Deliberately spreading disinformation through broadcast, social, and digital media is not a right — it is a crime against democracy. We are calling for the full restoration and expansion of the Fairness Doctrine, with real criminal accountability for those who knowingly lie to the public for profit, power, or attention.
The original Fairness Doctrine, repealed in 1987, required broadcasters to present controversial public issues in an honest and balanced way. Its removal did not create free speech — it created a free market for lies.
In the decades since, we have watched the deliberate weaponization of media — broadcast, cable, and digital — to manufacture outrage, suppress reality, and destabilize shared civic truth. The result is measurable: vaccine hesitancy, election denial, mass radicalization, and violence inspired by things people were told on screens.
The law must catch up with the damage. A strengthened Fairness Doctrine would not silence opinion — it would make knowing fabrication a legal liability, not a business model.
Restoring and expanding the Fairness Doctrine means: extending jurisdiction beyond broadcast to include cable, streaming, and algorithmic social media platforms; mandating equal time for factually grounded counterpoints; requiring on-air corrections for demonstrably false statements; and creating a criminal enforcement pathway for intentional, knowing disinformation.
Proposed legislation would create tiered accountability: platform compliance standards, individual broadcaster liability, and organizational licensing requirements tied to truthfulness audits — all enforced by an empowered FCC with criminal referral authority to the DOJ.
The right to believe what is actually true is not a partisan position. Propaganda corrodes the left and right equally. It makes governance impossible and civil society brittle.
Disinformation weaponized against climate science, healthcare data, and civil rights policy undermines decades of evidence-based advocacy. Accountability laws protect the integrity of facts progressives rely on.
When fringe actors fabricate narratives in the name of conservative values, they corrupt the movement and expose sincere conservatives to manipulation. Real accountability protects the integrity of the right, too.
If you simply want to know what is real, these laws work for you. A well-informed public makes better decisions — in the voting booth, the marketplace, and the community.
No matter your politics, you have been lied to. You have watched someone you trust repeat something false because a media personality said it with confidence. Strengthening media accountability is not about ideology — it is about the shared right to navigate reality clearly.
This is not a theoretical debate. History has run the experiment. When deliberate mass disinformation was allowed to operate unchecked, societies collapsed into hatred and violence. When it was shut down or regulated, the temperature dropped. The pattern is consistent, documented, and damning.
When Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, the Nazi Party controlled fewer than three percent of Germany's 4,700 newspapers. That would change with extraordinary speed. Joseph Goebbels, appointed head of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in March 1933, understood immediately what the era's most powerful new technology — radio — could do in the hands of a regime willing to use it without restraint.
The Nazis deliberately made radios affordable. A subsidized device called the Volksempfänger — the "People's Receiver" — was mass produced and sold at prices ordinary Germans could afford. By the late 1930s, Germany had one of the highest rates of radio ownership in the world. Goebbels knew exactly what he was doing: the regime needed the signal to reach everyone, in every home, in every kitchen, before they could think critically about what they were hearing.
What followed was the first large-scale deployment of broadcast disinformation as a political weapon in history. The Nazis used radio to dehumanize Jewish people, manufacture fear of political opponents, glorify Hitler as a messianic figure, stoke nationalist grievance, and prepare the German population — emotionally and psychologically — for policies that culminated in genocide.
Academic research examining Nazi Germany's elections found that access to Nazi radio broadcasts measurably increased vote share for the Nazi Party. Areas with stronger radio signal showed greater electoral support — not because voters were stupid, but because sustained, unopposed propaganda worked. Counter-programming with honest content had the opposite effect: anti-Nazi broadcasts reduced Nazi support in areas where they reached listeners.
Allied forces shutting down Nazi broadcasting infrastructure was not incidental to ending the regime — it was central to it. The last surviving German radio station, broadcasting in the name of the National Socialist state, made its final transmission on May 9, 1945: the announcement of Germany's unconditional surrender. Then it went silent. Within months, the infrastructure of manufactured hatred — stripped of its broadcast amplification — began to collapse. The denazification process that followed was made possible in part because the signal was gone.
Goebbels' propaganda machine did not survive democratic accountability because it was never subjected to it. The Nazis understood one thing clearly: given a monopoly on the broadcast signal, you can make a population believe almost anything. The inverse is equally true. Interrupt that signal — demand accuracy, counterpoint, and accountability — and the spell breaks. This is not ideology. It is documented history.
In 1993, a private radio station began broadcasting in Rwanda. It was called Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines — RTLM. It was different from state radio: it was lively, played popular music, featured disc jockeys, phone-ins, and used street language. It quickly built a massive audience among young Rwandans. That popularity was deliberate. The entertainment was bait. The content was a carefully constructed machine for manufacturing hatred toward the Tutsi ethnic minority.
RTLM regularly called Tutsi people "inyenzi" — cockroaches. It broadcast the names and locations of individuals. It broadcast explicit calls for listeners to "cut down the tall trees." When Rwandan President Habyarimana was assassinated on April 6, 1994, RTLM told listeners the Tutsi were responsible and called for a "final war" to exterminate them. Within 100 days, between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu had been massacred — the fastest mass killing in recorded human history.
The Belgian ambassador and staff from multiple international aid agencies recognized what RTLM was doing before the genocide began and specifically requested international help in shutting down the broadcasts. They were dismissed. The U.S. military drafted a plan to jam RTLM's signal but never executed it — officials cited cost, international broadcast agreements, and "the American commitment to free speech." Between April and July 1994, RTLM broadcast continuously throughout the massacres. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda later found that RTLM broadcasts "engaged in ethnic stereotyping in a manner that promoted contempt and hatred" and included direct incitement to kill — naming people and places that were subsequently attacked.
The entire genocide unfolded in 100 days while the radio broadcast without interruption.
Between 500,000 and 800,000 people were killed — while the broadcast signal ran uninterrupted.
The U.S. military estimated a jamming operation was feasible. It was never done. "Free speech" was cited as the reason.
Rwanda is the clearest modern demonstration of what happens when hate broadcasting is allowed to operate without any legal accountability. RTLM was not censored free speech — it was a precision instrument of mass murder. Its broadcasters were convicted of genocide by an international court. That is the legal and moral endpoint of unchecked disinformation. The question is not whether we can afford accountability. Rwanda proves we cannot afford the alternative.
Every historical case of mass propaganda required an amplified broadcast medium — radio, television, print at scale. The lie, on its own, is weak. The infrastructure of the lie is where the power lives. Regulate the infrastructure and you regulate the harm.
In post-war Germany, the systematic dismantling of Nazi broadcasting and press was directly correlated with the decline of organized Nazi violence. In the former Yugoslavia, where inflammatory radio was eventually shut down in specific regions, documented violence dropped in those areas compared to areas where it continued.
Rwanda is the definitive proof. The international community was warned. It had the technical means to intervene. It cited free speech principles and chose not to act. The cost of that inaction was measured in hundreds of thousands of lives. "Free speech" as a shield for known, deliberate incitement is not a legal principle. It is a choice — and that choice has documented consequences.
The Nazi propaganda machine had to subsidize radio receivers and install loudspeakers in public squares to reach German citizens. Today's disinformation apparatus reaches the average American for over seven hours every single day — in their pocket, on their desk, on their wall, and in their bed. The exposure is not comparable. It is categorically larger.
The average American adult spends more than 7 hours per day on screens — nearly half of all waking hours.
The average person spends over 2.5 hours daily on social media platforms — the least regulated disinformation vectors in existence.
Generation Z — the cohort that will run this country in 20 years — averages 9 hours per day on screens. More than their entire school day.
The average American checks their phone 96 times per day — once every 10 minutes of waking life. Each check is a potential disinformation exposure event.
Goebbels needed to build a physical infrastructure — subsidized hardware, broadcast towers, public loudspeakers — to achieve mass reach. He achieved radio ownership rates that, at the time, seemed staggering. In the United States today, that level of exposure is the baseline, not the peak.
The average American adult now spends more than 7 hours per day consuming digital media. Screen time accounts for roughly 40 percent of all waking hours. That exposure is not passive — platform algorithms are actively engineered to maximize engagement, and disinformation consistently outperforms accurate content on nearly every engagement metric. False information spreads faster, travels farther, and stays in circulation longer than truth.
When the Fairness Doctrine was written, Americans consumed perhaps a few hours of broadcast media per day through a small number of licensed channels. The legal architecture of that era was calibrated for that world. We now live in a fundamentally different world — one in which a single piece of deliberate disinformation can reach 50 million people in 48 hours through platforms that face no meaningful accountability for what they amplify.
Nazi Germany achieved its propaganda saturation by engineering a subsidized radio receiver and spending years building broadcast infrastructure. The average American today carries a device in their pocket that delivers 7+ hours of algorithmically curated content daily — including content that the platforms themselves have internally flagged as false but continue to amplify because outrage drives engagement. The scale of potential disinformation exposure today dwarfs anything Goebbels could have imagined. The legal accountability for it is effectively zero.
Fines alone are insufficient. When spreading disinformation generates millions in revenue, a fine becomes a cost of doing business. Only the credible threat of incarceration changes the calculus.
When a lie earns $50M in ad revenue and results in a $1M FCC fine, the math is simple. Profit wins. Fines are priced in as overhead.
A mandatory minimum of 18 months for intentional, knowing broadcast disinformation with documented public harm — regardless of fame, wealth, or influence.
Enforcement must apply regardless of viewership, political alignment, or network affiliation. No pundit or anchor is above the law.
Each subsequent offense triples the sentence. A second offense means 4.5 years. A third means 13.5 years. Patterns of deliberate lying have escalating consequences.
Because influence networks have resources to hire sympathetic counsel, minimum sentences remove the ability to buy a lenient verdict from the table entirely.
Prosecution requires proving the person knew the information was false when published or broadcast — protecting genuine errors while targeting deliberate fraud.
The expanded Fairness Doctrine applies wherever deliberate disinformation reaches a public audience — not just TV. Every major vector of modern disinformation is included.
Anchors, hosts, influencers, and social media personalities who knowingly spread disinformation are personally liable — regardless of their employer's size or influence.
Networks, platforms, and publishers that enable or fail to stop known disinformation face structural consequences — not just dollar fines that their PR teams spin as settled.
Accountability is not only the government's job. Civil society — you — plays a critical role in identifying, reporting, and resisting disinformation in real time.
Use independent fact-checking resources like PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, AP Fact Check, and Snopes before amplifying any claim — especially emotionally charged ones. Outrage is a red flag, not a green light.
Every major platform has reporting mechanisms. Use them consistently and document your reports. Volume of reports creates paper trails that matter in regulatory proceedings.
For broadcast violations, file a formal complaint at fcc.gov/consumers/guides/filing-informal-complaint. Include dates, times, exact quotes, and the demonstrably false claim with sourced corrections.
Demand that your Congressional representatives and Senators co-sponsor legislation to strengthen the Fairness Doctrine. Form letters work — personal calls and town hall attendance work better.
Companies whose ads run on disinformation platforms are funding the operation. Contact advertisers directly. Coordinated, documented advertiser pressure has pulled major advertisers from disinformation-heavy programming before.
The most powerful thing you can do after signing is get someone with different political views to sign too. A petition with documented bipartisan constituent demand is nearly impossible for any legislator to dismiss. Share this page specifically with people who disagree with you on other issues but share the basic right to know what is true.
This petition will be delivered directly to Congressional representatives and their staff. No personal information (PII) will ever be shared — only anonymized aggregate data showing the breadth of public demand for accountability.
Your signature carries weight. By signing, you are on record as a constituent demanding that Congress strengthen the Fairness Doctrine and establish real criminal accountability for intentional public disinformation.
Petition Agreement: I believe that intentional, knowing disinformation broadcast to the public causes measurable harm to democracy and civil society. I call on Congress to restore and strengthen the Fairness Doctrine to cover all broadcast, cable, streaming, social media, and digital platforms; to create enforceable criminal penalties — including mandatory incarceration — for individuals and organizations that knowingly spread disinformation for profit or influence; and to establish an independent oversight body with authority to investigate, fine, and refer cases to the Department of Justice. I understand this petition targets only deliberate, knowing fraud — not genuine free speech or opinion.
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