This is why you don't have fair media. (must read for you that don't know)

Reagan Vetoes Measure to Affirm Fairness Policy for Broadcasters.

LEAD: President Reagan today vetoed a bill that would write into law the fairness doctrine requiring broadcasters to present divergent views on controversial topics.

President Reagan today vetoed a bill that would write into law the fairness doctrine requiring broadcasters to present divergent views on controversial topics.

In rejecting the measure, Mr. Reagan denounced it as ''antagonistic to the freedom of expression guaranteed'' by the Constitution. ''In any other medium besides broadcasting, such Federal policing of the editorial judgment of journalists would be unthinkable,'' he said.

Congress approved the bill, which affects both radio and television, to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from dismantling the fairness doctrine, which the agency has said ''chills and coerces speech,'' inhibcoverage of major issues and is constitutionally suspect. Tests Likely Before Recess

The bill will become law if both houses of Congress vote to override the veto by a two-thirds margin. The tests are likely to come before the Fourth of July recess. The original measure passed the House earlier this month by a vote of 302 to 102.

But the President stands a reasonable chance of winning, at least in the Senate, where the bill passed in April by a vote of 59 to 31, less than the two-thirds necessary to override a veto.

The veto today was the third this year and the 62d of the Reagan Presidency. Only seven vetoes have been overridden. Long Attacked by Broadcasters

The fairness doctrine dates from the 1930's, when Federal regulators sought to make sure all sides of an issue were aired by the broadcasting industry, which then consisted only of a few radio stations on the AM band.

Broadcasters have long attacked the policy as unfair and an unwarranted infringement on their freedom to program. Critics also note that broadcast outlets now number in the thousands, while the number of newspapers is smaller than ever.

But proponents of the rule maintain that, unlike the print media, which are not subject to the policy, radio and television broadcasters are using a finite resource, the electromagnetic spectrum, and that the policy is necessary to assure that minority and controversial viewpoints are aired. Demands for Reaffirmation

An unusually broad range of groups called on Congress to codify and reaffirm the fairness doctrine, from the consumer advocate Ralph Nader and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to Phyllis Schlafly, president of the Eagle Forum, a conservative political lobbying organization.

By contrast, the American Society of Newspapers Editors, as well as the Justice Department and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a division of the Commerce Department, urged the President to veto the bill.

Even if Mr. Reagan's veto is not overriden, the measure may still survive, at least temporarily, as an amendment to other legislation introduced in this Congressional session. A number of the doctrine's key supporters, including Senator Ernest F. Hollings, Democrat of South Carolina, chairman of the Commerce Committee, and Representative John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, have vowed to offer the measure again as an amendment on other bills.

The veto has no effect on an earlier act of Congress requiring that once broadcasters sell or give air time to a candidate for political office, they must afford equal opportunities to opposing candidates. Landmark Ruling by Court

The F.C.C. said in a report in 1985 that the fairness doctrine was unnecessary and probably unconstitutional because more stations were broadcasting than in 1969, when the Supreme Court upheld it in a landmark case, Red Lion Broadcasting v. the Federal Communications Commission.

The Court, citing the limited opportunity for differing views to be heard on the air, ruled in the Red Lion case that a Pennsylvania radio station that had broadcast a program critical of a journalist, Fred Cook, had to provide free time for a response.

Much of the Congressional debate over the fairness doctrine has focused on the argument, made by the Court majority in the Red Lion decision, that the scarcity of broadcasting airwaves permits Government regulation.

Read page 2,3.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE4DB1239F932A15755C0A961948260