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What people often leave out of this is that it only applied to broadcast publicly available television. It did not pertain to subscription cable tv which is why it was deemed unfair to local stations leading to its demise.

Considering this and other “public” versus “paid” examples in commerce and welfare, it says a lot about our culture. We care more about our freedom to spend money than we care about the general welfare of the population. We Americans want the freedom to be “bad” people (for lack of a better term) while rejecting a government that would promote our wellness and prosperity.

This is because our federal guidelines (aka The Constitution) merely outline the root level philosophies and leaves the majority of government responsibilities to the states. And in a time when borders are nearly meaningless in an always instantly connected world, beginning with nationally distributed cable television channels, a lot of people are ignorant to their own state’s legislation and power of their local representatives and own voices.

This country has changed a lot in 250 years. The old rules and guidelines are failing us. The death of the Fairness Doctrine wasn’t unfair, so to speak, but there’s a desperate need for new legislation that does the same on a national level. That’s never going to happen because the federal government can’t limit the “free speech” of entities people have to pay for to gain access to.

I would guess that anything that requires an account to gain access to it, even just an email log in or ISP / cellular subscription, skirts around the same rules that apply to free over the air television. To reiterate, we want the freedom to pay to be lied to. And our Constitution grants us that right.