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| FCC Diversity Chief Says Republican Communications Policies Hurt Civil Rights |
| 2009-08-29 |
| (CNSNews.com) -- Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), claimed that communications policies enacted by Republicans negatively impacted the civil rights of minorities. Lloyd made the claim in a 1998 essay he wrote while working for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He said that two decades of Republican communications policies had eroded the gains made by the civil rights movement in minority ownership in communications. Lloyd also said that, prior to the Reagan administration, the FCC recognized that civil rights and communications policy were linked, and he said that minority ownership of radio and television stations was necessary to correct the lack of diversity in media. "In the late seventies, in recognition of the lack of progress made with these [equal opportunity] employment policies, the FCC ruled that minority ownership was essential to create a diverse range of messages over the public's airwaves," Lloyd wrote. Among the requirements the FCC created were licensing rules that required that the public participate in the license renewal process; caps on how many radio and television stations a company could own in one city; three-year license terms; and a process called ascertainment: requiring station owners to canvas the local community to find out what the public was interested in. Lloyd said that, starting with Reagan, the Republican-dominated FCC had rolled back these rules, and with them the gains of the civil rights community. "[T]he great progress made by the civil rights communities in the communications policy arena has been rolled back," Lloyd said. "The Reagan-dominated FCC destroyed the ascertainment process, arguing that it was too much of an administrative burden on the stations and the FCC. "Licensing renewal can now be accomplished with a postcard," he wrote. The worst blow, according to Lloyd, would come from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, passed by a Republican Congress allegedly beholden to big business |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #8 Wolfdog - it depends on where your centerline is. For this clown the 'centerline' is places like 'moveon.org' and huffington post. So with that sort of centerline the MSM is 'just right'. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2009-08-29 12:40 |
| #7 Just one question; as a casual/infrequent T.V. viewer, aren't all the "alphabet" media (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC,et al) liberal/extremely liberal? AND, don't they outnumber (only quantity of FCC licenses, NOT viewers) Fox News by a significant number? A true balance could/would be achieved by "redistributing" their licenses to more conservative broadcasters. |
| Posted by: WolfDog 2009-08-29 11:10 |
| #6 Glenn Beck has some questions: - Why does the FCC have a diversity "czar"? - Who is Mark Lloyd and how does he plan to "balance" the airwaves? - Will he bring back the Fairness Doctrine or worse? - Cass Sunstein once said he wants to balance the Internet; is that next? - Will broadcasters who leave the airwaves be allowed to go to satellite or Internet without government regulation? - Is there any place (that has a mass audience) where the government wont regulate free speech? - Why does it seem every member of the Obama advisory team hates capitalism, unless those companies (like G.E.) are in bed with the administration? If Lloyd has his way, stations who don't comply to the governments definition of the "public interest" will have to pay a massive fine — that helps support public broadcasting: - What will be the definition of "public interest"? - Who defines "public interest"? - Why should it be balanced? Because it's public airwaves? (Well, there are public roads that go by my house and I don't count how many Republicans and Democrats are driving on them) |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2009-08-29 09:39 |
| #5 Just going by the play book. Marxists know the first thing to do is seize the means of communication. |
| Posted by: ed 2009-08-29 09:20 |
| #4 And so the Ministry of Truth starts its work. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2009-08-29 09:04 |
| #3 nhegatively impaced the civil rights of minorities. Its all aout the assault on the constitution by one who is constitutionally inell8igible to the oval office anyway. |
| Posted by: Percy Spons4194 2009-08-29 02:15 |
| #2 Ascertainment po;icy will ensure that a survey and community outreach is taken to determine the public attitudes and needs. Community organizing groups will be perfect for using push polling to define the needs, and amazingly, minority broadcasting proposals, with goverment seed money, will end up with ownership of licenses, hence stations. Goebbels would be proud and Trotsky would applaud the brazen theft of the media, all the while creating government controlled organs of propaganda. 1934 anyone? |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2009-08-29 00:56 |
| #1 And so it begins. (The return of the "Fairness" doctrine, that is.) |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2009-08-29 00:26 |