Freedom of Expression and the Media
Freedom of Expression and the Media
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言论自由和媒体
DOI：
10.1163/9789004229402_004
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发表时间：
2012
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Barnett S
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Barnett S
Is it possible to reconcile the notion of an unqualifijied freedom to speak your mind—the bedrock of any defijinition of democracy—with a statutory obligation imposed on broadcasters by central government to ensure that TV and radio output is impartial? For those who adhere rigorously to the letter of the American Constitution’s First Amendment—that “Congress shall make no law… abridging freedom of speech, or of the press”—the answer to this philosophical question is easy: no law means no law, even if such lack of intervention places certain voices or commercial institutions in a position of greater power and influence. American sociologist Michael Schudson recounts the story of a candidate for political offfijice in Florida in 1972 who demanded a right of reply to critical coverage in the Miami Herald, was refused, and whose case eventually went to the US Supreme Court. In a unanimous judgement, America’s highest court found for the newspaper’s freedom to make its own judgement rather than run the risk of government intrusion. In Schudson’s words:“if the marketplace is to be the censor, that may be regrettable, but it is fully in accord with the Constitution. It is state censorship that the Constitution forbids”(2003: 202, italics in original).This fundamentalist approach to the First Amendment was reinforced during the 1980s by a deregulatory market-led approach to communications policy-making. It was encapsulated by Mark Fowler, the Reaganappointed Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 1981–7, who famously expressed the view that television was “just another appliance…. a toaster with pictures”(Horwitz, 1989; Barnett, 2008; Freedman, 2008). Under Fowler, the FCC voted to abolish the “Fairness Doctrine”, which had been America’s equivalent to the impartiality
