Selects: How the Fairness Doctrine Worked

Hey guys, it's me Josh, and for this week's episode, I've chosen our twenty twenty two episode on the Fairness Doctrine. It's been coming up all over the place lately, so I thought it was high time that we released it as a select. And I went back and listened to this one, and I found that Chuck just kind of sat back and really just let me go. And I really appreciate him for that, because this one really got my goat. Enjoy.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's jaredog the Rome Land of all Time over there, and.

This is the stuff you should know. Wow. I gotta pep it up a little bit, you know? Is that what that was?

Screw it up a little bit, That's what I meant to.

Say, speaking of screwing up Chicago, Illinois, screwing up.

It is.

I was trying to think about this, like which approach should we take. Should we just outright lie and say like there's very few tickets left, so you better go get them now? No? Or should we shame them and say there are plenty of tickets left, a disappointing amount of tickets left.

I think we should just be honest and not shame them, Okay, but express our disappointment. Nothing works better than disappointment.

You know, Chicago, we really expected a little more from you than this.

So if you're confused about what we're talking about, probably because you haven't heard, and that's our fault. About our live shows coming up all around the country to cities we've never been to before.

Yeah, yeah, we've.

Never been to Orlando before. We've never been to Portland, Maine before.

That's right.

But we are going to Chicago again because we thought Chicago loved us on July twenty fourth at the Harris Theater, and then Toronto the next night on July twenty fifth.

They're buying a lot of tickets. They love us up there.

Yeah, the Dan fourth, and then Boston August twenty ninth, Portland, May and August thirtieth, Orlando and New Orleans October ninth and tenth, and then Brooklyn the twenty third through the twenty fifth.

Yeah, October three night run at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, which is going to be great.

That's right.

But again, Toronto, you're doing great guys.

Keep it up.

Chicago, you could stand to step it up a little bit. You got a little bit of time.

But why wait you know.

Yeah, I mean the seats are only going to get worse.

True dad, chuck, true dad.

So just go to s ysk live for our home, our touring home on the web thanks to our buddies at squarespace. Oh yeah, and now let's talk about the fairness doctrine.

Okay, we actually need to If this were, say, pre nineteen eighty seven, we would need to have Jerry come in and say, so, here's all the reasons why you shouldn't buy tickets to stuff you should know live if we were going to follow the fairness doctrine. But it's

I can't remember.

But you know, since podcasts don't fall under the FCC, then doubt if.

It would have mattered. Oh yeah, I guess that's true. Huh.

Yeah, we could if we wanted to. Right now, we could say every curse word, every awful thing in the world under the sun. We elect not to do that everyone.

I heard a radio DJ the other day say, I know you want to curse so bad right now, this is why we're getting a podcast, and I was like, yeah, I guess we could. I guess we could curse, but it's I like that we don't chuck.

I do too.

And if you want to hear me curse just a you can come to a live show true to true because it happens a little bit. Or B you can just join me over at movie crush I cuss. I had a lot over there.

Yeah.

I think at first people were like, oh, and then now I think people go listen in part to hear you curse.

They like to hear that blue streak coming out, and they hear the real me. Oh.

I like to think that both sides are the real you put together well.

For roughly two and a half hours a week, this is the real me.

Do you find it difficult not to curse on the show? Uh?

No, I mean I'm fully used to it by now, Yes, but I definitely am not as fully free wheeling as I normally am.

Yeah, I guess I should say.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm like some you know, Flanders type or whatever. I curse pretty routinely myself in regular life, but I guess I find it kind of comforting just knowing that there's a there's a safe space where I don't say the F word a lot.

You should start another podcast just called filth Floren Filth with Josh Clark.

Okay, that's a pretty good idea.

But none of this has to do with the nineteen twenties, except for the fact that people did not curse on the radio back then either, because there weren't a lot of people on the radio in the nineteen twenties. No, actually, pre or early early early nineteen twenties, that is, right.

Pre November nineteen twenty, there was not much going on on the radio aside from Morse Code, some Ham radio operators.

And remember we.

Did a pretty good episode on Ham Radio.

Love those I remember correctly.

Yeah, Well, one of the things I remember about that Ham Radio episode is that there was a kind of a whole hacker anarchic ethos surrounding the early days of radio. You know, it's just a total free for all. You could broadcast on whatever station you wanted to and get in arguments with, you know, the government if you wanted to, who cared.

There was not a.

Lot of ways to trace anybody, So there was a lot of anything goes mentality among the early Ham radio operators. But that was basically all you would hear is people saying like, hey, how's it going, kind of thing, you know, maybe some heavy breathing. And then in November nineteen twenty, a station called k d KA actually organized itself and the first broadcast that it put out was reading the election results from the James Cock James Cox, Oh my gosh, almost just violated FCC.

Rules this dirty talk James Cox.

Warren Harding a nineteen twenty presidential election. It was the first commercial licensed radio broadcast in the world.

I think, yeah, I think that's a great trivia question. If someone were to say, what was what city hosted or whatever was part of the first radio commercial radio broadcast Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And the follow up would be and what did they broadcast a federal a presidential election outcome? Which was a big deal because it's weird to think about in nineteen twenty that people all over the country were waiting for that morning paper to come out.

Except in Pittsburgh. They knew, right, they did know.

And not everybody in Pittsburgh, just the people who had basically built their own radios because that was the radios that were around.

They were they're like eight people are Pittsburgh pretty much pretty much.

But the fact that this happened in words spread pretty quickly. Yes, some people in Pittsburgh knew the election results because they were listening to the radio and.

They ran around yelling that out and said we heard it on a radio, and everyone's like these people, lock them up.

Yeah.

And also other little known fact, the first song played on the radio was radio killed the newspaper Star.

Did you just make that up or did you have that prepped? I just made it up?

Okay, good job, thank you man. I'm glad you got like that. Grudging good job, because there was almost contempt in that first initialb.

Well, because off the cuff, that's a great joke. But if you workshop that over a few hours, then no, no.

No, when's the last time I workshopped a joke?

I don't know? Okay, you don't let me in your workshop, and I know I keep it a close to the guarded secret. So okay. So here's the point.

This is the reason we're even talking about that first broadcast is because that was November nineteen twenty. By nineteen twenty four, I think there were and in nineteen twenty there were like twenty thousand radios. Nineteen twenty four, there were one in a half million radios in the United States. By nineteen thirty eighty, no, nineteen forty eighty three percent

Yeah.

So in the nineteen forties, the FCC and you know, there's some background all this that we'll get to, but we haven't even really said what the Fairness Doctrine is yet.

No. No.

Finally, in nineteen forty nine, the US government said, you know what, we need some help here. We're a little bit worried that, geez, somebody could some private citizen who's wealthy could go and buy all the radio stations and essentially propagandize the news, right, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Yeah, So basically what they said was this, there is one thing we can do about it. We can flex our muscle as the government and specifically say you broadcasters can't do.

That, that's right, via something called the Fairness Doctrine, which had the overall goal of basically, and it's very kind of cute to look back at this time period, but its initial goal was to make sure that all the information on the radio waves was good information and true and fair and enriching. And there's only so much space on a radio dial, and this is very critical that there were a limited number of frequencies available.

Yes, frequency scarcity.

I think, yeah, that's just put a pin in that because that's a very big deal. Is how this weighed in the favor of the fairness doctrine and then also kind of helped kill it in some ways. Sure, but basically the very progressive view that public interests outweigh private interest in the public has a right to really good information over the free speech of the broadcaster.

Even Yes, so you just hit it right on the head, like that is the crux of the fairness doctrine. And it seems like okay, depending on your viewpoint, either.

Like the most.

Vile idea ever or just a completely sensible idea. And the reason that it can present the same these two totally different opinions is because this idea, the fairness doctrine, is it sits right at the heart of the difference between the right and the left, between conservativism and libertarianism and liberalism, right, and it is it comes down to this, like you if you have to promote public intercourse like people understanding not doing it in public, but I mean

We have to do that.

We have to limit what broadcasters can say. We have to curtail free speech to people on the right, like right there, full stop. That's a problem. That's an issue. It's it has fatally flawed because you are curtailing the free speech of somebody, whether it's a whether it's NBC or Joe Schmoe who wants to say something on the radio, It doesn't matter. You are curtailing free speech, and therefore

Yeah, pretty much. I mean it fell along those lines back then and still does today.

Mm hmm.

Even though the fairness doctrine isn't around, the ideology.

Is well, it keeps getting brought out in kind of you know, forced along like an angry parade route in order to kind of say like, look, look, look what the government's capable of doing. Look at the overreach they really want to do. Don't let them do it again with.

X, right. You know.

So it is it's a huge flash point, and it's understandable why it seems like so kind of limp and bureaucratic and boring, But when you dig into the history of the whole thing and even the contemporary idea behind it, it's a huge flashpoint politically in the United States.

Yeah.

So it had a couple of main components, and then within that a couple of big, big rules, very important rules. The first of the components were they were known together as the fairness rule, which is private broadcasters must report on my matters of public interest.

Like it's a responsibility of you as a broadcaster that's right.

And private broadcasters must cover opposing perspectives regarding that public interest.

It's a big one. That's a big one. And then the little rules there.

The personal attack rule said that if you're a broadcaster and you are going to run a negative story on somebody or something prior to that, you have to let these people know or this organization know and give them time to respond on the air. And then the political editorial rule, which is private broadcasters that air editorial programming that endorses a political candidate must inform other candidates and

Yeah, the equal time rule is why debates are supposed to have all candidates, because you're supposed to if you give one candidate time airtime to say, hey, here's my platform, you're supposed to give all other candidates the equal amount of time. And that political editorial rule kind of it's close to it, and it follows in the same tradition and principle. But really the personal attack rule and the political editorial role that we're part of the fairness doctrine.

That's a good point.

So the idea though that that public or that private broadcasters have to talk about issues and then have to error opposing viewpoints, that is that is kind of controversial because it's saying like he we we the government are saying you have to do this, this is your responsibility. And the idea that the government even has control over airwaves is is in dispute, but it actually dates pretty far back, and we'll talk about the background, the backstory behind the fairness doctrine after a message.

How about that sounds good? Okay, Chuck.

So there's one thing to really understand what we're talking about here. Initially we were talking about radio waves and then eventually TV waves, and then I eventually turned into the Internet. But all these things, especially something like a airwaves for a radio and TV, these exist naturally, right. Yeah, there's not like a government factory that produces radio waves and then the government can say, well, we produce these

Is that is that the deal?

I've never heard the difference. I think that's it was one and the same or something.

I think an ocean liner specifically can cross two different continents.

I got yeah. I guess a cruise ship could just hug the coast or something like that.

I think that, But I might be making all that up, I gotcha.

So the Titanic sank, there was a lot of radio traffic going on as the disaster breaks out. Obviously, so even though this in Newfoundland they heard very early on and picked up this distress call, they couldn't really get it out because everything was all clogged up.

Yeah, there are a lot of ham radio operators screwing things up at the time.

That's right.

And that's what prompted the Radio Act of nineteen twelve, which was sort of the beginnings of the foundation of what would eventually become the Fairness Doctrine, because what it did was it established spectrum allocation, and the FCC basically said, hey, listen, if you want to broadcast, you can't just broadcast.

You got to come to us and get a license.

Yeah, Initially it was the Commerce Department that was issuing licenses. Yeah, and then came the Radio Act of nineteen twenty seven that formed the Radio Commission and they started handling licenses. But not only did they start saying, Okay, you're a broadcaster, here's your license. This is the frequency that you can broadcast on. Prior to that that was around in the Radio Act, that was the Commerce Department that did that,

Yeah.

But and the really important thing, and this is how it not your family?

Right.

The really important thing was that established what we talked about before, which is spectrum scarcity. There's only so much space now if everyone has to apply for a license, who wants to broadcast.

It's just it was very key in the setup.

And then, like I said, eventual downfall of the fairness doctrine.

Yeah, because it says this like, Okay, here's the full here's the full spectrum the radio spectrum that we can broadcast on, and we're going to carve it up, and each person gets a specific frequency to broadcast on. That means that there's a finite number of frequencies. So there's a finite number of licenses, which means that not everybody can have a license to broadcast, which means that the people who do have that license to broadcasts have a

Right this The nineteen twenty seven Radio Act, while it did establish that, it kind of made some errors basically, and how they set it up.

There are a lot of misspellings. Yeah, there are a lot of misspellings.

But they would say basically to the broadcasters, you have to air content in support of quote, public convenience, interest or necessity end quote.

But they didn't really define what that was.

Which, by the way I looked it up, I was like, what does public convenience mean? Apparently in the UK it means a public toilet, and that's the only definite I could ever find for it. So somebody just made that up.

Yeah, I know, the air content about public toilets, right, an would being great actually.

Like that apart from naked gun, it's just nothing but the sounds of people peeing.

But this is a big problem because if something isn't clearly defined, then it can't be it can't be enforced, right you know. So in nineteen thirty four they knew that this was a problem. This was how many years later, like seven years later, and they said, you know what, we need to issue another act because we're the federal government. And so the Federal Communications Act replaced the Radio Act.

Right, because not only does it make it difficult to enforce, it makes it difficult to follow. So, like, even if you're broadcasting and you're like, I totally agree with this, I do have a rite and responsibility, what's this public public convenience thing?

Again?

Like, how do I do this? What am I supposed to be doing? And if it's not defined, yeah, you can't enforce it. You also can't follow it if you want to follow it. So there was just too much gray area. And so the FCC, when this was created, this idea of, Okay, we're going to set about like defining this stuff and really generating this idea of what

That's right, and that that really sort of laid the groundwork in a big, big way for the fairness doctrine, even though the Fairness Doctrine sort of undid that it did and said, well, you know, editor you can editorialize, but you just have to do it on both sides.

Right, you have to present, present, prevent present both sides. And like, on the one hand, that was a gift to the to the broadcasters right there saying okay, you can you can use your own voice. You can state your own opinion, you can support your own political candidate, but you have to give airtime to the other political candidate. You have to give airtime to people with an opposing.

View of what you just said.

So it was kind of like a compromise, but it was also a weakening of the progressivist agenda, I guess yeah.

And the broadcasters did not like it for sure, because again they were still sort of confused about what what does public importance mean. We're not even sure you know, everything's decided and applied on a case by case basis.

In other words, yeah, that's a big one.

Yeah.

In other words, if somebody just files a complaint, basically they will take up that complaint and hear that complaint. But it wasn't like some like big sweeping thing.

No, But it was also Chuck, that's so that that means that it's it's a capricious an arbitrary basically aping the rule on a case by case basis rather than a sweeping regulation. But it's also a weakness because it means that the SEC is saying, we'll leave it to you, the broadcasters, to police yourselves. We're only going to act when somebody complains.

Yeah, So what happened in a lot of cases was some radio stations were like, you know what, I'm not even going to go there, and I'm going to avoid controversy at all together because I don't think we pointed

It up, right exactly, And that was the fact that they didn't do that. They were airing on the side of caution over editorializing, but also probably they were trying to make sure that everybody was was not offended. They didn't offend either side because they didn't want to be boycotted with advertising too or fined.

Sure. Yeah.

So that was a big problem with the fairness doctrine is that it was ill defined. It was it opened the door for opposing viewpoints that that that put them on equal footing or equal ground with with with other viewpoints that were say, scientifically backed, which created what's called

When it came up.

There was a ruling in nineteen sixty seven that found that cigarette advertising qualified as a a presentation of one viewpoint of a controversial subject. Basically, cigarette smoking is great, Go smoke some cigarettes. And so some consumer groups petitioned the FCC and said, hey, we should be able to give the opposing viewpoint, don't smoke cigarettes, it's bad for you. And the SEC said, you're absolutely right, And advertisers.

Were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

This is a big deal, and now they jumped in to back up the National Association of Broadcasters, which was opposed to the fairness doctrine in general.

Yeah, and it also you know that kind of thing, if advertising counts, that opens the doors, and it did, or you know, like and we'll we'll get to this more specifically later. But like if a power company wanted to do an ad about their great new nuclear power plant that they were going to build, like a liberal group can come forward and say no, no, no, like, that's not an ad. I know they're paying for airspace, but that means we need to talk about the ills of nuclear power.

Right right.

And I mean even if it wasn't ed, the opposing group could say, we get free airtime to say that this is the opposite of that. And so if you're a broadcaster, especially if you're in like a successful market that you know fifteen thirty sixty second spot is important, you don't want to give that away. But it may also you may have like an interest in whatever the other group is protesting. So just on that in that respect as well, you don't really want to air the

The sc says, so that's right. So you got to think this is going to end up in court at some point.

Sure, and it did quite a few times over the years, not surprisingly, and for about a twenty to thirty year period, US courts basically supported the FCC in fulfilling this mandate. There were some real highlights. In nineteen sixty nine. There were a couple of big court rulings that affirmed this enforcement. One was Red Lion Broadcasting Company Incorporated the FCC. It's a little mouthy, it is. So this one was sort of two cases in one. The Supreme Court was able

You got to do this right.

So and since the Supreme Court ruled that that Cook could have equal airtime, this is like I think twelve years or nine years later, and I could not find anywhere if he actually took him up on it or not. But the whole thing was just like a It was an ad hominem attack, an attack on him on Cook because Cook had written a book against Barry Goldwater, who was a presidential candidate at the time, and the people who ran Red Lion didn't like it, so they attacked Cook.

But he so they.

In this ruling though, and this is the whole point, not that Cook got his time, it was airtime, but that the Supreme Court ruled that the SEC applying this fairness doctrine was good and fine and constitutional, which is a big deal. They ruled that the SEC could constitutionally exercise this fairness doctrine, which is that was just enormous.

Yeah, it was a very very big deal.

The other big kind of landmark case was that same year the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ at all the FCC.

Another sinilating title.

There was a US appeals court who overturned the FCC's decision not to consider a petition to revoke the license of Lamar Broadcasting WLBT. So these citizens got together civil rights groups and they were like, you know what, this station is awful. They are first of all, they're not covering the civil rights movement, and they're flat out racist

Which is pretty surprising because you know, the citizens are the ones the sec have always been like fighting for right.

It was a little hinky hinky is the word that we used to use. So the petitioners appealed, and in nineteen sixty six, yeah, sixty the Court of Appeals for DC said, you do have standing to petition the FCC to revoke a license, right, because that's all about protecting the public interest, which is what the FCC was supposed to be doing in.

The first place. So get back to work.

And finally, in nineteen sixty seven, the FCC revisited that petition rejected it again because they said, hey, the station has actually kind of taken some steps since then, and we think they're doing the right thing. Petitioners still weren't happy. They appealed that. In nineteen sixty nine, the FCC actually revoked Lamar Broadcasting's license.

They did. As far as as far as I could tell, Lamar Broadcasting was the one and only company to lose their license under.

The Fairness Doctrine permanently.

Yeah right, they never got it back and chuck a little cherry on top because Lamar Broadcasting lost the license of WLBT in Jackson, Mississippi. It was up for grabs and it was taken by a majority black owned group that took over the station at that point, isn't that nice? So things seem to be going smoothly for the fairness doctrine. What could go wrong? Well, we'll tell you what could go wrong after a break?

How about that? Okay, Chuck.

So one thing that I've learned is it's not necessarily like the Supreme Court is their decisions are final forever. They kind of shift and move over time over long enough periods of time. And the fairness doctrine is a really good example of that, because in the sixties the Supreme Court ruled pretty clearly the FEC was constitutional. But by the end of the seventies the Supreme Court started to side with broadcasters instead. The windsor change kind of

Yeah.

So the complaint here was that he or the station rather via Harold Gross, had abused their broadcasting power to the detriment of the public. So what he did was he denied airtime to political rivals in some cases.

In other cases he.

Censored coverage of local businesses if they didn't advertise with them.

Yeah, he was accused of clipping, which is taking like when a network delivers a show it has commercial breaks in it. He would have his editors go through and add even more commercial breaks, which you're not supposed to do.

That was a big one.

Didn't cover the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance because he didn't like Jimmy Hoffa's politics, even though it was a national and a local story.

Yeah.

So in nineteen seventy five a hearing by the FCC said, you know, you violated the fairness rule. We're taking your license, buddy. But he appealed it and this time he won the appeal. And like you said, this was a big shift in the way things were being thought about as far as the fairness doctrine went.

Hey, one one more thing about Harold Gross before we move on this guy. He was such a businessman that when he started his TV station in nineteen fifty w JIM, he was actually one of the first one hundred and eight license holders to broadcast on TV. But he wasn't sure that TV was going to stick around, that it was going to take off as a technology, so he built the WJIM facilities so that it could be converted into a motel if TV didn't go anywhere. So the original WJIM TV station had.

A pool out back. What is it now? Do you know? What is what? The buildings the pool? I don't know.

I looked up to see if there was anything recent about it, and I didn't find any new stuff. But I saw a picture of the station and there's definitely a pool out back from back in the fifties.

It's got a nice perk, I guess.

So I wonder if you let anybody swim in it or not.

I don't know.

Maybe if you advertised, he would have let you.

So this was the mid to late seventies, and then things really really started changing in the nineteen eighties because that whole thing about remember when we said putting a pin in spectrum scarcity, that was no longer a problem. By the mid nineteen eighties, there were more than ten thousand radio stations, thirteen hundred TV stations, about seventeen hundred newspapers, and the whole sort of drum beat was like, wait a minute, there's not a problem here anymore with scarcity.

We should be able to do what we want.

Because you told newspapers from the very beginning that their free speech was protected and they could do whatever they want.

Why are we any different.

Yeah, that's a really big point that a lot of people pointed to over the years, is why does this just apply to electronic media? Like the print media literally has an editorial page where they come out with positions on candidates and all this stuff. Why doesn't it apply to them? And for years and years and years it was any schmoke can basically go get a newspaper. Printed radio is different because of that spectrum scarcity.

But yeah, as the satellite.

People came along, and as cable came along, that just kind of went out the door. So spectrum scarcity going away, and the fact that the newspaper industry, the print media, was not regulated anywhere near the same way really kind of removed any remaining foundation for the fairness doctrine to stand on.

Yeah, So in nineteen eighty five, the FCC kind of got their gears turning and said, you know what we think this is.

We want Congress to review this.

Basically, we're going to institute a public comment period even and we think we should abandon the personal attack rule and in this case by case thing right.

And yeah, they did this for like two years, and while the SEC's holding like these public hearings on it, Congress at the same time was saying, well, we don't really want the fairness doctrine to go away, and not just the left. There was a bipartisan supported bill that got passed in Congress to codify the fairness doctrine, but it was vetoed by Reagan and so after that that was basically it for the fairness doctrine.

Yeah, the FCC voted unanimously to just get rid of it.

They did, and so they didn't actually get rid of it, they just stopped enforcing it, or some parts of it. They kept enforcing I think the personal attack and political editorial provisions up until like two thousand, for like another thirteen years. But the idea that you had to promote opposing viewpoints on your television station or your radio station that went away starting in nineteen eighty seven, and a lot of people say that really changed the American media landscape big time.

Yeah, I mean, you know, depending on who you are. I know, I'm trying to dance around this.

Depending on who you are, you probably have a very strong opinion about the fairness doctrine one way or the other, or you may think it was a mixed thing. It was definitely a flawed policy. I think everyone agrees that

Right right, And so especially if you have, like each side promoting a viewpointer or an agenda to the detriment of the other side. There's like the middle ground is lost, which I mean some people, I know, some people aren't very hip on centrism these days anyway, but I mean you can keep a pretty decent sized society together when you kind of follow a centrist access upward and onward, you know. And I think that to me, the fairness

Idea or not. But I just don't think it's.

Like I can see saying, all these people out here need good information and it's probably not going to just get out there on its own if we the government don't step in and say here's how we need to

Yeah, I mean, one thing we can say is without the fairness doctrine, we may not have gotten any of these minority viewpoints. In the nineteen forties and fifties and sixties, people might not have been as well informed except maybe via newspaper about the civil rights movement, women's rights movement, how bad smoking is, about nuclear power plants, like, all of these things that were sort of in the shadows

So it was flawed, to be sure.

Sure, Yeah, there's from what I understand, any democrat to the right of Ralph Nader, which is almost everybody says, yes, fairness doctrine, what a terrible idea.

Terrible idea.

It was officially repealed in twenty eleven, and if you'll think back, that was under the Obama administration. So the Obama administration's FCC was the one that officially took the fairness doctrine off of the books, removed it.

Yeah, but I mean that was a purge. That was just like there's a bunch of rotten food in the fridge, and why has no one thrown it out yet?

Yeah, but it was also pretty symbolic. You know, it was a symbolic act, whether they intended it or not. But the idea that it was it was removed by a democratic, lefty president's administration is it's I don't know, it's saying something I think.

Yeah, here's where we are today.

Though there was a poll, a Gallop polling just last year in twenty eighteen that's found Americans don't trust the news. They guess, let me see, sixty two percent of what they hear is biased, forty four percent is inaccurate, and thirty nine percent is misinformation.

That's those numbers seem low to me.

That's not a great place to be in as a country. Though.

No, it's a terrible place. It's a scary place, Like, how is this country still together, you know.

Yeah.

But and the other thing is we're going to get so much guff because we didn't come out and just stay completely down the middle. But I mean, I want to say, like I understand where people on the right are coming from with this, Like ideologically, this is censorship and the prohibition of the exercise of free speech, and that is one of that is a core founding value

Yeah, But it's like it wasn't it wasn't like state run radio, you know. No, it wasn't like the government, the federal government propagandizing their agenda.

Right.

But yeah, it was saying like, hey, you can say this viewpoint, you also have to show the other viewpoint. To me, that's almost impossible to argue with.

Yeah, And I think newspapers of.

High standing still on their editorial page kind of print the two opposing opinions side by side.

Yeah, that's what op ed stands for, is opposite the editorial page. So the editorial page will be the newspaper's opinion their editorial board, and then on the literal opposite page is the basically the opposing pinion of that. Yeah, it's just a high journalistic standard. But this is the government saying this. Newspapers do this on their own, I guess, just out of tradition, whereas electronic media is a little more wild westy than that.

That's right. So here we are today.

Pretty interesting times we live in, and it's all because the fairness doctrine went away. Anyway, thanks for listening to this episode of stuff.

You should know.

If you want to know more about the fairness doctrine, just go outside see how you like things. And since I said that, it's time for listener.

Mail, I'm going to call this the sound of our voices. All I'm sorry, let me say this the color of our voices.

Oh yeah, I know what my voice is. Color. This is good. In fact, yours isn't even color. This is more of a field thing.

Okay, So hey, guys, I listened to the episode on perfect pitch. You mentioned that cinistets are often good candidates for having perfect pitch. I fall into the category of being someone who possesses both. I've been serious about my musicianship since my earliest recollections of life. And that's when I began involuntarily hearing all the individual musical notes and

Pitch pipe? I bought a pitch pipe. Why didn't you bring it in?

No, I should have brought it in. The one note harmonica, I should have bought two.

I'm going to buy you one.

I would love it. Can you have it engraved too?

Sure? Okay?

So the sound of F for Alison has never not caused a rush of the color orange to sweep over her from head to foot. I also hear people's individual voices and colors. What's unique about voices to me? They're incredibly textured in and of themselves. You guys have voice colors and textures.

I love mine, read mine.

Josh's voice.

Anytime I hear it sounds like suede. If Swede Swede could make a sound painted medium to dark brown with a tiny hint of easter egg purple, that's your voice.

That is a lovely combo. If you ask me.

Chuck's voice, on the other hand, has zero fuzzed to it at all. Chuck's voice is very, very metallic, almost shimmery, like you're gazing upon a deep blue green body of water and you can see straight to the bottom.

Nice.

That's a nice voice right there.

Check. These are both great voices. Yeah, I'm very happy that.

I mean, who knows what could have come out of this email.

You here's like a puke and yours sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

The end, I've come to find out that no two voice colors are exactly the same, kind of like thumbprints and snowflakes. A person's voice color does not morph into something else either if they suddenly start speaking in another language, And it also has nothing to do with his or her particular personality type. So they're not saying you're smooth like suede on like.

As a person.

Oh yes, clearly, I think that I'm a shimmery as a person.

The point of the matter, I delight in hearing both of your voices nearly every day.

Is a tune. End of the show.

It's become a staple in my daily existence. Keep on being wonderful. That is from Alison, who is at our Salt Lake City show. She interacted with us from the crowd.

That's great. Thank you for interacting with Alison.

We appreciate that it's illegal at our shows, but she goes I think I asked a question and she answered it.

It's against the rules, that's what they say. Well, thanks Alison. That was one of the more interesting emails we've ever received. Frankly, if you want to be like Alison and go to one of our live shows, you will never regret it

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