Court Opinion

ID: 8886642
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 22:02:09.454276+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:06:57.217407
License: Public Domain

McGOWAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
The majority does not hold that petitioner in No. 24,492 is entitled to have its proposed spot announcements carried by the intervenor-licensee there involved, or that the petitioner in No. 24,537 is assured of being able to buy time for its programs on public issues. What is held is that the Constitution commands that “some”, but not all, editorial advertising be accepted; and the Commission is directed to embark upon rulemaking to determine how a licensee is to differentiate the “some” from the all.
The majority appears to believe that this assignment will not prove difficult. I am not so sure, particularly when I note that the only Commissioner who has perceived the same constitutional requirement as the majority responds to the practical problems by suggesting that sales of a significant proportion of the total broadcast time be made on a first-come, first-served basis, accompanied by. a possible suspension of the fairness doctrine. That approach does not seem to me a promising one in terms of the public’s right to know.
The difficulties derive, of course, from the physical peculiarity which distinguishes radio and television communication from all other forms, namely, the limited number of frequencies and the impossibility of accommodating all who may wish to be heard over them. This, so the Supreme Court has said in Red Lion, makes it “idle to posit an unabridgeable First Amendment right to broadcast comparable to the right of each individual to speak, write, or publish.” The majority, in recognition of this fact, does not purport to discern other than an “abridgeable” or “limited” First Amendment right to initiate paid editorial advertising. Petitioners themselves, it is said, may conceivably never be able to insist that their particular advertising be accepted. That will depend upon the rules which the Commission propounds.
The Commission has, at the least, been set a task of heroic proportions, and one whose very complexities may undermine the premise upon which it is founded. The question is whether the Constitution requires that it be undertaken. I am not convinced that it does. It is presently the obligation of a licensee to advance the public’s right to know by devoting a substantial amount of time to the presentation of controversial views on issues of public importance, striking a balance which is always subject to redress by reference to the fairness doctrine. Failure to do so puts continuation of the license at risk — a sanction of tremendous potency, and one which the Commission is under increasing pressure to employ.
This is the system which Congress has, wisely or not, provided as the alternative to public ownership and operation of radio and television communications facilities. This approach has never been thought to be other than within the permissible limits of constitutional choice. Its existence provides a mechanism for implementation of the public’s right to know which, by and large, has been effective. Indeed, the loudest voices in criticism of it complain that it has been working too well for the comfort of governmental policy makers in the areas of greatest current concern.
It is hardly the path of wisdom to scrap it for a system in which money alone determines what issues are to be aired, and in what format, even assuming, as is likely to be the case, that those issues, whatever they may prove to be, compare favorably with the intellectual content of the great bulk of commercial advertising. The responsibility for informing the public is now squarely on the licensee. That responsibility will only *667be diluted and obscured by requiring the licensee, against his own better judgment, to accept paid editorial advertising. I do not think the First Amendment requires that result, at least not within the context of a regulatory scheme which has made provision for the airing of controversial issues of public importance.
Of course it is true that licensees are currently free to accept paid editorial advertising, and some do, subject always to the limitations of the fairness doctrine. It may well be that a detailed inquiry and investigation by the Commission of this area, by formal rulemaking or otherwise, would be both useful and consonant with the Commission’s continuing obligation to see to it that the public interest obligations of the licensees are being met in the most effective way. The Commission’s currently announced purpose to undertake a comprehensive and wide-ranging review of the operation of the fairness doctrine might well include the subject of paid editorial advertising. But, believing as I do that the First Amendment exerts no compulsion to the contrary, I would not order, the Commission to undertake that review in a constitutional strait 'jacket which dictates the result in advance.