The Fairness Doctrine – a Federal Communications Commission rule that’s been out of commission since the 20th century – just doesn’t seem to die, at least in the minds of politicians, the press and much of the public. Politicos of many political stripes trot out its specter as a bogeyman any time its convenient, while […]
Even though Trump is leaving the White House on January 19, he’s set up the FCC to carry on his idiosyncratic policy goals well into the Biden administration, especially if a Republican-led Senate resists the new president’s nomination for a new chairman. At the last minute, Trump decided not to renominate FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly […]
The FCC is testing its luck with the Supreme Court, after years of failure in attempting to revise media ownership regulations using justifications that pass Constitutional scrutiny. Prof. Christopher Terry from the University of Minnesota joins us to explain what the Commission argues, and what its odds are. However, a more immediate concern is that […]
A different media world is possible. What if the FCC truly regulated in the public interest, creating policies and services that promoted community voices and civic values? It does happen occasionally, but not often enough. It’s easy to assume our media system turned out this way because it was inevitable, but in truth it was […]
Apparently you can’t repeal the Fairness Doctrine too many times over at the Federal Communications Commission. Today FCC Chair Julius Genachowski announced that the policy, which the agency dumped in the 1980s, needs to be scotched yet again. An “unnecessary distriction,” Genachowski called the Fairness Doctrine, which “holds the potential to chill free speech and […]
Blaming its demise on a decline in radio industry ad revenue for ten consecutive quarters, Air America Media has decided to file under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code, effectively ending its six-year broadcasting run as of 9PM EST tomorrow. Created as a liberal / progressive radio response to conservative talk show hosts like Rush […]
It was the summer of 2007. Not moments after the Republican far right triumphed over President Bush’s hated immigration reform law than Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, introduced a rider to a budgetary bill in the House that would forbid funding for the Federal Communications Commission to enforce the Fairness Doctrine. The bill overwhelmingly […]
The Federal Communications Commission’s Diversity Officer defended himself this morning from the veritable avalanche of attacks he has sustained since he took his job. Speaking at a Washington, D.C. conference, Mark Lloyd asked to be allowed to “clear away some mud:” “I am not a Czar appointed by President Obama. I am not at the […]
Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski is in hot water with the right wing talk radio crowd. They’ve discovered that his Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer, Mark Lloyd, is a co-author of that noted and/or notorious study, The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio. So Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, has written […]
Everybody and their mother who watches Federal Communications Commission politics wrote up pretty much everything proposed FCC Chair Julius Genachowski said at his Senate Commerce Committee nomination hearing on Tuesday. But a lot less got written about the comments of the other nominee: Republican Robert M. McDowell, he up for a reappointment. And even less […]
