Abstract

This article analyzes the historical continuity between the opposition of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) to the Fairness Doctrine (1949) and to the contemporary Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Open Internet principle, net neutrality. These debates demonstrate how media policy discourse has shaped democratic ideals, including by designating whose voices are or are not included in broadcast and digital communication spaces. The discourse emerging from both media policy debates reveals that fears concerning cultural hegemony and the diversity of expression in the United States have intertwined with fears concerning the invasion of foreign ideologies. The article then considers the possibility of reconciling religious and secular discourse in the mediated public sphere.

Highlights

  • The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) net neutrality rules (2017, para. 2) aim to ensure the Open Internet by prohibiting Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from blocking access to legal content, applications, or services; throttling lawful Internet traffic; and favoring Internet traffic that benefits their own interests

  • Robert McChesney’s (2007, pp. 184–185) characterization of net neutrality provides a useful framework for analyzing the opposition of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) to both net neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine: The story was too often miscast in the press as a corporate clash of the titans—Google versus AT&T, or Yahoo! versus Verizon—when the real story was the unprecedented involvement in a media policy issue from the grassroots

  • Jürgen Habermas (2011, pp. 25–26) recognized that, religious reasons are insufficient for substantiating arguments in the public sphere, citizens could translate religious language of public reason in order to provide a common moral ground in the public sphere

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Summary

Introduction

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) net neutrality rules (2017, para. 2) aim to ensure the Open Internet by prohibiting Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from blocking access to legal content, applications, or services; throttling lawful Internet traffic; and favoring Internet traffic that benefits their own interests. 20), the Federal Council of Churches had tried to “strike an agreement with the networks and the large stations in communities across the Nation to act as gatekeeper for all religious programming”. These events preceded the Fairness Doctrine (1949), which formalized this framework for broadcast communication through two principles. Discourse emerging from the net neutrality debates, drawing from the possibility of a revived Fairness Doctrine and the concerns NRB leaders had previously harbored about the policy in the mid-twentieth century, reveals the fears of the NRB about cultural hegemony and free expression at home alongside peripheral fears concerning the invasion of foreign ideologies

Theoretical Framework
The Rise of the NRB in a Mediated Public Sphere
Negotiating Net Neutrality
Fearing the Resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine
Thwarting the Threat of Foreign Ideologies
Conclusion

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