WFB and his guest, the co-inventor (with Edward R. Murrow) of the television documentary, are both close students of the Fairness Doctrine and its metastasis, from modest beginnings in 1949 to the engine of pervasive regulation it had become. But let Mr. Friendly set the stage: "There's a great contradiction in the whole broadcast system. 'Congress shall make no law,' the First Amendment says. I.e., you shall not license printing presses. And yet when broadcasting came along, it was necessary to license some people. Therefore you were giving a license, and you were saying broadcasters must operate in the public interest, convenience, necessity, and you were saying that they had to let other points of view be seen and heard on the air. I think that's a pretty good idea. I think you are a fiduciary. But I think where you get into trouble is when the government tries to be the super-referee."