have received at the hands of ASCEF? Is it not the case that Chinese military discipline may worry the *458Soviets more than it worries us, and therefore constitute a point in favor of our national security? If so, should the comment not then have been characterized as Viewpoint A? As this example makes clear, the dynamics of world diplomacy do not lend themselves to the rigid compartmentalization practiced by ASCEF.
The problems with the ASCEF study do not end here. How realistically can one draw the lines necessary to delimit the four above-mentioned categories, assuming arguendo their validity? The category of Chinese military and foreign policy was, in one instance, said by ASCEF to include the following statement of a restaurant owner recently returned to this country from a trip to China:
[Chinese children] were only exposed to mainly [sic] songs and dances with a touch of revolutionary fervor. The dances, the shows, the music and so on concentrated largely on patriotism, social justice, dedication to work, patience, and above all, selfless service to the public. * * * [45]
If this is a statement on Chinese foreign and military policy, then it would seem, to draw upon one of countless conceivable examples, that a report on the patriotism, dedication to excellence, and backwoods acumen of the Boy Scouts of America would be a statement on American foreign and military policy.
The plain fact is that ASCEF was not successful in selecting the news items in a realistic way. Nor can we say that rationality ruled in the absence of realism, for ASCEF furnishes no guidelines on how it selected the news items. Except for the mere assertion of the four rather porous categories themselves, we are left wondering whether the process of categorizing CBS news items was subject to any rational constraints.
The many and fatal shortcomings of the ASCEF study are apparent. The question then arises whether any study as ambitious and broadly based as the present one — that is, one that attempts systematically to establish patterns of bias in news broadcasting that have existed over a substantial period of time — could succeed in the fairness doctrine context, where First Amendment considerations dictate surgical precision in the regulation of communications. I believe such a study can succeed, but it must be shaped to fit the contours of the fairness doctrine rather than expecting the fairness doctrine to conform to its imperatives.
First, the study must be structured around a highly specific issue,46 one that can be defined with precision and can be addressed and responded to directly and efficiently by the broadcaster. Both this opinion and the majority opinion have canvassed the First Amendment interests at stake here, and there is no need to repeat them. Suffice it to say that issue ambiguity in the fairness doctrine context is a certainty to lessen the free flow of information favored by the First Amendment, and is therefore unacceptable.
Second, the study must reflect a high level of qualitative correspondence between its narrowly defined issue and the subjects dealt with by the news items evaluated in the study. In fact, one ought reasonably to be able to deduce from a knowledge of the issue itself that an evaluated subject is a constituent element. For instance, one can deduce from a knowledge of strip mining, an issue that has been the basis of a successful fairness doctrine complaint,47 that the subject of reclamation of strip mined land is a constituent element of the strip mining issue. In contrast, an impressionistic report on the education of Chinese children cannot be said to bear any organic resemblance to Chinese foreign and military policy, let alone to American national secur*459ity however defined. A deductive relationship between the issue and the indicia employed will help ensure rigor in delimiting the scope of the study.
Third, the study must seek to achieve a true objectivity not based on the spurious notion that any single administration is uniformly centrist in its positions. Although it is futile to attempt to define objectivity in the abstract, the requisite objectivity could perhaps be achieved, at least as to some issues, through comparisons of viewpoints based on quantitative assessments of the status quo. For example, the issue of military spending — assuming arguendo its specificity, importance, and controversiality— might be analyzed in terms of viewpoints seeking to increase, decrease, or maintain at present level the defense budget.
A study meeting these requirements might well succeed where the present study has failed.
IV. CONCLUSION
The purpose of the fairness doctrine is to ensure the presentation of differing views on controversial issues of public importance. The FCC and the courts must be receptive to new and innovative ways of measuring broadcasters’ compliance with the doctrine. Yet in doing so we must be constantly vigilant so that First Amendment values are not jeopardized in any way, and it is that vigilance which today leads me to agree with the FCC in dismissing petitioner’s complaint.

. In re American Security Education Foundation, 63 FCC2d 366 (1977). The FCC’s decision was reversed and remanded by a panel of this court, American Security Council Education Foundation v. FCC, D.C.Cir. No. 77-1443 (Sept. 13, 1978), but that judgment was later vacated.

. Petitioner’s brief at 1.

. This word appears throughout petitioner’s brief. See, e. g., petitioner’s brief at 2.

. For a discussion of the amorphousness of “national security,” and its consequent inadequacy in the fairness doctrine context, see text at notes 26-38 infra.
The fairness complaint was based on a study of the 1972 CBS Evening News that was published as E. Lefever, TV and National Defense (1974). The study is analyzed in text at notes 39-47 infra.

. Petitioner’s Prayer for Relief before the FCC contained, inter alia, the following requests:
D. Upon a finding that CBS-TV News has violated the Fairness Doctrine, to require that CBS-TV News:
1) begin providing reasonable opportunities for responsible persons to express the following contrasting views:
a. The Soviet Union still has the objective of eventual world domination.
b. The Soviet Union is militarily superior to the United States.
c. The United States should be militarily superior to the Soviet Union.
d. The United States should have the objective of winning the conflict between the two systems.
and 2) provide compensatory opportunities for the expression of the above views to help balance the years of non-coverage of such views.
Joint Appendix (JA) 21.

. The FCC also decided that the ASCEF study that underlay the complaint was inadequate because it did not examine the overall programming of the network, but rather focused exclusively on the CBS Evening News. In re American Security Council Education Foundation, supra note 1, 63 FCC2d at 369. I find this argument of the FCC unpersuasive because of the central and dominating role that the Evening News plays in the network’s coverage of public events.

. Id. at 367-369.

. American Security Council Education Foundation v. FCC, supra note 1.

. See text at notes 12-26 infra.

. See text at notes 26-38 infra.

. See text at notes 39-47 infra.

. The roots of the fairness doctrine are sunk deep, and there is no need here to engage in the routine excavation that would once again establish their depth. See, e. g., Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 380, 89 S.Ct. 1794, 23 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969); Report on Editorializing by Broadcast Licensees, 13 FCC 1246 (1949).

. See, e. g., Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic Nat'l Committee, 412 U.S. 94, 111, 93 S.Ct. 2080, 36 L.Ed.2d 772 (1973); Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, supra note 12, 395 U.S. at 377, 89 S.Ct 1794; Public Media Center v. FCC, 190 U.S.App.D.C. 425, 431, 587 F.2d 1322, 1328 (1978).

. See Reconsideration of the Fairness Report, 58 FCC2d 691, 694-696 (1976).

. See, e. g., Banzhaf v. FCC, 132 U.S.App.D.C. 14, 27, 405 F.2d 1082, 1095 (1968), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 842, 90 S.Ct. 50, 24 L.Ed.2d 93 (1969).

. See, e. g., Reconsideration of the Fairness Report, supra note 14, 58 FCC2d at 696.

. See Brandywine-Main Line Radio, Inc. v. FCC, 153 U.S.App.D.C. 305, 333, 473 F.2d 16, 44 (1972) (“It was never intended by either Congress, or the Commission, that the [fairness] doctrine work toward suppression of the discussion of controversial issues.”).

. Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, supra note 12, 395 U.S. at 390, 89 S.Ct. 1794, 1807.

. See, e. g.. Energy Action Committee, Inc., 64 FCC2d 787 (1977).

. See Applicability of the Fairness Doctrine in the Handling of Controversial Issues of Public Importance, 29 Fed.Reg. 10416, 10418, 40 FCC 598, 604 (1964); Reconsideration of the Fairness Report, supra note 14, 58 FCC2d at 694— 696.

. This requirement has been judicially endorsed. See, e. g., Hale v. FCC, 138 U.S.App.D.C. 125, 128, 425 F.2d 556, 559 (1970).

. Petitioner’s brief at 16.

. Id at 5-6.

. One might surmise that the time and resources were not entirely for naught, as ASCEF did gain a certain notoriety in consequence of the study.

. See text at notes 39-47 infra.

. There was no element of surprise in this case, in the sense that due diligence on the part of the ASCEF personnel who designed the study and framed the fairness complaint would have revealed the existence of and reasoning behind the specificity requirement. See, e. g., Green v. FCC, 144 U.S.App.D.C. 353, 359, 447 F.2d 323, 329 (1971); Fairness Report, 48 FCC2d 1, 21 (1974). Although the ASCEF study that underlay the fairness complaint dealt with the 1972 news coverage, it was conducted in late 1973 and 1974 and was based on an examination of transcripts of the 1972 CBS Evening News.

. The point of view of President Carter, as evidenced in his latest State of the Union Message, is an example:
We are building that new foundation [for a stable world community] from a position of national strength * * *. America’s military power is a major force for security and stability in the world. * * * I urge you to support the strong Defense budget I have proposed.
But national security in our age requires more than military might. In less than a lifetime, world population has doubled; colonial empires have disappeared; and a hundred new nations have been bom. Mass communications, literacy, and migration to the world’s cities have all awakened new yearnings for economic justice and human rights among people everywhere.
In such a world, the choice is not which superpower will dominate the world. None can and none will. The choice instead is between a world of anarchy and destruction, or a world of cooperation and peace.
In such a world, we seek not to stifle inevitable change, but to inñuence its course in helpful and constructive ways that enhance our values, our national interests, and the cause of peace.
Quoted in The Washington Post, January 24, 1979, at 6, col. 3 (emphasis added).

. That is to say, even if one grants that national security has a single dimension — for example, military strength — one is still confronted with tough allocational questions. A news report that reveals the waste and inefficiency associated with the development of a particular weapon system might well, in the eyes of petitioner, rank as “dovish.” Yet another inference that might properly be drawn from such a report is that the resources devoted to development of that system could be more efficiently employed if allocated to development of another.
This example is not fanciful. A report on opposition to the B-l bomber was classified as “dovish” even though that opposition might well have been premised on the perceived ineffectiveness of that particular weapon system as opposed to others. See E. Lefever, supra note 4, at 90-91.

. ASCEF’s study is described in some detail in text at notes 39-47 infra.

. The viewpoints employed in ASCEF’s study that correspond to “more,” “less,” or “the same” amount of national security are described, in ASCEF’s own words, in text at note 39, infra. Judge Wilkey’s dissent makes the same mistake. Dissent at -U.S.App.D.C. at -, 607 F.2d at 467 (“whether this nation should do more, less, or the same about perceived threats to its national security") (emphasis in original).

. The avian metaphor is petitioner’s. See, e. g., petitioner’s brief at 2, 11, 27, 44.

. JA 19.

. JA 10.

. JA 18.

. Petitioner’s brief at 31 (emphasis added); id. at 33 (“national security subjects”).

. In fairness to ASCEF’s study, it apparently was well received by many observers, none of whom, it must be added, had the responsibility of dovetailing the study with the fairness doctrine and the First Amendment. Some of the *456critical acclaim is contained as “blurbs” on the back of the red, white, and blue cover in which the study is bound. I note, however, that three of the five favorable blurbs were provided by individuals who played a role in the study’s development. See E. Lefever, supra note 4, at ix, x.

. See Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 93 S.Ct. 2908, 37 L.Ed.2d 830 (1973); Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 60 S.Ct. 736, 84 L.Ed. 1093 (1940); Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451, 59 S.Ct. 618, 83 L.Ed. 888 (1939); Note, The First Amendment Overbreadth Doctrine, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 844 (1970); Note, The Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine in the Supreme Court, 109 U.Pa.L.Rev. 67 (1960).

. Consider the following:
WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
One could no more define with specificity “national security” than one could define “a more perfect Union,” “Justice,” “domestic Tranquility,” “the common defence,” “the general Welfare,” “the Blessings of Liberty,” or, for that matter, “the pursuit of Happiness.”

. E. Lefever, supra note 4, at 78 (emphasis in original).

. Of the 1,396 news items subjected to AS-CEF’s viewpoint analysis, 1,122 were found to contain no expressions of “A,” “B,” or “C” viewpoints. Of the remaining 274 news items, 3.54% were categorized as Viewpoint A, 34.63% as Viewpoint B, and 61.83% as Viewpoint C.

. Senator McGovern, for example, favored a $30 billion reduction in the defense budget and an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, in contrast to President Nixon’s policy of “Vietnamization” and his support of higher levels of defense spending.

. 395 U.S. 367, 390, 89 S.Ct. 1794, 1806, 23 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969).

. Petitioner’s brief at 39.

. This nation’s rapprochement with China, which has recently blossomed into full diplomatic recognition, commenced early in 1972; thus triangular diplomacy was a reality during the period dealt with by the ASCEF study.

. E. Lefever, supra note 4, at 92.

. The issue, of course, must also be important and controversial. See note 13 supra (citing cases).

. In re Patsy Mink, 59 FCC2d 987 (1976) (holding that a West Virginia radio station did not present sufficient coverage of the strip mining issue).