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C C J8nuary 7, 1980 MEf•10RAR;DUM TO MR. TEMKO Re: Westchester County Newspaper Clipping The attached clipping from Arthur Stevens of LorillaQ apparently refers to follow-up material provided by Chairman Ferris of the FCC to Chairman Lionel Van"Deerlinnof the House Subcommittee on Communications, with respect to a question posed through Van Deerlin by Congressman Ottinger. The headline and the lead paragraph are inaccurate in suggestiing that the FCC does not require free time to offset ads onnballot propositions under certain circumstances. Following receipt of the Westchester County newspaper clipping., we searched the Commission's files for the response to Congressman Ottinger. We also checked with f-1illt Gross, who is the FCC staff inember in charge of political broadcast and fairness questions. We found nothingnin the Commission's files that seemed to support the newspaper story, and Gross said he was completely unaware of any Commission statement that would support the newspaper clipping. We contacted Congressman Ottinger's office and were given the attached materialT as having,been the basis for the newspaper story. 0ttiinger' s i'nquiry seems to have arisen out of a balll!ot dispute in'::estchester County, New Joss.oy, concerning governmentt takeover of ConEdison activities. In 0ctober the Commission ruled on a"sponsorship"identification" question rellating to spots opposing count, takeover of publlic power activities. The gist of the complaint was that the real sponsor of the spots opposing the referendum was ConEd. Apparently the stations in question complied with the Fairness W ~ Doctrine by providing free spots in response to the announcements ~ C!~ N CJ1 ~

IN opposing the referendum and the complainants raised no questi,ons about the stations" handliing of their Faiirness Doctrine obligations. The thrust of Ottinger's question rellates to a Commission rule that station logs be made avaiil'able upon request to the g,enerall publ ic 45 days after the day of broadcast. He asked, inieffect, whether the 45-day time lag would not prevent Fairness Doctrine complainants in ballot proposition cases from find'ing out how much time had been sold to opponents. The Commission's response, as set forth in the materiial attached to the Ferris letter, is that the rule does not deter Fairness Doctrine complaints in these siituations since the Commissiorn will. promptly ask for information about the amount of time devoted to one viewpoint on a ballot proposiition. Although the newspaper article is misleading, the materiall supplied in the Ferris letter is not as clear as it might have been. The second paragraph of the answer on page 22 makes the point that the Fairness Doctrine "gives no person or group a right of access to present contrasting points of view." The point here is that the Fairness Doctrine is an.obligation owed to the general public and not t&any particular group. The statilon's obligation is to air the contrasting point of viiew, not to, provilde time for a particular group. This is not the same as saying that the Fairness Doctrine dbesn't apply to ballot proposiitions. Then~ the irrate ri al' i ncl uded i n the Ferri s l etter states that a station may itself air tne contrasting viewpoint or may selli announce- is clear O from the cases,that if the station provides time to the other side iin W~ ~ GD W N Clt1 C!T ments to opponents to, a i r~~ that vi ewpoint. Ut does not say what

order to discharge its Fairness Doctrine oblliigations, it may have to give it for free. The Ferris rnaterial also does not make clear what i~s clear fromithe cases that where one side has been presented frequentl'y in spot announcements there is an obligation to be fair to the other side in terms of the number of exposures provided to it, which for allll practical purposes means that announcements must be given to the other side; it won't be enough to provide five or six programs for one side where the other siide has received 50 or 60 exposures via spot announce- ments. The last paragraph of the answer on page 23 is simil!arly unclear. The Ferriis letter does not signall any change of attitude on the Commission's part in this area. There have been no other cases or developments that signal such aichange. The ground rules remain the same as they were, for example, during the California referendum on public smoking,. Joni Blake Enclosures