The venue was different, but the message was the same. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, on something of a farewell tour as he wraps up his second and what he has indicated will be his last term as commissioner later this year, continued to push for better, more accountable broadcast journalism.
The occasion was the USC Annenberg School For Communications Walter Cronkite Awards luncheon in L.A. saluting the best in broadcast journalist, and Copps gave those winners a shout-out. But most of his remarks were about the fact that those winners were swimming against a tide of media consolidation that had put journalists on the street looking for jobs, not stories.
He laid some of the blame on past and present FCCs. The past, Republican-led commissions for "blessing just about every media merger transaction that came their way, but wiping the slate virtually clean of the public interest guidelines and responsibilities of licensees." As he has before, he also took aim at the current Democratic-led FCC for not converting the Obama victory into progressive change....
Copps has been pushing the FCC to return to its former policy of actively ascertaining broadcasters' public interest performance at renewal time, and for shorter renewal cycles. He has also called on the commission to toughen its sponsor ID rules to require fuller disclosure of who is actually paying for all those political ads, whose volume has increased since the Supreme Court lifted a ban on direct funding of campaign ads by unions and corporations.Read More.
Also Read: Text of Copps speech.
RADIO WORLD: Copps Speaks Up for Public Broadcasting
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