Joe McCarthy: Father of the Fairness Doctrine?

If not the father, he certainly qualifies as a founding father:

"In 1949, the FCC had formally articulated a Fairness Doctrine....The commission said in the Fairness Doctrine that stations could editorialize on the air, as long as their overall coverage provided 'reasonably balanced presentations' of current issues. McCarthy interpreted this to mean that anytime anyone on television took a stand on a controversial issue, an equal and opposing opinion had to be presented. He sold the public on this view and cajoled the individual stations and networks into accepting it, giving him free access to television on the flimsiest of reasons. In November 1953, after much huffing and puffing, McCarthy even received 'equal time' to reply to a TV speech by former President Harry Truman." Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, Watching TV: Six Decades of Television (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 87.