In 1987, a quiet decision by the Federal Communications Commission forever changed how Americans consume information. That year, the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine, a policy that for nearly four decades required broadcasters to present balanced coverage of controversial issues–and the media hasn’t been the same since.

While it may seem like a relic of the past, the consequences of that repeal are more relevant now than ever. The Fairness Doctrine wasn’t perfect, but it upheld a principle that feels increasingly rare today: objectivity.

Without it, we opened the floodgates to ideologically driven programming–from partisan talk radio in the ‘90s to the round-the-clock political spin we now see on cable news and across the internet.

The rise of the internet was supposed to give us acce

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