Meet Michael Copps, He Wants To Regulate Your Speech

Meet the FCC commissioner who wants to control the news

By Mike Riggs - The Daily Caller Published: 12:53 AM 12/08/2010 Updated: 6:58 AM 12/08/2010

In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission created a rule requiring broadcasters to cover issues that the government deemed important, and to do so in a way that the government found “honest, equitable and balanced.” If a broadcaster did not agree to abide by this rule, the FCC reserved the right to revoke the station’s broadcasting license. This rule was called the Fairness Doctrine. The FCC abandoned it in 1987. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a socially conservative Democrat appointed to the FCC in 2001, would like to bring it back.

Copps has a long history of advocating for government control of media, dating to the beginning of his tenure. But it wasn’t until last week, after Copps spoke to the BBC and an audience at Columbia University, that Congress decided to look into the commissioner’s philosophy against private media companies.

“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,” Copps told the BBC. Media outlets are not “producing the body of news and information that democracy needs to conduct its civic dialogue.”
[Emphasis added]

Copps went on to criticize his Republican colleagues at the FCC, who he claims, “eviscerated just about every public interest responsibility that generations of reformers had fought for and won in radio and TV.” In other words, the FCC folded the Fairness Doctrine in the 80s when it should have been cooking up legal justification for applying it more widely.

Republican Rep. Joe Barton got wind of Copps’ remarks and sent him a letter in which he asked if Copps meant “to suggest that it is the job of the federal government, through the Federal Communications Commission, to determine the content that is available for Americans to consume.” While Copps has not publicly answered Barton’s query, it’s no secret what he’d say: Hell yes

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The Durbin Doctrine’s Assault on Free Speech

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Following a premeditated White House campaign to demonize Rush Limbaugh, Newsweek aided the left’s “Hush Rush” campaign with a cover story pushing for Rush to be silenced. Now, Rush can handle criticism from the White House and Newsweek just fine. But there was also a little noticed vote in the Senate late last month that could enable the left to accomplish by government regulation what they could never accomplish with actual debate.
During the debate over the unconstitutional bill that would give the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives, Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) each sponsored amendments with major implications for the First Amendment. DeMint’s amendment banned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine which, prior to 1987, was used by the government to stifle free speech on our nation’s airwaves. DeMint’s amendment passed 87-11. Score one for free speech.
However, Durbin’s amendment also passed, although by a much narrower 57-41 margin. And what does Durbin’s amendment do? It forces the FCC to “take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest.” In other words, Durbin wants to bring the wonders of government enforced affirmative action to our nation’s airwaves. Sen. James Inhofe warns: “The revocation of broadcaster licenses [under the Durbin Doctrine] is a real possibility, which at the very least will threaten the willingness of broadcasters to appeal to conservative listeners.”The true intention of the Durbin Doctrine could not be more clear. Its language is modeled after a Center for American Progress report that aims to fix “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” And just two years ago, Durbin told The Hill: “It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”Durbin’s commitment to squelching free speech has not diminished at all since that 2007 statement. But Durbin has gotten smarter. He knows that reinstating the old Fairness Doctrine is a non-starter so he has come up with a new but equally pernicious law that will accomplish the exact same thing. Conservatives need to wise up in the fight for free speech. The Fairness Doctrine is dead. The real threat is the Durbin Doctrine.

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