That Time Reagan Accidentally Broke Democracy

How killing one boring rule created our media nightmare

Have you ever wondered how politics became so partisan?

Is it really a shifting of demographics and values - or has the distance between viewpoints been artificially inflated?

Looking at media today - with its echo chambers and partisan screaming matches - you’d think things have always been this messy. But you’d be wrong. They haven’t.

There was actually a time when broadcasters had to present both sides of controversial issues. It was called the Fairness Doctrine, and when Reagan’s FCC killed it in 1987, they accidentally created the monster we’re dealing with now.

The doctrine wasn’t some politically correct suggestion. It was the law of the land. Starting in 1949, the FCC required broadcasters to cover controversial public issues and present contrasting viewpoints. If someone attacked you on air, the station had to notify you within a week, provide transcripts, and give you free response time. Most stations found it easier to avoid controversial topics entirely rather than deal with expensive FCC hearings that averaged $60,000 per case.

Only one station ever lost its license for violating the doctrine - WUXR in Pennsylvania got shut down for broadcasting one-sided fundamentalist programming. But the threat was real enough to keep most broadcasters in line. The Supreme Court backed this up in 1969 with Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, ruling that viewers’ rights trumped broadcasters’ rights because radio spectrum was limited.

Then things changed and Reagan became president. His FCC Chairman Mark Fowler, who famously called television “just another appliance - it’s a toaster with pictures,” believed broadcasters should be marketplace participants, not community trustees. By 1985, the FCC concluded the doctrine “hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights.” When Congress tried to save it in 1987, passing restoration bills by huge margins in both houses, Reagan vetoed the legislation.

The real death blow came on August 4, 1987, when the FCC voted 4-0 to eliminate the doctrine entirely. They argued it “restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters” and “actually inhibits the presentation of controversial issues.” What they actually did was open Pandora’s box.

Rush Limbaugh figured out what happened first. Months after the repeal, he got a deal to syndicate his show nationwide for free - something only possible without equal-time rules. By 1994, he had 20 million listeners on 650 stations. The explosion was insane: conservative talk radio went from 150 stations in 1987 to over 2,000 by 2013. The ratio became 10 conservative shows for every 1 progressive show.

The content that emerged was beyond toxic. Bob Grant, some radio host in New York, called Black people “savages” and said cops should use machine guns on gay pride parades. Under the old rules, stations would have had to give equal time to people calling out this garbage. Now they could just let it fly.

Fox News followed the same playbook. Roger Ailes founded it in 1996 after producing Limbaugh’s TV show. Limbaugh had proven there was an audience hungry for partisan rage - Fox just put it on cable with better graphics.

The whole industry consolidated too. Media ownership went from 50 major companies in 1983 to just 6 by 2005. Clear Channel bought over 1,200 radio stations and turned them into cookie-cutter operations. Remember local programming? It died so corporate suits could maximize profits.

The political damage was predictable. Pew Research shows that by 2014, 92% of Republicans positioned themselves to the right of the median Democrat, while 94% of Democrats went left of the median Republican. In 1994, nearly half of Americans had mixed political views. That shared reality just vanished.

Every attempt to bring back the doctrine has failed miserably. Tulsi Gabbard tried in 2019 and got zero co-sponsors. Now everyone’s focused on regulating Facebook and Twitter instead of fixing the original problem.

The irony kills me. Reagan’s people thought they were defending free speech. What they actually did was let the loudest, angriest voices drown out everyone else. They replaced actual diversity with whatever made the most money.

Sure, the doctrine had problems. It was heavy-handed and sometimes made stations nervous about covering anything controversial. But it also meant there were actual standards for what counted as journalism. Without those guardrails, news became entertainment and facts became weapons.

Today’s mess - from talk radio to cable news to social media bubbles - all traces back to that day in 1987 when the FCC decided the free market could police itself. The market delivered exactly what markets always deliver: whatever sells best. Turns out, anger and fear sell really well.

Now, we’re still stuck with the consequences. Every fight about social media censorship and fake news happens in the world Reagan created. A place where we’re actually debating if media should serve democracy or just make money?

The answer should be obvious, but apparently it wasn’t obvious enough to prevent one of the dumbest policy decisions in American history.

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