Michael Copps' Excellent Adventure

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission member 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 Commissioner Copps has been peddling. Maybe the problem is that the Internet has upset the business model of almost all of the “old media,” denying them, most importantly, the kind of ad revenue that has been their lifeblood. Seen from this perspective, exhortations to deny the efficiencies of consolidation, or to require more stringent “public interest” obligations, or to recommend greater funding of public broadcasting are not just irrelevant, they’re appalling.

[Maines is president of the Media Institute]