FREEDOM OF SPEECH FOR WHOM?

This article focuses on the desirability of freedom of speech in the U.S. where definition of the word is not in consonance with the practice. The author questions whether there is enough freedom for all, or is the quantity so limited that it may be entrusted only to the care of the most deserving. In the fight over freedom of speech, radio broadcasting is a particularly active battlefront. The incident which set off this fight was the adoption by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in 1941, of regulations dealing with the relationship of broadcasting stations to the networks. The new rules were defined to remove certain contractual restraints upon the free flow of programs, and to give to the stations a little more control over their own time. The networks or at least the two biggest national networks-did not like these regulations. In an effort to have them set aside, they resorted to the courts, claiming that the FCC was not only interfering with their business practices but was stuffing their freedom of speech.