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Drawing on the argument that limited broadcast signals constitute a scarce national resource, Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934. The act mandated that radio broadcasters operate in “the public interest, convenience, or necessity,” suggesting that they were not free to air whatever they wanted. Since that time, station owners have challenged the “public interest” statute and argued that because the government is not allowed to dictate newspaper content, it similarly should not be permitted to control licenses or mandate broadcast programming. But the U.S. courts have outlined major differences between broadcast and print—as demonstrated by two cases.

The first case—Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (1969)—began when WGCB, a small-town radio station in Red Lion, Pennsylvania, refused to give airtime to author Fred Cook. Cook wrote a book criticizing Barry Goldwater, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1964. On a syndicated show WGCB aired, a conservative radio preacher and Goldwater fan verbally attacked Cook on-air. Cook asked for response time from the stations that carried the attack. Most complied, but WGCB snubbed him. He appealed to the FCC, which ordered the station to give Cook free time. The station refused, claiming the First Amendment gave it control over its programming content. The Supreme Court sided with the FCC and ordered the station to give Cook airtime, arguing that the public interest—in this case, the airing of differing viewpoints—outweighs a broadcaster’s rights.

The second case—Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo (1974)—centered on the question of whether the newspaper in this case, the Miami Herald, should have been forced to give political candidate Pat Tornillo Jr. space to reply to an editorial opposing his candidacy. In contrast to the Red Lion decision, the Supreme Court sided with the paper. The Court argued that forcing a newspaper to give a candidate space violated the paper’s First Amendment right to decide what to publish. Clearly, print media had more freedom of expression than did broadcasting.