Public Policies on Broadcast and the Fairness Doctrine: History, Effects, and Implications for the Future

At its most root element, the media as an industry is founded on the principle of the exchange of information, whether it be a one-sided flow or a dialogue between sources. Public policy and its control over this information exchange is critical to the study of the views and opinions that shape our field of inquiry. To continue this line of reasoning would be to conjecture that how people view and interpret their world is the basis of how their everyday life interactions play out. To sum up this sort of abstract reasoning would be that the media wields an inordinate amount of influence on those it touches, connecting them to experiences far outside their realm of experience, while at the same time coloring their day-to-day interactions. Television itself is merely a different format in which to experience this informational exchange, one which continues to evolve. Originally known as “graphic radio,” the television was the culmination of effort between a great many inventors, and one that took on several different types of amalgamations. But over the years, television has evolved from the black-and-white models, to an ever-growing variety of sizes and varieties.