and electronic media are inappropriate and damaging to the
First Amendment.

Almost no one argues that broadcasting should be totally
unregulated. But contemporary debate centers on whether the
federal government should be involved in matters other than the
technical aspects of broadcasting, particularly decisions that
affect programming and news content. Simply put, should the
government regulate the medium of communication by which
its citizens learn what their government is doing? Such regula-
tory policies as the fairness doctrine, personal attack rules, equal
opportunity doctrine, and other rules raise the most serious First
Amendment questions.

This study examines the major issues raised by federal regu-
lation of electronic communication and the environment in
which that regulation takes place. Chapter 1 considers whether
the decline of newspapers and the development of broadcasting
have made the scarcity argument obsolete. In other words, is it
damaging to First Amendment principles to continue to maintain
that electronic and print media are not constitutionally parallel?
Chapters 2 and 3 examine the development of case law in
broadcasting and discuss the evolution of broadcasters' First
Amendment rights. Chapter 4 considers the political environ-
ment in which broadcast regulation takes place, examining the
Federal Communications Commission and its relationship with
Congress, the White House, its clientele groups, and the public.
Chapter 5 discusses First Amendment concepts of public
interest, diversity, and access as they apply to the regulation of
broadcasting. It is to promote those principles that such rules
as the fairness doctrine are directed. Chapter 6 considers
the current "rewrite" of the Communications Act of 1934 that
is before Congress and discusses the consequences of changing
the "public interest, convenience, and necessity" standard that
has governed the regulation of broadcasting for fifty years. And
the appendix provides an analytical model for evaluating the
relative contributions of various actors to FCC policymaking and
suggests issue areas for testing the model analytically.

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