Studs Terkel interviewed people for 45 years on WFMT radio.

In an effort to understand our present circumstance it’s important to find out how we got here. What if we took a wrong turn and lost our way? We may need a course correction to get back on track.

Consider the FCC for example. How has it changed?

Listen to Terkel’s January 16, 1981 interview with Nicholas Johnson, a former member of the FCC. Their conversation about communication, advanced technology, the role of the public, censorship and control of information re-frames the current state of our political discourse.

We have operated on the assumption for a couple hundred years that we are really going to define truth, for political purposes, not as something which is handed down from the president or a king or some religious figure, but what evolves out of the public discourse and dialogue.

Since the Fairness Doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission introduced in 1949, was repealed in favor of deregulation under President Ronald Reagan in 1987. Public protections and rights were taken away leaving private unregulated monopoly.

The Trump FCC quietly hacked away at regulatory requirements which had been put in place to protect local broadcasting.

Media consolidation of broadcast power paves the way to the establishment of a dominant national broadcaster.