The Zapple doctrine was part of a specific provision of the fairness doctrine, an FCC policy which required broadcasters to present multiple viewpoints about controversial issues of public importance. The fairness doctrine of 1949 allowed station licensees to editorialize, provided that more than one perspective was included in their overall programming. This was a departure from prior policy under the Mayflower doctrine, which did not allow any editorial content. The Zapple doctrine pertained to a particular sort of political speech situation, when a candidate or his supporters buy air time to support the candidate, or criticize his opponent, but the candidate himself does not actually appear in the broadcast.
History
The FCC's political broadcasting rules require that equal time be offered to political candidates. The equal-time rule only applied to the candidate, not to the candidate's supporters or spokespeople though. In May 1970, Senate Commerce Committee counsel Nicholas Zapple argued to the FCC that the fairness doctrine was applicable to air time provided by a broadcast station to a political candidate's spokesperson or supporters. In other words, if one candidate's supporters were allowed to buy air time, then representatives and supporters of opposing candidates should have the opportunity to buy a comparable amount of air time. Similarly, if one candidate was given free coverage by a broadcaster, then that broadcaster should be required to offer free coverage to the opposing candidate too. After careful consideration, the FCC responded to Nicholas Zapple by ruling that all similar parties must have quasi-equal opportunity, i.e. they should be treated similarly. This decision became known as the Zapple ruling, and eventually, the Zapple doctrine. Under the terms of Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934, 23 FCC 2d 707, the Zapple Doctrine applied to purchasing of broadcast time by major political party candidates only.
Demise of the fairness doctrine
By 1985, the FCC was concerned that the fairness doctrine might actually have a chilling effect, which was the very opposite of the policy's original intent of encouraging fair and balanced coverage: "In order to avoid the requirement to go out and find contrasting viewpoints on every issue raised in a story, some journalists simply avoided any coverage of some controversial issues." In addition, journalists felt that it infringed on their rights of free speech/free press under the First Amendment. In August 1985, the FCC decided to suspend the fairness doctrine.
Zapple Doctrine 1985–2014
Although the Fairness Doctrine was suspended, the Zapple doctrine remained extant as an FCC ruling for the next two decades.
Wisconsin election complaint
On May 8, 2014, the FCC was asked to respond to a political programming complaint, made against a broadcast licensee, Capstar TX LLC by supporters of Tom Barrett, the Democratic candidate for Governor of Wisconsin. The Barrett supporters alleged that Capstar would not give them any free airtime on its radio station WISN, in order to respond to statements previously aired on WISN in support of Scott Walker, the Republican candidate for office in the 2012 election. Walker's supporters had received free air time from WISN and affiliate WTMJ for political campaigning purposes. Barrett supporters based their complaint on WISN's violation of the Zapple doctrine. The FCC acknowledged that WISN had refused to provide air time to Barrett campaign supporters, in violation of the Zapple doctrine. However, the FCC ruled that there was no violation of the law: "Given the fact that the Zapple Doctrine was based on an interpretation of the fairness doctrine, which has no current legal effect, we conclude that the Zapple Doctrine similarly has no current legal effect."
Unenforcable
In re: Capstar TX LLC was the catalyst for the FCC's decision that the Zapple doctrine was unenforcable.
The agency tasked with protecting the public interest in broadcasting has decided that WISN and WTMJ, two publicly-licensed radio stations in Milwaukee, were allowed to give away all the free time they wanted to the supporters of one candidate, without allowing supporters of his Democratic recall opponent any free airtime at all.
