Free Republic

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...

Behold one of the new "Fairness" Doctrines - "media diversity" - coming soon to a radio station near you. President Barack Obama's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released the names of the thirty-one members of their Advisory Committee On Diversity For Communications In The Digital Age. This May 7 gathering is made up of a laundry list of left-wing grievance groups, with a smattering of radio and television companies included to break up the monotony. Not a single conservative organization is taking part in this Commission - more than a dozen Leftist groups are. A little ironic for a "diversity"...

Barack Obama’s purported pick to guide the transition of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) may not bode well for free expression in the land of liberty. The president-elect is expected to appoint D.C. lawyer Henry Rivera as transition leader for the FCC, according to Multichannel News. Rivera is a Democratic former commissioner who served on the FCC panel from 1981 to 1985. Following Rivera’s resignation in 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed Patricia Diaz Dennis, who opposed the Fairness Doctrine. The law was subsequently repealed in 1987. The law mandates that equal time be given on broadcast airwaves to opposing political...

Reports about the man that President-elect Barack Obama is expected to choose to manage the transition at the Federal Communications Commission emphasize his past role as a lobbyist and FCC Commissioner. But the truth is that Henry Rivera has never really left the FCC, having stayed active in its matrix of advisory groups from the 1980s right up to the present. And Rivera's agenda is no secret: figuring out ways to help minorities get a bigger slice of the telecommunications and broadcast media pie. In fact, as Chair of the Commission's Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital...

Democrat Henry Rivera, a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, is expected to head President-elect Barack Obama's FCC transition team, a move that has sparked fear in media circles that the Fairness Doctrine may return to silence conservative talk radio. If reenacted, the "Fairness Doctrine" would require broadcasts over the public airwaves to give equal time to opposing political views. For talk radio, which boomed after the law's repeal in 1987 by building an audience devoted to conservative talk, the law's return would decimate the industry's marketability. Many fear the "Fairness Doctrine" would drive talk radio hosts – like...