A TYRANT’S THINKING: CONTROLLING BROADCAST NEWS
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/556103/201012071859/A-Tyrants-Thinking.htm
Regulation: A member of the Federal Communications Commission appears to want Washington in control of broadcast news. What a shame that people with such ideas are placed in positions of power.
The FCC’s Michael Copps suggested last week that a “public value test” should determine who holds broadcast licenses for television and radio. Speaking at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, he said he was looking for “a renewed commitment to serious news and journalism.”
So are we. We’re weary of the hard-left bias ever so present in the media. We’re fed up with celebrity treatment of all those on the left and contempt for all those on the right who aren’t Republicans in name only. We’ve had enough of a press corps that makes no effort to understand economics and keeps promoting tired, freedom-choking, statist ideology.
We’ve been frustrated, as well, by networks that keep framing the issue — by 6-to-1, according to the Media Research Council — as a debate about “tax cuts for the rich” rather than a simple continuation of current rates.
And we’re still dismayed by the media’s refusal to look into Barack Obama’s thin background during the 2008 presidential campaign, while digging up everything they could on Sarah Palin to portray her as an inexperienced ditz.
But there’s another difference between us and Copps: We’re not willing to use the police power of the state to force the outcome we prefer.
According to the Hill newspaper, Copps would issue licenses only when broadcasters:
“Prove they have made a meaningful commitment to public affairs and news programming, prove they are committed to diversity programming, report more to the government about which shows they plan to air, require greater disclosure about who funds political ads and devote 25% of their prime-time coverage to local news.”
Who is Copps to make such demands? And why does a man who thinks like a tyrant hold such a high-ranking position in the U.S. government?
His appetite for power isn’t new. It’s been simmering for some time. He has a history of campaigning against media ownership laws that advance freedom, preferring instead regulations that limit how many media outlets one owner can have in a market.
“Why does any corporate interest need to own three stations in any city, other than to enjoy the 40%-50% profit margins most consolidated stations are racking up?” he wrote in 2003 in response to a proposal to relax media ownership rules.
In a free society, it’s not for Copps or anyone else to ask why any corporate interest needs to own three stations in one city. Liberty doesn’t always produce the conditions we like. But it never produces results that are damaging.
If one company owned every news outlet in the country, we’d have reservations. But that situation, as uncomfortable as it might be, would not violate the life, liberty or property of a single person.
But Copps’ ideas would. A company’s freedom to operate without government interference is infringed upon if that company must meet any of his standards if it’s to have its broadcast license renewed.
It’s reasonable to ask, as Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas did in a letter to Copps this week, if the commissioner means to give the federal government the power to determine what content is available for Americans to consume. Frankly, it’s hard to interpret his remarks any other way; they are so consistent with his history of wanting to impose his ideas on others.
Three years ago, the FCC voted to eliminate some of its statist ownership rules. Copps and another Democrat were against the change, but the proposal passed on the three GOP votes. This was not a radical change but a marginal deregulatory shift toward greater freedom in the market. And some rules remain.
They’re not enough, though, for Copps and like-minded leftists. They continue to rail at large media companies and media consolidation as if they were hatched in Hades, and grumble about a lack of diversity among owners.
Absent in their rants is any concern about the dominance of left-leaning journalism that has corrupted American thinking for decades. But then, that’s expected because this deeply biased state of affairs is what they’re trying to protect.
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