By Cody Buckmann
09.03.09
I really don’t know where to start with this Mark Lloyd character who has just been appointed the new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chief Diversity Officer (or Czar?). On July 24, 2007 he wrote an article entitled “Forget the Fairness Doctrine” which outlines the Progressive’s agenda to, not re-instate the Fairness Doctrine, but employ many of the same policies toward licensing and free speech on the airwaves.
The Fairness Doctrine of 1949 required that anybody holding a broadcast license for the purpose of radio communications, public opinion, political commentary, or individual opinion were to present an (forced) accurate, fair and balanced account of issues that the FCC deemed were of the most importance to a community, whether it be local, state or the entire country. Given the limited numbers of radio stations, companies and individuals have to apply to the FCC for a broadcast license, which gave them permission to broadcast over the radio waves, but also made them comply with the FCC’s vision of what the important issues were and exactly how balanced the debates and presented opinions were.
In 1985 the Reagan administration issue the Fairness Report which concluded that the Fairness Doctrine had caused a “chilling effect,” making reporters, journalists and the like halt their coverage of certain issues, for fears of being forced to present opposing points of view, and thus had not done it’s job. More or less, the media saw the Fairness Doctrine strip them of the First Amendment rights (Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacefully to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.) In 1987 the Congress voted in Merideth Corp v. FCC that the FCC was no longer mandated to uphold the Fairness Doctrine, thus giving life to Reagan’s promise to dismiss the Fairness Doctrine, which was dissolved later that year.
So, there’s a very basic understanding of the Fairness Doctrine: The federal government passed a piece of legislation that gave it power over media to present news and opinion, fair and balanced, as it saw fit, via the FCC.
This new Chief Diversity Officer doesn’t bother me because he doesn’t openly support the Fairness Doctrine. He doesn’t bother me because he is a CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICER (Why do we need somebody to regulate diversity?) Mark Lloyd is an advocate of using media reform and media control as a means to “social change” which has been a theme with Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, John Holdren and Joe Biden. What’s the deal with social change and why do these people, who are now all apart of the same presidential administration, want to bring about social change?
Watch a few videos of Mark Lloyd entitled “National Conference for Media Reform” from 2008. There are two videos and watch them closely, specifically the second video. In this speech he talks about media coverage during the Civil Rights movement, state-run media in Rwanda which brought about the genocide of millions of people, Hugo Chavez’s rise to presidency during the “democratic revolution” in Venezuela after he started focusing on the media, and several other examples, including global warming and the 2008 presidential election. He deems governmental control over the media as a means to intelligently inform citizens and get them pumped up to go vote and make intelligent decisions, and hold them accountable for those decisions.
Is it the job of the radio commentators, journalists, and news corporations to give the people a voice? Is it their responsibility to give fair and balanced debates to all issues? We could all agree that the answer is yes. It’s the responsibility of the NEWS media to bring about honest debate regarding issues that effect the people. It’s not the job of opinion and political commentators to being about fair and balanced debate. It’s their job to do their job, which is to bring about their opinion, that’s why they pay thousands of dollars for broadcasting licenses, more importantly that’s how they earn those dollars from supporters. But, when it comes down to it, it might be the responsibility of a journalist to report honestly, but there shouldn’t be laws and regulations from the federal government mandating how they present issues and opinions, much less laws that allow the federal government to revoke the licenses of corporations whose opinions don’t coincide with the governments, or to tax “dollar for dollar” corporations and media who already have licenses who don’t present opinion that is the government’s definition of “fair and balanced.” But enough of the picking and choosing of words and phrases: THE GUY USES HUGO CHAVEZ AS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW A GOVERNMENT SHOULD INTERACT WITH MEDIA??????? Yes.
Mark Lloyd also has visions of creating “independent news.” I’m sorry, but as much right- and left-bias as there is, with NBC and Fox and anybody else, there is more independent and un-biased news. If a multi-million dollar corporation wants to spend its millions, paying for its licenses and airtime, paying its employees and promoting a message that has an agenda, let it. That’s capitalism. That corporation has the right to express its opinion, as do its employees. That’s America. There is nothing in our constitution or Declaration of Independence that states everything, specifically opinions, need to be fair and equal.
Now, he has some interesting ideas concerning conservative talk radio. His “Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio” essay was an amazing outline for liberals to fight and eventually silence the highly-influential conservative stations, Fox News (can you name another conservative cable station?) across the nation and the conservative figures, such as Rush Limbaugh, Ben Savage, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Being that I am a proud conservative, I take offense to these ideas because, while I might disagree with somebody’s opinion, a friend, colleague or my president, I don’t wish to stifle their opinions and voices with laws and regulations, or with brute force for that matter. I also don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh or Ben Savage, for anybody who likes stereotypes. We are all entitled to our own opinions and we are all entitled to share those opinions, be it privately or publicly, or through a media outlet.
Also interesting to read up on are his feelings that there is “too much free speech in America” and his love of the book ‘FDR and the News Media.’ Another guy our president will be taking advice from is Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein who wrote the books ‘On Rumors: How Falsehoods are Spread, Why We Believe Them, and What Can Be Done’ and ‘Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.’ The former of which is somewhat self-explanatory; Some people lie, some people believe the lies, we must do something about the liars (especially if they disagree with us). While the latter is a book about behavior analysis and the implementation of behavior analysis within government to help people make better decisions for ourselves because we are too helpless and stupid to make good decisions. Does that insult anybody else? That this guy, who is now sitting privately with the president, thinks that people are too stupid to think for themselves and that the government could make better decisions for them?
I also HIGHLY recommend checking up on the S. 773 Cybersecurity Act of 2009 and specifically Section 18, paragraph (2): the U.S. President “may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to or from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system network,” with paragraph (6) stating that the President “may order the disconnection of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security.” Sweet, the president can SHUTDOWN the internet in during a state of emergency, to which this bill gives NOT ONE definition.
And how about how all of these people who I’ve mentioned in this (Obama, Michelle Obama, Lloyd, Sunstein, Jones and many more within the cabinet of advisors) are all advocates of expanding libel laws. If you don’t know what a libel laws is, a short lesson: Libel is a synonym for defamation or “falsehoods” that are implied with a truthful manner. So, libel laws protect industries, corporations, companies, websites, publishers, etc. from being held accountable for the lies, slander, defamation or “falsehoods” that somebody somehow affiliated with those companies, websites, etc. (such as a blogger, journalist, writer, employee) might express to the dismay of somebody with an opposing point of view. Got it? This is interesting that they are all in favor of expanding libel laws because the Senate passed a piece of legislation earlier this year that adds homosexuality and gender to the list of federally-protected classes. It extends the reach of prosecution to hate speech, as well. I’m not an advocate of hate-mongering, hate or prejudice of any kind but giving a legal attorney jurisdiction to decide what’s hate speech and offensive and what’s not, is a stretch too far. Remember the chilling effect? Well, check out Europe, where hate speech laws have been passed to prosecute religious people from voicing their opinions about homosexuality. This legislation was passed because of the mother who posed as a boy to get a girl to like her only to tell the girl she was a woman and to have the girl, who was the woman’s daughter’s friend, kill herself. Tragic story, but not good enough in my opinion to create laws for prosecuting people for exercising free speech and opinion. Do you disagree with me?
I only picked out these things because the government is slowly trying to regulate how we think, how we act and how we interact with each other and think about our government. They are filling the white house and congress with people who are self-proclaimed progressives, communists, socialists, Marxists, Black Panthers, people who advocate forced abortions and sterilizations, legal rights for animals, population control, controlling and stifling of freedoms of speech, expression and religion, and people who are obsessed with global warming, Europe and affirmative action, and many people still aren’t catching on because they voted for hopey-changey crappy crap and are refusing to recognize what this government is doing.
Cass Sunstein, Van Jones, Richard Holdren, Mark Lloyd, Jeff Jones, Jeff Immelt, Ezekiel Emmanuel, Carter Snead, RJ Pestritto, Pete Singe..... Seriously, check these people out and ask yourself if you’re comfortable with your president sitting down privately and looking to these people for special advice on the most important issues our country has to deal with. If Bush or McCain or Palin or Limbaugh or Beck associated with these people, they’d be crucified.
Further reading and watching on this issues can be found at:
Museum of Broadcast Communications -- Fairness Doctrine
http://www.museum.tv/archi
Center for American Progress, “The Fairness Doctrine” by Mark Lloyd, July 24, 2007
http://www.americanprogres
Center for American Progress, “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio” by Mark Lloyd, June 21, 2007
http://www.americanprogres
NoisyRoom.com, “The New Media Diversity Czar: Mark Lloyd” by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, August 18, 2009
http://noisyroom.net/blog/
Govtrack.us, “S. 773 Cybersecurity Act of 2009” 111th Congress, 2009-2010
http://www.govtrack.us/con
About.com, “Will the S. 773 CyberSecurity Act Shut Down Private Computer Networks?” by Bradley Mitchell, August 30, 2009
http://compnetworking.abou
YouTube videos:
“NCMR 2008 Media Reform and Social Change w/ Mark Lloyd Parts 1 and 2”
“Mark Lloyd on the Need for Independent News”
No comments:
Post a Comment