Fairness in Media

I am old enough to remember when media coverage of politics – TV and radio only in those days – was governed by the FCC’s fairness doctrine. The fairness doctrine said, essentially, that if you wanted to report on an election, all sides, and all candidates, needed to be given equal time.

This was both useful, and boring. It was useful because it meant that the public at large could hear underfunded candidates, and get to know them. It was boring because vanity candidates and single-issue cand...