Early in 2019, a local guy – Raymond B. Wallace – had an opinion published by The Richmond Times-Dispatch in which he fulminated about the distressing decline in quality of broadcast news, especially the cable news outlets. By decline, he apparently meant that the news was not being reported in a pleasing manner, and pleasing was evidently some version of Fox News. The reasoning was more than a tad motivated. Mr. Wallace also purports to outline the history of the spiral downward in reportage that he perceived. The secret behind offering a history of anything is knowing the history of something; the salient facts of this history seem to have evaded his notice. The Richmond Times-Dispatch didn’t publish my response to Mr. Wallace.
Raymond B. Wallace, “What’s Happened to Television Journalism?” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 11 January 2019, A9 (https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/ray-wallace-column-whats-happened-to-television-journalism/article_5d8598f6-9edc-548e-b68b-1e89bd73cec5.html).
Raymond B. Wallace’s excoriation of cable news suffers from lack of historical context. The genesis of today’s polarized cable news environment is not difficult to locate.
The FCC in 1987 suspended the Fairness Doctrine, under which the granting of broadcasting licenses was conditioned upon a commitment both to cover controversial matters of public significance and to present differing opinions regarding them. Efforts by the US Congress to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine legislatively were thwarted by President Reagan’s veto in 1987 and President Bush’s threatened veto in 1991. The quashing of the Fairness Doctrine fostered the proliferation of political talk radio and it is likely no coincidence that Rush Limbaugh’s show first went national in 1988.
The polarization was sharpened with passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Intended to foster media competition, the legislation has had precisely the opposite effect, the concentration of ownership of electronic media into progressively fewer hands. It likewise is probably not coincidental that Fox News went live eight months after President Clinton signed the bill.
Mr. Wallace seems curiously untroubled by elements of the media environment he decries: the nearly monopolistic domination of political talk radio by the right and the concentration of control of local electronic media into fewer hands, control responsible for the sad spectacle last year of dozens of anchors at Sinclair Broadcasting stations mouthing the same editorial verbatim in a “forced read.” One must wonder whether Mr. Wallace’s problem is less that each cable outlet has selected its editorial lane and more that some outlets have the temerity to gainsay and fact-check the notoriously mendacious Trump administration. Whatever the case, he asserts that a myriad of stories goes largely unreported except by Fox; nevertheless, I, no Fox viewer, was substantially informed regarding every story he cites. How could this have happened?