July 2010

On July 21, the Federal Communications Commission filed a brief to Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia defending the media ownership rules adopted in 2007 under then-Chairman Kevin Martin. The FCC relaxed rules on cross ownership of newspapers and broadcast outlets in the nation's 20 largest markets.

"While the rules being challenged were adopted before I became chairman, I support our general counsel in arguing that the order was within the discretion of the commission and the brief's general defense of the commission's authority to make decisions based on the information before it at the time," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said.

In its defense, FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick argued in the brief that it was reasonable to relax the rules in the top 20 markets because "combinations ‘generally raise fewer diversity concerns' in the top 20 markets because those markets 'have more media outlets.'" The FCC brief describes the change as modest. The commission brief also defended the Martin commission decision not to scrap the ban. "To protect against the realistic prospect that consolidation of media outlets in some instances could harm viewpoint diversity, the Commission adopted a presumption against newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership in markets below the top 20," it said.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, took the commission to task for its defense. "It is difficult for me to believe that our new FCC, with its new majority, is in court today basically accepting the validity of the pro-consolidation decision of a previous Commission," said Copps. "We have had 18 months to reconsider the awful vote that loosened our newspaper-broadcast cross ownership rules, but the best we can do, judging from today's brief, is to kick the media ownership can farther down the road."

[Commentary] When I'm talking to people from outside Washington, one question inevitably comes up: Why is the media so liberal? The question often reflects a suspicion that members of the press get together and decide on a story line that favors liberals and Democrats and denigrates conservatives and Republicans. My response has usually been to say, yes, there's liberal bias in the media, but there's no conspiracy. The liberal tilt is an accident of nature. The media disproportionately attracts people from a liberal arts background who tend, quite innocently, to be politically liberal. If they came from West Point or engineering school, this wouldn't be the case. Now, after learning I'd been targeted for a smear attack by a member of an online clique of liberal journalists, I'm inclined to amend my response. Not to say there's a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism.

Google spent $2.7 million on lobbying activities in the first six months of 2010, compared with $1.8 million during the same period in 2009.

[Commentary] Regardless of what statements and actions come from the latest Federal Communications Commission broadband report, there's at least one sign of a step forward in the actual definition of "broadband," which as recently as 2008 was considered by the FCC to be 200 kbps down.

The new standards, which were initially suggested in the National Broadband Plan, are four Mbps down and one Mbps up. Fiber technologies already trump this minimum definition, but fiber-to-the-home is expensive — even in non-rural areas. The FCC's newest findings, then, could give additional life to DSL, which although prominent, is seen as a slower pipe with its use of copper for the last mile instead of fiber optics. A more likely solution for covering the broadband "black hole" that tens of millions now face is wireless as the last mile -- carriers wouldn't have to wire each individual home in rural areas. Instead, their wire investment would be limited to single lines of backhaul to towers among the fields and forests.