By Abby Qin
Fresh off his appointment as chair of the United States Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr is making waves, launching reviews of NPR sponsorships and opening inquiries into major networks’ alleged anti-Trump bias. He’s also pledged to trim “overly cumbersome or outdated” regulations – a priority he outlined as a contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 initiative.
Carr’s moves tap into a decades-old trend of deregulation. Since its inception in 1934, the FCC has governed America’s airwaves with a simple trade-off: Broadcasters get licenses to use public spectrum only if they serve the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” For a long time, that meant providing local journalism, educational programming and balanced debate.
However, the FCC’s shift since the 1980s toward deregulation has eroded those obligations. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 exempted broadcasters from presenting diverse views on public interest topics. The 1996 Telecommunications Act loosened TV and radio ownership restrictions, giving rise to industry giants like iHeartMedia (operating 870 radio stations) and Sinclair Broadcast Group (operating 181 TV stations).
According to Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Democracy without Journalism?”, deregulation not only reshapes journalism, but also poses a threat to democracy.
“It’s dangerous for a democracy if one interest controls all the media and if one voice is amplified through various kinds of media,” he said. “Deregulation removes public interest protections and guarantees that our media will be restructured according to unmitigated capitalistic logics.”
How ownership deregulation undermines public interest
In 1985, the FCC had a one-to-a-market rule that prohibited owning more than one broadcast station in a media market. But the FCC made an exception to that rule following the merger of media company Capital Cities with ABC, allowing the new company to retain both its WPVI-TV in Philadelphia and ABC’s WABC-TV in New York, even though the stations had overlapping signals in New Jersey.
Though they’d made an exception, the FCC approved the merger only after Capital Cities pledged to enhance localized TV service in Delaware and southern New Jersey, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Steve Thode, a retired producer who once worked at WPVI-TV, witnessed the merger firsthand and recalled how regulatory pressure drove public interest investments. The station opened bureaus in Trenton, Harrisburg and Wilmington to increase localized coverage in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
“None of these were the result of a corporate edict … These were done out of regulatory concerns,” Thode said. “And I should point out – this was 40 years ago.”
By 1996, the tide had fully turned. The Telecommunications Act, signed by President Bill Clinton, unleashed a wave of deregulation. The new act extended TV and radio station license terms from five to eight years, enabled corporations to acquire unlimited TV and radio stations, lifted the limit of a broadcaster’s national audience reach from 25% to 35% of U.S. households and allowed cross-ownership of TV and radio stations in the top 50 markets.
That same day, FCC Commissioner Susan Ness endorsed Disney’s takeover of ABC, saying “Big is not inherently bad, and big is not inherently good.” And yet Ness’s statement obscured the larger picture. While corporate size isn’t inherently good or bad, regulators once compelled those giants to act in the public interest – a mandate that faded as ownership rules loosened. Without that pressure, “big” would rarely choose to be “good.”
Today, Sinclair Broadcast Group reaches millions of viewers through its 181 local TV stations across 86 media markets. Yet Sinclair stations have also drawn attention for their flashy, dramatic headlines, their “must carry” edicts to local stations and a tendency to swap out local stories for pre-packaged national programming. Studies suggest that in communities served by Sinclair stations, residents often rate their local news as lower in quality, show less awareness of pressing issues like climate change and increasingly align with the Republican Party.
These trends underscore a stark reality: without rules demanding accountability, media consolidation doesn’t just change what we watch, it can also reshape public understanding, priorities and political loyalties.
The unseen casualty of content deregulation
When the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, critics warned it would deepen political divides – a prediction that proved true. But while partisan media flourished, another shift went unnoticed: the steady decline of TV editorial segments and the erosion of journalism that once prioritized accountability over profit.
The Fairness Doctrine had two key rules: broadcasters were obligated to cover critical public issues and include diverse perspectives. Without the doctrine, media companies could now sidestep contentious debates entirely or amplify one-sided narratives. This didn’t just pave the way for conservative talk radio, but also freed networks from mandating local editorials.
Neil Heinen, former editorial director of WISC-TV and advisory board member for the Center for Journalism Ethics, saw this transformation up close. His station clung to its editorial program for 33 years post-repeal, even when management questioned the value of editorials.
Such dedication was rare. Nearly all stations scrapped editorials to cut costs and avoid alienating advertisers. In the 1980s, the National Broadcast Editorial Association boasted hundreds of members; today, it no longer exists as a standalone entity, having merged repeatedly into larger organizations, such as the American Society of News Editors, as membership plummeted.
Heinen’s approach at WISC TV – hosting weekly editorial meetings with community leaders – once connected journalists and the public. But after his retirement, even that tradition faded. “We’re overwhelmed by other pressures and obligations,” he said.
Reflecting on his decades in broadcast journalism, Heinen underscored the urgent need for professional, locally rooted opinion segments in today’s media chaos.
“Especially now, when unprofessional opinion is rampant across cable and social media, we need journalists trained in opinion journalism to offer an alternative,” he argued. “People deserve someone who knows and cares about their community to take a stand on local issues.”
Why regulation must mandate the public good
For decades, rules like the Fairness Doctrine and ownership limits forced media giants to invest in local journalism, amplify diverse voices and confront uncomfortable truths. The absence of regulation is now leaving most media under structural vulnerability, where public interest is at the discretion of media owners.
For Pickard, addressing that contradiction is key to making positive change.
“We really have to denaturalize the media system that we’ve come to inherit here in the United States. We need to understand how truly weird our system is compared to most systems around the planet and how it is not living up to democratic expectations and responsibilities,” Pickard said.
Pickard outlines three approaches to changing today’s concentrated and hyper-commercialized media system: (1) breaking up media monopolies and encouraging diversity of ownership, (2) mandating commercial media to prioritize public interest in their programming and (3) creating publicly funded media alternatives.
“We need to carve out a significant part of our media sphere that is not driven by commercial logics,” Pickard said.
FCC chair Carr might argue that cutting regulations is about championing free speech, but history offers us a caution. Without guardrails ensuring balance and accountability, “free speech” becomes a euphemism for corporate control. The challenge is to demand a media ecosystem where the public interest is not an afterthought but the bottom line.
Abby Qin is a 2024-25 fellow at the Center for Journalism Ethics and a graduate student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The Center for Journalism Ethics encourages the highest standards in journalism ethics worldwide. We foster vigorous debate about ethical practices in journalism and provide a resource for producers, consumers and students of journalism.