Michael Copps

Two former FCC threw cold water on President Donald Trump’s suggestion today to “challenge” the broadcast licenses of networks over news reports he considers to be “fake” and “bad for country.”

Former FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps: “I believe there is much the FCC should be doing to revitalize America’s media. The FCC could usher in a new “Era of the Public Interest” by learning to say “No!” to merger proposals that will wreak further havoc on our news and information infrastructure. This is the essential first step. Next, the FCC should implement a credible broadcast licensing system. An automatic, no-questions-asked eight-year extension is nothing more than conferring monopoly power with no public oversight.”

Former FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps: The CBS-Time Warner Cable stand-off “goes beyond programming to the functionality of the Internet itself. CBS is blacking out access to CBS.com for Time Warner Cable broadband customers nationwide — even those outside the affected markets and even those who are not cable television subscribers! CBS is perpetrating an audacious violation of the FCC Open Internet (“net neutrality”) rules. These rules guarantee consumer access to lawful content. They are designed to prevent just this sort of corporate censorship. Someone here needs to stand up for consumers.”

A cornerstone of American democracy is a free and open press providing diverse viewpoints. In America today, however, a trend toward corporate media consolidation is drowning diverse opinions and eliminating local control. In 1983, 90% of the American media was owned by 50 companies. Today, 90% is controlled by just six corporations. And the FCC may be on the verge of making a bad situation worse. It is considering a rule change that would clear the way for even more media consolidation. All Americans should be deeply concerned.

Michael Copps no longer has a vote on the FCC, but he’s as opposed as ever to media consolidation. Not surprisingly, he’s opposed to the current FCC doing anything to loosen the crossownership rule.

The United States communications infrastructure has been “short-changed” by “30-plus years of misguided public policy,” according to former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps.

Michael Copps, the former FCC commissioner, tells C-SPAN’s The Communicators that a complete spectrum inventory is needed, which he believe will reveal that there’s a “whole bunch of spectrum lying fallow that could fuel a whole lot of devices and fuel a whole lot of technology.”

At 71, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is retiring after 10 years, and while he may not look like a glamour boy, few regulators have received a standing ovation like he did at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis in 2007.

Michael Copps, one of the commission’s senior Democratic members, today announced his expected resignation after one decade as the agency’s fiercest critic of media consolidation and one of its greatest proponents of Internet access rules. Copps’ second term ends at the end of this Congressional session and President Obama has nominated Jessica Rosenworcel, one of Copps’ former staffers, to take his seat.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is now in his 10th and final year as commissioner and he still isn’t happy with the state of media and the journalism it supports. If he and the rest of the FCC couldn’t fix things during the last decade, perhaps the problem all along hasn’t been consolidation or avarice as he argues. Maybe it’s been that what ails the media, and the way forward, are more complex than to be availing of the kind of nostrums Copps has been peddling.

“I do not believe the FCC should reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.” That was the message Friday from FCC Commissioner Michael Copps to Rep. Joe Barton.  Barton had asked Copps to clarify that point after the commissioner’s speech at Columbia University where he talked about the government applying a more stringent public interest test on broadcasters.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), an influential member of the House Commerce Committee, is upset with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps over a speech the regulator gave last week at Columbia University’s School of Journalism and an interview he did with the BBC America.

FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps says TV and radio stations should be required to air more public interest programming as a condition of license renewal.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is taking aim at the state of television news, which he says is “in its hour of grave peril.”