This article considers the suspension of the Fairness Doctrine in the USA and the legal instatement of the professional practice of impartiality in Britain as examples of two very different approaches to the regulation of broadcasting. These developments are located within the context of the shifts and changes of the post-Cold War period and are considered in terms of the highly differentiated unfolding of the bourgeois revolution in these two countries. It is also suggested that the practices of impartiality on the one hand, and of broadcaster advocacy or editorializing on the other, may be key factors for the outcome of a democratic process which seeks to identify the public interest and to foster the expression of public opinion.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Appleby, J. (1984) Capitalism and the New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s.New York: New York University Press.
2.
Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
3.
Aufderheide, P. (1990) `After the Fairness Doctrine: Controversial Broadcast Programming and the Public Interest', Journal of Communication, 40(3): 47-72.
4.
BBC (1984) Annual Report and Handbook 1985. London: BBC.
5.
BBC (1989) Impartiality: Representing Reality.London: BBC.
6.
Blumler, H. and M. Gurevitch (1995) The Crisis of Public Communication.London and New York: Routledge.
7.
Briggs, A. (1961) The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom. Vol. I, The Birth of Broadcasting.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
8.
Broadcasting Act (1990). London: HMSO.
9.
Corner, J. and S. Harvey (eds) (1996) Television Times: A Reader.London: Arnold.
10.
Deetz, S. (1992) Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life.Albany: State University of New York Press.
11.
Entman, R. (1989) Democracy without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics.New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
12.
Fallows, J. (1996a) Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy.New York: Pantheon Books.
13.
Fallows, J. (1996b) `News You Can't Use', The Guardian, 1April.
14.
Frazer, N. (1990) `Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy', Social Text, 25-26: 56-80. Reprinted in C.Calhoun (ed.) (1992) Habermas and the Public Sphere, pp. 109-42. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
15.
Freedman, W. (1988) Freedom of Speech on Private Property.New York: Quorum Books.
16.
Garnham, N. (1986) `The Media and the Public Sphere', in P. Golding, G. Murdock and P. Schlesinger (eds) Communicating Politics.Leicester: University of Leicester Press. Reprinted in N. Garnham (1990) Capitalism and Communication: Global Culture and the Economics of Information.London: Sage.
17.
Habermas, J. (1979) `The Public Sphere', pp. 198-201 in A. Mattelart and S. Sieglab (eds) Communication and Class Struggle, volume 1. New York: International General. First published as an encyclopaedia article in German in 1964; published in English translation by Sara Lennox and Frank Lennox in New German Critique 3 (Fall), 1974.
18.
Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity Press. (First published in German in 1962.)
19.
Harvey, S. (1994) `Channel 4 Television: From Annan to Grade', pp. 102-32 in S. Hood (ed.) Behind the Screens: The Structure of British Television in the Nineties.London: Lawrence and Wishart.
20.
Horwitz, R.B. (1989) The Irony of Regulatory Reform. The Deregulation of American Telecommunications.New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
21.
Independent Television Commission (1995) The ITC Programme Code.London: ITC.
22.
Jakubowicz, K. (1991) `Musical Chairs? The Three Public Spheres in Poland', pp. 155-75 in P. Dahlgren and C. Sparks (eds) Communication and Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere.London and New York: Routledge.
23.
Kahn, F. J. (ed.) (1984) Documents of American Broadcasting.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
24.
Kellner, D. (1990) Television and the Crisis of Democracy.Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
25.
Mathias, G. (1993) `Competing with Impartiality', British Journalism Review4(1).
26.
McChesney, R. (1993) Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935.New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
27.
Milne, A. (1988) DG: The Memoirs of a British Broadcaster.London: Hodder and Stoughton.
28.
Negt, O. and A. Kluge (1993) The Public Sphere and Experience: Analyses of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Spheres, trans. by P. Labanyiet al.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
29.
Owen, J. (1996) `Crisis or Renewal? The Origins, Evolution and Future of Public Service Broadcasting 1922-1996; unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Westminister, London
30.
Perkin, H. (1989) The Rise of Professional Society: England since 1880.London: Routledge.
31.
Philo, G. and J. Hewittet al. (1982) Really Bad News.London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative.
32.
Public Culture (1994), 7(1). Special Issue on the Black Public Sphere.
33.
Ramberg, B. (1986) `The Supreme Court and Public Interest in Broadcasting', Communications and the Law, 8(6): 11-30.
34.
Ray, W.B. (1990) FCC: The Ups and Downs of Radio-TV Regulation.Ames: Iowa State University Press.
35.
Rowan, F. (1984) Broadcast Fairness. Doctrine, Practice, Prospects.New York and London: Longman.
36.
Scannell, P. (1989a) `Public Service Broadcasting and Modern Public Life', Media, Culture & Society, 11: 135-66.
37.
Scannell, P. (1989b) `Public Service Broadcasting: The History of a Concept', in A. Goodwin and G. Whannel (eds) Understanding Television.London: Routledge.
38.
Scannell, P. and D. Cardiff (1991) A Social History of British Broadcasting, Volume 1: 1922-1939: Serving the Nation.Oxford: Blackwell.
39.
Schiller, H. (1996) Information Inequality. The Deepening Social Crisis in America.New York and London: Routledge.
40.
Smith, A. (ed.) (1974) British Broadcasting.Newton Abbot: David and Charles.
41.
Smith, A. (1993) `Public Service Broadcasting Meets the Social Market', Books to Bytes. Knowledge and Information in the Postmodern Era.London: British Film Institute.
42.
Stein, L. (1996) `The Battle over the Fairness Doctrine: Deregulation and the Shifting Balance of Power in the Regulatory Process', unpublished paper, Radio-Television-Film Department, University of Texas at Austin.
43.
Thomas, R.M. (1978) The British Philosophy of Administration: A Comparison of British and American Ideas 1900-1939.London and New York: Longman.
44.
Willis, J. (1993) `Vague Sense of Unease', The Guardian25January.
45.
Wilson, V. (ed.) (1967) The Book of Great American Documents, Brookeville, MD: American History Research Associates
46.
Wyatt, Lord (1990) Speech, col. 369, Hansard, House of Lords, 11 July. London: HMSO.
