Time for Beck's Bad-Asses to Back Off of Mark Lloyd

[Commentary] Mark Lloyd is a distinguished member of the telecommunications community. He is a former journalist who turned to law and scholarly pursuits, casting a particularly skeptical eye on media concentration and its effects. He has been affiliated with any number of worthy organizations, most recently with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Center for American Progress. The Federal Communications Commission announced on July 29 that Lloyd had been named associate general counsel and chief diversity officer. As a rule, it's not that big a deal to become an associate general counsel in an independent regulatory agency. It's a nice job with some potentially interesting work, but all things being equal, hardly the equivalent of, say, a presidential chief-of-staff, or even of an FCC commissioner. The FCC release said Lloyd, and others, "will collaborate on the policies and legal framework necessary to expand opportunities for women, minorities, and small businesses to participate in the communications marketplace." In other words, Lloyd and others will make sure that broadband policy, for example, leads to improvements for everyone - from rural areas and urban areas alike. But under Glenn Beck's attack, however, Lloyd joined the elite ranks as a government "czar" who will lead the attack against the radio industry generally, and conservative radio specifically. My goodness. Lloyd would be the most powerful associate general counsel of the FCC in history if Beck were right. Alas, he is not, but that didn't stop Beck from claiming, "Radio is under attack" on his Aug. 14 program.