History: Regulation of Communications
A hundred years of the public interest standard has been applied to radio and television, with the explicit goal of protecting free speech. The very opposite was the case, as John Samples and Paul Matzko have clearly shown.
A 1920–30s radio host, Bob Shuler, had exposed the Julian Petroleum Corporation’s defrauding of investors, and subsequently accused the district attorney and city prosecutor of negligence. Shuler also exposed the Los Angeles mayor’s ties to organized crime. The payment for Shuler’s deeds was the loss of his station. He became the first casualty of “public interest.”
The public interest standard was enforced by the Federal Radio Commission (later the Federal Communications Commission). The FRC/FCC used

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