Policies and practices concerning broadcasts of controversial issues

Abstract

If the number of articles appearing in the Journal is a good criterion, more and more broadcasters and scholars are exploring the area of controversial issues programming with keen interest. Within the past year, the Journal has published such articles as Commissioner Frederick Ford's “The Fairness Doctrine” and broadcaster Rex Howell's “Fairness . . . Fact or Fable?” Although there has been a sharp increase in the extent to which American broadcasters editorialize or present other programs exploring public issues of a controversial nature since the dark days in the 1940's under the first “Mayflower Decision” the rate of this growth may have slowed down considerably in recent years.

The following study reports on two surveys of American broadcasting stations. Each survey covered several months, and several hundred stations responded. Professor Ripley found that almost three quarters of the stations responding had programmed some opinions about controversial issues—but that the amount of programming on the average individual station was very small. These surveys are intended to form the base for a projected comparative study that will examine controversial issues programming in 1967.