McDowell: Fairness Doctrine, Net Neutrality Linked

FCC commissioner: Reimposition of Fairness Doctrine could affect Web policy.

By Joel Topcik -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/13/2008 8:25:00 AM

Republican Federal Communications Commission member Robert McDowell said Tuesday that a potential reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine could be “intertwined” with the debate over network neutrality.

Following a speech to bloggers at the conservative Heritage Foundation, in which he discussed Internet policy and the FCC’s recent ruling against Comcast, McDowell warned that an effort to reimpose the defunct broadcasting doctrine could sync up with efforts to regulate network management, resulting in “government dictating content policy” on the Web.

“This [presidential] election, if it goes one way, we could see a reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine,” McDowell told BMI, the economic arm of the conservative Media Research Center. “I think it’ll be intertwined into the net-neutrality debate … because there are a few isolated conservatives who might be cherry-picked in a net-neutrality effort, and I think the fear is that somehow, large corporations will censor their content, their points of view. I think the bigger concern for them should be if you have government dictating content policy -- which, by the way, would have a big First Amendment problem -- then whoever’s in charge of government is going to determine what is ‘fair’ under a so-called Fairness Doctrine.”

McDowell did not specify which "way" he was referring to with respect to the election. Although presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama has said that he does not favor reimposing the Fairness Doctrine, which the FCC scrapped as unconstitutional in 1987, conservative talk-radio community is convinced the Democratic majority in Congress will seek its return.

McDowell joined fellow Republican commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate in voting against the commission’s Aug. 1 ruling concluding that cable giant Comcast violated its Internet open-access guidelines by blocking BitTorrent peer-to-peer traffic.

He said the Fairness Doctrine “has not been raised at the FCC.”

Media reform group Free Press, which supports network neutrality and lauded the FCC's ruling against Comcast, took issue with McDowell's comments in a statement, saying, "Net Neutrality has nothing to do with empowering the FCC to regulate content. Net Neutrality is the First Amendment of the Internet, and has been part of the Internet since its inception.

"It is absurd to equate Net Neutrality--a principle that promotes and protects free speech on the Internet--with any effort to regulate speech."