FCC's Copps at National Conference for Media Reform

Federal Communications Commission spoke at the National Conference for Media Reform saying he's "more worried than ever about the state of America's media and what it's doing to our country. We see investigative journalism on the endangered species list, hundreds of newsrooms shuttered, reporters fired by the thousands, walking the street looking for a job instead of a story. And it didn't start with the Internet because the process of media being high-jacked by the profit-at-all cost gang has been going on for decades. For the consolidated owners of radio and TV, the license to broadcast became a license to despoil. Visions of sugarplums danced in their heads-spectrum that belonged, they decided, to them rather than to the people. I don't indict all broadcasters in saying this because some managed to hold the speculators at bay-but it's harder than ever for the best in media and journalism to succeed in a world dominated by those who are in it for the quick buck and who are often not even traditional broadcasters-they're stations run by hedge funds, banking trusts and private equity firms. Yep, the folks who brought media and journalism down are the same folks who darned near brought the country down, too. Having hedge funds deliver the news is like delivering lettuce by way of a rabbit, as my old boss Senator Fritz Hollings would say. Left to their own devices, these absentee landlords would put local and independent programming on a starvation diet and feed us instead monotonous homogenized music and mindless infotainment masquerading as 'news.'" h

He concluded saying: "As for me, I pledge this: after my time at the Commission runs out later this year, I am staying on these issues; I am sticking with them; and I'm sticking with you to bring them home. These ten years it's your voices more than anyone's that ring true to my ear; your vision and passion that give direction to my work; your belief in media of, by and for the American people that makes me know-this must be done; this can be done; this will be done."