Cronkite, Part Two

An addendum this morning to my Cronkite Reflection after opening the local newspaper. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's Paul Greenburg adds his postmortem (sorry, paid link), a decidedly different take in which Cronkite's Report from Vietnam is the highest symptom of the "tri-opoly" of media held by ABC, NBC and CBS. Greenburg views Cronkite as a high priest of the message control of the heyday of the mass media, going so far as to declare it the Age of Cronkite. Hmm -- I just might have to steal that one for presentations, little broader than Watergate Era Journalism.

Greenburg pairs Cronkite's position as the arbiter of truth with the Fairness Doctrine. Yes, that scared a ton of local broadcasters into not covering local issues, but I don't know that it really slowed the nationals that much -- or the omnipotent locals. Growing up in Monroe, La., "Governor" Jimmy Noe was never worried when he'd get on the air for editorials, or his anchors, at KNOE-TV. I put his title in quotes because he had been appointed to serve as Louisiana governor for five months after O.K. Allen died.

Here's where I differ with Greenburg. The Fairness Doctrine's day is done, ended by a combination of technology and awareness. The public accepted the idea of federal management and control of the airwaves because it was a check on powerful, wealthy individuals like Noe and corporations like CBS. A legacy of the Progressive Movement of the turn of the century which empowered the federal government to regulate in the name of the people. These were homogenized times, and unless you were an iconoclast like Greenburg in his prime at the Pine Bluff newspaper, all media tended to hew the Fairness line.

Fairness Doctrine held the almighty FCC license in the balance. Violate it and a broadcaster -- with substantial investment and debt -- loses everything. His station becomes a pennies on the dollar bankruptcy. Not the case today, in fact, quite the opposite. A return to anything like the Fairness Doctrine would be the final blow to broadcast media. For exactly the same reason: it would make something worthless; however, this time it is the FCC license.

Howard Stern proved the point. Harassed and limited by the FCC's regulations on decency, Stern bolted once technology provided him an alternative, satellite radio.

The public understands on a basic level what the networked media means to this equation. The average consumer knows that you do not need a printing press or FCC license to voice your opinion, report your news, become your media. Never before in the history of mankind has the barrier to mass communication been lower.

So not only will Rush Limbaugh or Rachel Maddow not accept their disappearance through the banality of Fairness, neither will the voters. Politicians who do not understand this are no smarter than the newspaper executives who continue to believe that they can just tweak the business plan by directly repurposing their content on-line or broadcast corporations who think spreading a single music format across a network of terrestrial stations like some kind of metasticizing cancer will save radio.

The senators who think they can reinstitute a 21st century version of Fairness understand the media about as well as Al Gore when he claimed to invent the internet. Unfortunately for Al, the point of what the military started was an indestructable way to share information among key points without a central control point. A way to continue after apocolypse.

The goverment may have started it, but by no means does any government own the internet that it could create a choke hold combination that the Fairness Doctrine and the FCC license were in the Age of Cronkite. Yes, federal fiber and switches are part of the system, but far, far too much is in private hands. And as long as those private providers don't make a stupid move like metering the access -- which would give Net Neutrality a whole new life and the feds an entry point to regulation -- they are free and clear.

Thus the best way for Congress or the administration to bring broadcast media to an end would be to further limit its ability to compete in the marketplace. Nothing is killing the old tri-opoly more than the inability to be as edgy as cable -- both in content and commentary. Reinstate Fairness and much of AM radio and non-commercial FM falls silent as the religious and opinion broadcasters go streaming. Big boon for Steve Jobs. Government assisted suicide for legacy media corporations.

So indeed, the Age of Cronkite is dead. The revolution won't be on TV. The revolution will be Twittered. Viva la revolucion.