Word: fcc
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...predictable as Rush Limbaugh sparking a controversy: every few years, someone in Congress brings up the Fairness Doctrine. In 1987 the FCC abolished the policy, which dictates that public broadcast license-holders have a duty to present important issues to the public and - here's the "fairness" part - to give multiple perspectives while doing so. Now, more than 20 years later, a group of Democratic legislators are calling for it to be brought back to life. "I absolutely think it's time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves," said Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow...
...could misuse their broadcast licenses to set a biased public agenda. The Fairness Doctrine, which mandated that broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance, was meant to level the playing field. Congress backed the policy in 1954, and by the 1970s the FCC called the doctrine the "single most important requirement of operation in the public interest - the sine qua non for grant of a renewal of license." (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...Supreme Court proved willing to uphold the doctrine, eking out space for it alongside the First Amendment. In 1969's Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, journalist Fred Cook sued a Pennsylvania Christian Crusade radio program after a radio host attacked him on air. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court upheld Cook's right to an on-air response under the Fairness Doctrine, arguing that nothing in the First Amendment gives a broadcast license holder the exclusive right to the airwaves they operate on. But when Florida tried to hold newspapers to a similar standard in 1974's Miami...
...consortium of government organizations including NASA, NORAD and even the FCC keeps track of all the planet's high-flying rubbish, and so far, its running count is flat-out scary. There are currently at least 17,000 objects measuring 4 in. or greater circling the Earth - and in some ways, that's the good news. The government estimates that there are 200,000 objects in the 1-in.-to-3-in. range and tens of millions smaller than an inch...
...Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill made a particularly mismatched lineup in 1992, as did Michael Jackson and a group of 3,500 children the following year. The show's most memorable glitch, of course, wasn't a casting choice: Janet Jackson's infamous wardrobe snafu in 2004 sparked an FCC crackdown on racy content and prompted networks to go to tape delay for major live events...