holding that broadcast licensees are not required to accept all paid political advertisements, because such forced access would “tend to transform broadcasters into common carriers and would intrude unnecessarily upon the editorial discretion of broadcasters.”
How later courts described this case
- holding that broadcast licensees are not required to accept all paid political advertisements, because such forced access would “tend to transform broadcasters into common carriers and would intrude unnecessarily upon the editorial discretion of broadcasters.”
- noting that “over the course of the past half century ... Congress and [the FCC] have established a delicately balanced system of regulation intended to serve the interests of all concerned. The problems of regulation are rendered more difficult because the broadcast industry is dynamic in terms of technological change; solutions adequate a decade ago are not necessarily so now, and those acceptable today may well be outmoded 10 years hence”
- noting that the Senate decided in passing the Communications Act “to eliminate the common carrier obligation” for broadcasters because “it seemed unwise to put the broadcaster under the hampering control of being a common carrier and compelled to accept anything and everything that was offered him so long as the price was paid” (quoting 67 Cong. Rec. 12,502 (1926))
- setting forth legislative history in which Congress recognized that requiring a broadcast station to provide nondiscriminatory access to its facilities by political candidates would render it a common carrier
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom Mr. Justice Powell joins, concurring.
In Part IV the Court determines "whether, assuming governmental action, broadcasters are required” to ac *148 cept editorial advertisements “by reason of the First Amendment.” Ante, at 121. The Court concludes that the Court of Appeals erred when it froze the “continuing search for means to achieve reasonable regulation compatible with the First Amendment rights of the public and the licensees” into' “a constitutional holding.” Ante, at 132. The Court’s conclusion that the First Amendment does not compel the result reached by the Court of Appeals demonstrates that the governmental action issue does not affect the outcome of this case. I therefore refrain from deciding it.