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This was in my email inbox this morning and just begs a reply. It would be fun to go through it line by line, adding my comments and corrections, but space and time is limited. By the way, The Investors Business Daily is a mouthpiece of the right wing, not at all an impartial, fair, or balanced source of news. Their article is crammed full of editorial slight-of-hand. To the friend who sent it, thanks…..
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We all should be afraid, very afraid of the unchecked power of ALL the appointed Czar's. Diversity Czar Threatens Free Speech By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, August 31, 2009 4:30 PM PT 1st Amendment: Mark Lloyd, a disciple of Saul Alinsky and fan of Hugo Chavez, wants to destroy talk radio and says free speech is a distraction. The new FCC diversity "czar" says Venezuela is an example we should follow. When Mark Lloyd was appointed July 29 as the chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission, a nation focused on ObamaCare and a deteriorating economy took little notice. But as angry constituents flood town hall meetings and call in to talk radio, a man dedicated to silencing them sits at the right hand of the president. They share a common hero - Saul Alinsky - who wrote the community organizer's bible, "Rules for Radicals." It speaks of confrontation or, as candidate Obama put it, of "getting in their faces" as a way to obtain power, not from the people or for the people, but over the people. Lloyd has written that we make too much of the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and the press - for "the purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance." We thought we were democratically governed. We thought we could vote as we choose after a vigorous and open debate. Once the major networks served as information gatekeepers controlling what we saw and heard. Now talk radio, the Internet and cable news have enhanced democracy by promoting the free flow of information and discourse. Lloyd wants to stop all that. Fox News host Glenn Beck has done yeoman work in exposing this threat posed by Mr. Lloyd. He points out that in his 2006 book, "Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America," Lloyd wrote: "It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. . . . This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. . . . At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies." Lloyd wants to restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations and ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing. The kicker is he would also require owners who refuse to give up profitable air time in the name of "localism" to pay a fee to support public broadcasting. He proposes using the existing FCC "localism" requirement, which can mean anything from running more public service announcements to putting Janeane Garofalo on after Rush Limbaugh. Local community organizers would be encouraged to harass conservative stations by filing complaints with the FCC. He essentially proposes extorting money from broadcasters who have the audacity to air the likes of Beck, Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, all of whom have competed in the marketplace of ideas and won in the ratings, and use it to fund those outfits nobody wants to listen to - like NPR and Air America. As Lloyd writes, the "part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads (Rush Limbaugh fans) upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay." Or worse. The FCC could then say they had enough justification to revoke a station's license if they didn't comply or pay a fee. In true Alinsky style, shut them up by shutting them down. Lloyd praises Hugo Chavez's "incredible revolution" in Venezuela and the way "Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country" by imposing restraints on cable TV and revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio stations" that insufficiently toed the Chavez party line. Lloyd long ago declared war on unbridled talk radio and cable news. He wrote that "our work was not simply convincing policy makers of the logic and morality of our arguments. We understood that we were in a struggle for power against an opponent, the commercial broadcasters." When Mark Lloyd talks about diversity, it is not diversity of opinion. As in the '60s sci-fi series, "Outer Limits," his advice is to "sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear."
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My thoughts….. First, don’t you just love the way that very last sentence, while citing the origin of the quote, really makes it sound like it came from Mr. Lloyd? And, I don't like the term 'czar', with its connotation of 'absolute ruler'. No one in our government has the kind of power a 'czar' had, or anything approaching it. The system is designed to make that impossible and has worked pretty well.
I'm not familiar with Mr. Lloyd, his views, or with what an FCC DIVERSITY OFFICER is supposed to do. I remember hearing something several months ago about someone who wanted to bring back The Fairness Doctrine for broadcasters. Was that him? You may remember that, The Fairness Doctrine. It was an FCC ruling that said anyone using the public broadcast frequencies and getting a license from the FCC to operate had to provide "equal time for opposing views". The FCC abolished the rule in 1987, during Ronal Regan's tenure as president. I always thought The Fairness Doctrine made a lot of sense if you buy the notion that broadcast radio and television have a duty to present all sides of an issue honestly and non-judgmentally so that a person can make better decisions. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine) That idea is based on the fact that broadcast frequencies are a finite resource. There are only so many of them, fewer than there are people and entities wanting to use them. So, when those frequencies are entrusted to an entity, they come with some responsibilities attached, and the government has a right to some control “in the public good”. The Supreme Court has upheld that idea, by the way. You might also want to read an article entitled: THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE; HOW WE LOST IT, AND WHY WE NEED IT BACK by Steve Rendall at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0212-03.htm. It is well worth the time it takes to read and explains the issue in some detail. A short quote explains what happened to the doctrine, the how and why of it.
"The 80s brought the Reagan Revolution, with its army of anti-regulatory extremists; not least among these was Reagan’s new FCC chair, Mark S. Fowler. Formerly a broadcast industry lawyer, Fowler earned his reputation as “the James Watt of the FCC” by sneering at the notion that broadcasters had a unique role or bore special responsibilities to ensure democratic discourse (California Lawyer, 8/88). It was all nonsense, said Fowler (L.A. Times, 5/1/03): “The perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants.” To Fowler, television was “just another appliance—it’s a toaster with pictures,” and he seemed to endorse total deregulation (Washington Post, 2/6/83): “We’ve got to look beyond the conventional wisdom that we must somehow regulate this box.”
I’m thinking Mr. Lloyd would like a return to something like The Fairness Doctrine, but he is coming at it from the direction of "broadcasters as marketplace participants". (I also think it interesting, as an aside, that Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Beck, et al, are so opposed.) At any rate, it seems to me that all this flack is based on something Mr. Lloyd wrote and said during his tenure in previous positions. I can’t support him in thinking that Mr. Chavez is a good idea, but then I don’t know if he said that, when, or under what circumstances. A lot of people thought Mr. Chavez was a good idea at the beginning. I'm not at all sure that Mr. Lloyd’s current position puts him in a place where he has any official say in the matter.
But, I will dig a little deeper. Until then, keep thinking.......
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