Michael Copps on Step Number One to Getting our Democracy Right

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[Commentary] The more things change, the more they stay the same. Try as we might to talk about new issues facing the Commission, the old challenges just keep coming back. In fact, they never go away. They may come in different wrappings and with new semantics, but they’re really not much different. It’s still all about protecting the public interest. In telecommunications, that means getting advanced communications out to all our citizens -- reasonably comparable services at reasonably comparable prices. From there, Congress made plain the need for consumer protections, competition among providers, and protecting the safety of the people. In media, and I’ll come back to this briefly later, it‘s still about promoting diversity, localism and competition and making sure people get the news and information they need to be fully-functioning citizens. These were the challenges of 1934 and 1996 and they remain the challenges of 2012. What’s changed, however, is that it’s so much more difficult to meet these challenges in 2012. To be sure, it was never a slam-dunk, but we have ourselves in a predicament now where we won’t overcome these challenges without some major changes. And making those changes is piled high with difficulty. Here’s my take on why this is so.


Michael Copps on Step Number One to Getting our Democracy Right