Editing Fairness doctrine (section)

==Origins==
{{See|Mayflower doctrine}}

In 1938, Lawrence J. Flynn, a former Yankee Network employee, challenged the license of John Shepard III's WAAB in Boston, and lodged a complaint about WNAC. Flynn asserted that these stations were being used to air one-sided political viewpoints and broadcast attacks, including editorials, against local and federal politicians that Shepard opposed. The FCC requested that Shepard provide details about these programs. To appease the commission, the Yankee Network agreed to drop the editorials. 

Flynn created a company called Mayflower Broadcasting and tried to get the FCC to award him WAAB's license. The FCC refused. In 1941, the commission made a ruling that came to be known as the Mayflower Decision, which declared that radio stations, due to their public interest obligations, must remain neutral in matters of news and politics, and they were not allowed to give editorial support to any particular political position or candidate.

In 1949, the FCC's Editorializing Report<ref>''Report of the Commission in the Matter of Editorializing by Broadcast Licensees'', 13 F.C.C. 1246 [1949].</ref> repealed the [[Mayflower doctrine]], which since 1941 had forbidden on-air editorializing. This laid the foundation for the fairness doctrine, by reaffirming the FCC's holding that licensees must not use their stations "for the private interest, whims or caprices [of licensees], but in a manner which will serve the community generally."<ref>''Report&nbsp;... Licensees'', 13 F.C.C. 1246, 1248-9.</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title = America's Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform|last = Pickard |first = Victor |author-link=Victor Pickard (professor) |publisher = Cambridge University Press|year = 2015|isbn = 9781107694750|location = New York, NY}}</ref> 

The FCC Report established two forms of regulation on broadcasters: to provide adequate coverage of public issues, and to ensure that coverage fairly represented opposing views.<ref>Jung, D.L. (1996), ''The Federal Communications Commission, the Broadcast Industry, and the Fairness Doctrine 1981–1987'', New York: University Press of America, Inc.</ref> The second rule required broadcasters to provide reply time to issue-oriented citizens. Broadcasters could therefore trigger fairness doctrine complaints without editorializing. The commission required neither of the fairness doctrine's obligations before 1949. Until then broadcasters had to satisfy only general "public interest" standards of the Communications Act.<ref>Donahue, H. (1988). ''The Battle to Control Broadcast News''. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press</ref>

The doctrine remained a matter of general policy and was applied on a case-by-case basis until 1967,<ref>Memorandum Opinion and Order, 8 F.C.C.2d 721 (August 7, 1967), which codified the personal attack doctrine and implemented provisions with respect to political editorials from Times-Mirror Broadcasting Co., 40 F.C.C. 531, 538 (1962); codified as 32 Fed. Reg. 10303 at para. 4 (1967). This was amended twice in Memorandum Opinion and Order, 9 F.C.C.2d 539 (1967) and Memorandum Opinion and Order, 12 F.C.C.2d 250 (1968).</ref> when certain provisions of the doctrine were incorporated into FCC regulations.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Donald P. |last=Mullally |title=The Fairness Doctrine: Benefits and Costs |journal=[[Public Opinion Quarterly]] |volume=33 |issue=4 |year=1969 |pages=577–582 |doi=10.1086/267746 |jstor=2747567 }}</ref>

In 1969, the [[United States courts of appeals]], in an opinion written by [[Warren Burger]], directed the FCC to revoke Lamar Broadcasting's license for television station [[WLBT]] due to the station's segregationist politics and ongoing censorship of NBC network news coverage of the U.S. civil rights movement.<ref>[http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/6/the_fcc_censorship_legendary_media_activist "The FCC & Censorship: Legendary Media Activist Everett Parker on the Revocation of WLBT's TV License in the 1960s for Shutting Out Voices of the Civil Rights Movement"], ''[[Democracy Now!]]'', March 6, 2008.</ref>