A little story that slipped under the radar from Friday, via CNS News
American journalism is in “grave peril,” FCC Commissioner Michael Copps says, and to bolster “traditional media,” he said the Federal Communications Commission should conduct a “public value test” of every commercial broadcast station at relicensing time.
In a speech at the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York on Thursday, Copps also said station relicensing should happen every four years instead of the current eight.
“If a station passes the Public Value Test, it of course keeps the license it has earned to use the people’s airwaves,” Copps said. “If not, it goes on probation for a year, renewable for an additional year if it demonstrates measurable progress. If the station fails again, give the license to someone who will use it to serve the public interest.”
Obviously, the targets here are Fox News and conservative radio stations. Liberals will surely cheer this bit of news, yet, have they considered what could happen if Republicans are in control of that “public value” re-licensing effort?
Yet, if you go and read the full story, based on Copps’ comments, you will see how he sees the government to be in complete control of the public airwaves, spewing a litany of liberal doctrine, while shutting down anything Conservative, a complete violation of the Constitution. Obviously, this is just Copps rambling on with his wish-list, rather than any actual proposals. He would like more “localism,” which is an end run around the Fairness Doctrine, meaning that nationally syndicated radio programs would suffer, which would affect Conservative radio the most, since even liberals barely listen to liberal radio.
It is funny that he mentions “diversity,” since most of the big TV news organizations, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, are pretty much white bread from the top down, not to mention male dominated. They would surely get a pass because of their “Meaningful Commitments to News and Public Affairs Programming.”
He said he hopes the FCC will “put the brakes” on cross-ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations.
Obviously, aimed at Rupert Murdoch.
Copps said the FCC and Congress in the future will need to examine the rules governing the structure of media ownership. And he advocated increasing support for public broadcasting, which he described as “the jewel of our media landscape.”
In other words, he wants more government run propaganda.
I’m not quite clear on how a cable-only news channel is using “the people’s airwaves”. Maybe I can get Al Gore to explain it to me.
So let’s see…… this clown is advocating a “content based” test?
No one ever told him of the First Amendment?
If ‘American journalism’ is indeed in ‘grave peril’, the people that Mr. Copps wants to help are the ones who have imperiled it — if it isn’t already dead in those places.
Has this guy ever had a real job? Except for NPR and PBS, radio and TV stations have as one of their primary purposes the generation of revenue, in other words, to make money. By threatening to take their licenses away, those with money to invest in radio or TV stations will find something else to do with the money, and a lot more stations than just the ones that get his panties in wad will wind up going dark when their money dries up.