Free Republic

On June 2, 2011, Judicial Watch released documents that show the Obama FCC’s collusion with a radical leftist organization to seize control over the Internet. This investigation caught the eye of congressional leaders, and now it appears a congressional probe of the matter is in the offing. ... The documents we uncovered show that the Obama FCC was deeply involved in discussions with the radical leftist organization Free Press in the run up to the December 2010 FCC vote. How deep? Free Press reached out to the FCC to invite FCC Commissioner Michael Copps to write an op-ed for the...

POWER GRAB: FCC Commissioner Calls for Gov Run ‘Values Test’, Control Over Minority Characters, Programming & Scheduling of TV (full title)

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) pushed back on Monday against a contention by a Democratic FCC commissioner that the government should create new regulations to promote diversity in news programming. Barton was reacting to a proposal made last week by FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who in a speech suggested that broadcasters be subject to a new "public values test" every four years. "I hope … that you do not mean to suggest that it is the job of the federal government, through the [FCC], to determine the content that is available for Americans to consume,” Barton wrote Monday in a letter...

Saying there has recently been no oversight of the media, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps plans to tell a Columbia School of Journalism audience that American journalism was in "its hour of grave peril." That is according to an interview with BBC World News America. The interviewer described the statement as a "pretty serious condemnation." "It's a pretty serious situation. I think the American media has a bad case of substance abuse right now," Copps replied, giving new meaning to the term "news junkie." "We are not producing the body of news and information Democracy needs to conduct its civil dialog,"...

In an interview to air tonight on BBC World News America, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps describes American journalism as having reached “its hour of grave peril.” -snip- It’s a pretty serious situation that we’re in. I think American media has a bad case of substance abuse right now. We are not producing the body of news and information that democracy needs to conduct its civic dialogue, we’re not producing as much news as we did five years, 10 years, 15 years ago and we have to reverse that trend or I think we are going to be pretty close...

In a Wednesday interview on BBC World News America, liberal FCC Commissioner Michael Copps told correspondent Katty Kay: "I think American media has a bad case of substance abuse right now....we are going to be pretty close to denying our citizens the essential news and information that they need to have in order to make intelligent decisions about the future direction of their country." As TVNewser reported on Thursday, after Kay asked about instituting a "Public Value Test" of media outlets, Copps replied: "What we've had in recent years is an aberration where we have had no oversight of the...

Keeping with President Obama’s big government ambitions, the Federal Communications Commission has announced a plan to control the internet and a proposal to sustain “traditional media” by requiring broadcasters to reflect ethnic diversity and a commitment to public affairs programming to keep their license. Both agendas were revealed this week by two separate FCC commissioners, Michael Copps and Julius Genachowski, who was crowned agency chairman by Obama. The FCC’s five commissioners are political appointees assigned by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate for five-year terms. Their job is to regulate interstate and international communications by radio, television,...

The First Amendment forbids Congress from infringing on Americans' right to free speech. But the Federal Communications Commission is not Congress. And Michael Copps, one of four FCC commissioners reporting to Chairman Julius Genachowski, seems intent on ignoring that pesky part of the First Amendment about "abridging the freedom of speech" when that speech is sent out over the airwaves. In two American Thinker articles earlier this year, I discussed possible FCC attempts to force progressive programming into broadcast media. Now, in addition to a nasty Christmas present that Genachowski wants to give Americans on December 21 (Net Neutrality), Copps...

(CNSNews.com) - American journalism is in "grave peril," FCC Commissioner Michael Copps says, and to bolster "traditional media," he said the Federal Communications Commission should conduct a "public value test" of every commercial broadcast station at relicensing time. In a speech at the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York on Thursday, Copps also said station relicensing should happen every four years instead of the current eight. "If a station passes the Public Value Test, it of course keeps the license it has earned to use the people’s airwaves," Copps said. "If not, it goes on probation for a...

Corporations Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission’s “Diversity Committee,” chaired by Fairness Doctrine proponent Henry Rivera, made it clear that they were going force the President’s supporters into positions of power within the broadcast industry.FCC Chairman Michael Copps forcefully denounced the current racial and gender make-up of the broadcast industry and called its lack of diversity “a shameful state of affairs.” Copps then asked the Committee: “Is it any wonder that minorities are so often stereotyped and caricatured and that the positive contributions of the minority community are so often overlooked?”Copps told Committee members, many of whom represent left-leaning activist groups...

A socialist-oriented “media reform” group with intimate ties to the Obama Administration and George Soros is calling for new federal programs and the spending of tens of billions of dollars to keep journalists employed at liberal media outlets or at new “public media.” The group, which calls itself Free Press, is urging “an alternative media infrastructure, one that is insulated from the commercial pressures that brought us to our current crisis.” However, speakers at this week's Free Press "summit" had nothing to say about the well-documented liberal bias that has contributed to the decline in readers and viewers for traditional...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Federal Communications Commission Acting Chairman Michael Copps said Wednesday he intends to act boldly to help improve the diversity of broadcasters in the U.S. "Today we commit to getting independent and credible information to gird what I intend to be meaningful action to right the injustice" of the lack minority- and women-owned broadcasters in the U.S., Copps said at an FCC meeting. The FCC approved a proposal to improve data collection about broadcasting entities owned by women and minorities. The FCC voted to expand the number of broadcast entities that must file data to the commission about the...

Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Copps says he doesn’t support bringing back the controversial Fairness Doctrine, but he does think government has a role in enforcing media “diversity.” That role includes re-examining licensing and other regulations for radio stations -- including AM stations dominated by talk radio -- to make them “more reflective” of public interests. Copps, chosen by President Barack Obama to be acting chairman until a permanent replacement is named, said that he thought the Fairness Doctrine – a policy that critics say amounts to censorship – was an old fight that “didn’t need to be rehashed.”...

Washington-- President Barack Obama on Thursday named FCC Democrat Michael Copps as acting chairman, replacing Kevin Martin two days after he resigned on the final day of the Bush administration.

Minneapolis: Dropping any pretense of objectivity and non-partisanship, the “National Conference for Media Reform” on Saturday night turned into a Barack Obama-for-President rally, as left-wing media figure Arianna Huffington denounced Senator and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain as a “Trojan horse for the right” who had “sold his soul” to become president. Several speakers, including Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps, used the Obama campaign slogan, “Yes, we can,” as they urged the thousands of “progressives” in the audience to bring “change” to Washington, D.C. --------------------------------------------------------- Meanwhile, a Canadian, Naomi Klein, who writes for the British Guardian and The Nation...

A U.S. Federal Communications Commission official is seeking an inquiry into the blacking out of a politically charged segment of the CBS News magazine "60 Minutes" by a local television station in Alabama. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said he had asked the chairman of the FCC to open an inquiry into the February 24 incident at WHNT, a CBS affiliate in Huntsville, Alabama, in which civil rights footage from the 1960s was blacked out. "The FCC now needs to find out if something analogous is going on here," Copps said at a luncheon with media watchdog groups. "Was this an...

Internet noise threatens emergency radio 10:31 14 January 2005 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Barry Fox After the tsunami hit Sri Lanka on 26 December, Victor Goonetilleke, head of the island's amateur radio society, delivered a short-wave radio set and two 12-volt car batteries to the prime minister's emergency headquarters in Colombo. At the same time, three of his friends drove through the devastation to Hambantota, on the hard-hit south-east coast, where they set up another battery-powered short-wave radio. For two days, while the military struggled to restore electricity supplies and phone lines, the prime minister was able to...

...Terry McAuliffe called the program "an illegal in-kind contribution" to the Bush campaign and said the Democratic National Committee is filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. Over at the FCC, Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps interrupted his Columbus Day holiday to dub the broadcast "an abuse of the public trust." More ominously, Kerry adviser Chad Clanton told Fox News yesterday that "I think they (Sinclair) are going to regret doing this, and they better hope we don't win." ...It wasn't the intention of the Founders to give elected officials veto power over press reports.... The excuse for such broadcast...

FCC Getting Hip With The Present Dan Ackman, 05.13.03, 9:15 AM ET More From Dan Ackman     The new cross-ownership rules being floated by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission have been in the works for at least two years now, but the reality in which they operate has been changing for a lot longer than that. The result: many more voices, even if the loudest voices all tend to say the same thing. The new regulations, which have not been made public but which have been leaked to the media, would allow companies to own combinations of newspapers and...

Now here's a dandy example of the kind of thing that never makes it to the front page or the top of the news broadcast, but that affects absolutely everyone. The Federal Communications Commission, led by Michael ("my religion is the market") Powell, is fixing to remove the last remaining barriers against concentration of media. This means one company can own all the radio stations, television stations, newspapers and cable systems in any given area. Presently, 10 companies own over 90 percent of the media outlets. Bill Kovach of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and Tom Rosenstiel of the Project...