Good morning. Today marks 4200 days since the @FCC launched its National Broadband Plan.

The plan ran ten years from March of 2010 until March of 2020. It was ambitious and also failed to achieve any of its six stated goals. I assessed the plan's outcomes ahead of the deadlines on Day 3500 (now700 Days ago) in this @Benton_Inst piece: benton.org/blog/3500-days…

You can see we'll still debating how to resolve or achieve many of the deployment goals here.

Setting aside the compelled speech issue, the Fairness Doctrine, like "shouting fire in a theatre" is more legend than reality in enforcement terms.

The FD was handed down in 1949, but the personal attack and political editorial rules were additions to it much later in 1967.

https://twitter.com/ChristopherTerr/status/1435560386561024006

The Fairness Doctrine, and the personal attack/political editorial rules were collectively upheld 8-0 (unanimously) by the Supreme Court in Red Lion v FCC in 1969.

The doctrine was sporadically enforced and was abandoned by the Mark Fowler FCC in 1987.

Since we'll be revisiting all of the Fairness Doctrine's greatest hits as the @FCC tries to change Section 230 so @BrendanCarrFCC can regulate speech he doesn't like, perhaps a short trip down memory lane. The Fairness Doctrine's roots grew out of the Mayflower Decision...a dispute in a comparative licensing process over the owners of a station using it to editorialize.

The @FCC, then just a few years after creation, declared in the decision that stations could not editorialize.