In his remarks, (FCC Commissioner Michael) Copps paints a grim picture of today’s media. He notes that more than half of the 50 states have no full-time reporter covering Capitol Hill. He cites a study by the USC Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism’s Norman Lear Center showing that the average 30-minute local news broadcast has less than 30 seconds devoted to local government news.
The remarks above by Commissioner Copps were delivered in a BBC interview on the sorry state of journalism in the United States. Copps blames the FCC’s deregulation fever that banished the public interest standard. Copps has been an ardent voice for public broadcasting.
Interestingly, his comments come the same day that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski delivered a speech revealing new rules for “Net Neutrality”
The chairman’s plan has been criticized as giving away too much control to commercial network providers, failing to adequately extend rules to wireless providers, and choosing a regulatory category (Title I) that gives industry many legal advantages.
While these FCC leaders seem to be speaking about different things (failed broadcast journalism and nascent regulation of the Internet), in fact, the two areas intersect in at least one key place: at the door of the FCC, our primary watchdog for the public interest.
Copps suggests the watchdog is now more lapdog, and Genachowski certainly seems to be wagging his tail for industry strokes. (And strokes he got!)