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FCC commissioner Michale Copps accuses the media of falling short of serving the public and that the industry is now in “grave peril.”
From the Los Angeles Times
Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps is taking aim at the state of television news, which he says is “in its hour of grave peril.” In both an interview with BBC World News America that airs Wednesday and in a speech at Columbia University’s School of Journalism he is to deliver Thursday, Copps charges that the media is falling far short when it comes to serving the public.
American media is not “producing the body of news and information that democracy needs to conduct its civic dialogue,” Copps said in an interview with the BBC’s Katty Kay. That trend, he added, has to be reversed or “we are going to be pretty close to denying our citizens the essential news and information that they need to have in order to make intelligent decisions about the future direction of their country.”
But Copps, who has never been shy about criticizing big media, doesn’t just point the finger at them. He says his own regulatory agency allowed much of it to happen through deregulation that cleared the way for a massive consolidation in the industry.
In his remarks to Columbia, which his office provided to the Los Angeles Times, Copps writes: “The place where I work — the Federal Communications Commission — blessed it all, encouraged the consolidation mania, and went beyond even that to eviscerate just about every public interest responsibility that generations of reformers had fought for and won in radio and TV.”
As for the digital revolution being able to fill any void left by traditional media, let’s just say Copps’ Columbia remarks reveal a bit of skepticism:
“What,” you say, “peril in a 500-channel universe? Peril when the touch of a search button delivers a veritable library of mankind’s acquired knowledge to our various digitally fueled devices? Peril when we can chat online with strangers on the other side of the planet as easily as our parents talked with their neighbors across the backyard fence?”
Though Copps acknowledges there is much to celebrate, he notes, “Increasingly, the private interests who design and control our 21st century information infrastructure resemble those who seized the master switch of the last century’s communications networks.” Furthermore, he argues that though there may be many more platforms both on TV and online, the news itself is coming from fewer sources.
In his remarks, Copps paints a grim picture of today’s media. He notes that more than half of the 50 states have no full-time reporter covering Capitol Hill. He cites a study by the USC Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism’s Norman Lear Center showing that the average 30-minute local news broadcast has less than 30 seconds devoted to local government news. (The research was focused on Los Angeles news broadcasts.)
“If it bleeds it leads, but if it’s democracy’s lifeblood, let it hemorrhage,” Copps cracks.
The FCC has oversight over local TV and radio stations but not the broadcast or cable networks. Local stations get licenses from the commission to operate. Copps wants to toughen up the renewal process, which he says today is a “slam-dunk, no-questions-asked” procedure.
Copps wants stations to commit to covering more debates and issues-oriented programming during election years. He also wants stations to be more in touch with the communities they serve.
Writes Copps: “Nowadays, when stations are so often owned by mega companies and absentee owners hundreds or even thousands of miles away — frequently by private equity firms totally unschooled in public interest media — we no longer ask licensees to take the public pulse. Diversity of programming suffers, minorities are ignored, and local self-expression becomes the exception.”
Copps like most liberals doesn’t like deregulation in any form as it removes the government’s ability to control in this case what we see on television of hear on the radio. But deregulation while he spawned media consolidation also allows for more creative ideas than would have been fostered under the watchful eye of government bureaucrats who are more concerned about protecting their turf than what is really in the public interest.
Thank goodness the FCC’s reach doesn’t extend to cable otherwise there would never have been a Fox News or any other type of alternative news outlet that have captured a portion of broadcast televsion’s audience over the years.
What Copps and his fellow liberals are more upset about is that since deregulation conservatives have gained a bigger voice on television and radio and in the process have exposed the liberal agenda for everyone to see.
But all is not lost for the FCC. They still have net neutrality.
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About the author
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.
7 Comments for FCC Commissoner Says TV News is In Hour of ‘Grave Peril’
The only “grave peril” that media faces today is from censoring bureaucrats like this snivelling douchebag. There was perhaps some argument to be made for the regulation of broadcasters when there were limitations on radio frequency spectrum (although truthfully, even that was and is a specious argument… the scarcity of spectrum was itself caused only by government interference in regulating the allocations of spectrum), bur those arguments certainly do NOT apply in a multi-thousand channel digital media world.
The entire organization of the FCC should be completely abolished, and the sooner the better. There is no reason in today’s era why one should require permission from the state in the form of a “license” to be a broadcaster. Worse, having to justify the content of one’s broadcasts to some worthless hack regulator like Copps as a requirement of obtaining a license is pure, simple, blatant censorship. Nothing more and nothing less.
I think Shepard Smith doesn’t quite get it, how the free market is better at serving the public interest than is the government. Shep, I know you were doin’ the Hidy-Tidy at Ole Miss, downing volumes of beer, long after I graduated from Bama, but come on, man, get with it! We wond the Cold War against the USSR, by virtue of the free enterprise system and the power of individual self determination to create, to market, to express ones’ self, without government intervention or control. That especially goes for our First Amendment rights of free speech, assembly and religious expression of our choice. We won; Communist-Progressives lost.
We are in deep doo-doo these days, with people like this in power in our bureaucracies in the Executive Branch, that have no oversight due to a negligent Congress, and a disengaged society from our duty to police these idiots and prevent them from getting into these positions in the first place!
Sorry for my rant! I was simply typing at a rate of stream-of-consciousness, and not spll chkng.
I havnt watched the news in years since it all controled by the goverment and it too liberal and people are getting tired of the same liberal bunk all the time
Mr. Copps is right to a certain extent. And it’s that extent of government’s control that must be controlled not what people are saying on the internet. And as usual the “liberal” is the one who wants more government intervention when it comes to content about the issues. But he does make a good point in that the mega news agencies do have an obligation to the public to tell all, about both sides. An example of what the main stream media would do if told they have to talk about what the “other side” is doing and wants, they would find the most liberal Republican they could, kinda like they do now, to make it sound like all is well from both sides of the aisle. It’s not. All through the Bush administration the conservatives were demanding that Bush be more conservative like the public was believing he was on the bills that he was signing into law that were coming strictly from the left. He wouldn’t do it. And finally when the public’s ire was in his face about the Democrat’s amnesty bill he wanted to sign into law, the Republican conservatives won the day. And we got to see his true side towards doing what the public will is and his attitude which is the same as the media and the left is, we just need to shut up and stay out of the governments way.
Mr. Copps should want the public view to be more in the media but until he gets it he won’t understand what the 70 or 80% of the public really wants to see on their evening news program and that is the truth about what is going on so that they can see what their government is up to, and the support they have from those in government who want the government to return to only what the Constitution says they are to do. And like President Obama said in one of his pre-campaign interviews, “…what the government can do TO you…” is what we want protection from. And part of that protection should be coming from what the media can do FOR us by making sure the public stays informed of what the position is of both sides of the aisle.
No one side has a monopoly on what the public “should” know. And right now that’s the way it is. And why is it that way? Because the FCC doesn’t have the guts to tell the main stream media that if they don’t start reporting what is really going on they will loose their license. The Democrat’s used that same tactic when they wanted the media to become their spokesperson for them, we can demand that it work that way for us out here in the public. We deserve to know what our government is about to lay on us and we deserve to have the opportunity to get out of the way.
When I was growing up back in the 50′s and 60′s there were 3 major networks, and a couple of local stations on TV that plus 2 news radio stations and 2 local newspapers was our only source of news. We had to trust these sources that they were feeding us the facts as we had little means to verify.
Now we have literally unlimited sources of news and information on the internet. The only requirement of the consumer is to do their own research to judge truth from bull@#*! I believe I am much better informed today.
Dr. Copps, Ms. Clyburn, and Mr. Geanchoswki – LEAVE OUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS ALONE!