February 2009

[Commentary] To anyone in Congress trying to cut funding for rural broadband, ask yourself this: do you care about the future economic viability of the rural communities you represent? If so, how can you justify taking away money from the only infrastructure that gives these rural communities a fighting chance to not just survive but thrive in the 21st century? It's like saying, "Rural America doesn't deserve to be a player on the world's stage, their businesses don't need any help competing in the global economy, their children are just fine being disconnected and unable to access the resources of their peers, their elderly and sick can get by without top-flight medical care" and so on. I can't help but feel that anyone trying to cut funding from rural broadband is basically saying, "Well, this looks like it's going to be hard, and there's no guarantee it's going to succeed, so let's hedge our bets and back off from pushing all in."

President Barack Obama named the members of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. The board will be chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and will be directed inside the White House. Several experts on the 15-member panel have close ties to the high-tech community: 1) John Doerr, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers who helped launch companies like Amazon, Google, Compaq and Netscape. 2) Oracle Corp. President Charles Phillips, who was previously with investment bank Morgan Stanley and a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. 3) University of California at Berkeley business school dean Laura Tyson, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton and author of a recent report on the economic impact of intellectual property enforcement. 4) General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, who has been with GE since 1982 and serves on the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

In the debate over the House economic recovery bill on the five cable news networks, Republican lawmakers outnumbered Democratic lawmakers 75 to 41 on cable news interviews. Fox News hosted 24 Republicans and only 11 Democrats; CNBC had more than twice as many conservatives, with 14 Republicans and 6 Democrats. Fox Business was even worse, hosting 20 Republicans for just 4 Democrats; only MSNBC hosted more Democratic members of Congress than Republicans, with 17 Democrats and 12 Republicans. Though the imbalance is already stark, the tilt of the coverage would have been even more lopsided if the analysis had been broken down into whether a lawmaker who appeared on TV was a supporter or a critic of the economic recovery plan. Some of the most frequent Democratic guests this week were outspoken critics of the proposed stimulus plans, such as Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Kent Conrad (D-ND).

Sen Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told radio host Bill Press this week that she thought there needs to be more balance in broadcasting and suggested there would be hearings in the Senate during this Congress on possibly reinstating the fairness doctrine. She was responding to the news that a liberal radio station in Washington had closed and as part of a discussion about the dwindling number of those stations in the face of the popularity of conservative talk radio.