Media Consolidation

Even before Pai joined AEI, his hiring at Searchlight Capital Partners led former FCC Democrat Michael Copps to say, "We have a serious revolving door problem at the FCC. This is not encouraging." Copps "said commissioners tend to be more sympathetic to private equity firms and corporations when they are commissioners if they know that they might also, one day, become their future employers," according to the New York Post.

Dorothy Butler Gilliam, the first Black woman reporter at The Washington Post, said in 2019, “When journalists are being called ‘an enemy of the people,’ and Black women reporters, and other reporters, are being called names and treated with such disrespect, I think it’s just so important to remind people of the importance of the media.”

The silver lining is that the Supreme Court ruling affirmed the FCC has authority to help make things right. “The way I read it, that means the FCC has broad discretion to enact substantive, meaningful ownership rules,” said Michael Copps, a former FCC member now advocating for diversity in media ownership.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this decision opens the floodgates to more consolidation for media conglomerates. But that doesn’t mean the FCC has to approve every merger that comes knocking on its door,” said Yosef Getachew, Media & Democracy Program Director for Common Cause.

Today, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in Federal Communications Commission v. Prometheus Radio Project upholding the FCC’s 2017 Order to roll back several of its media ownership rules. The rules prohibit a single entity from owning too many newspaper, radio, and television stations within a local market. In upholding the FCC’s deregulation of media ownership rules, the Supreme Court found that the agency acted reasonably for the purposes of the Administrative Procedure Act, which guides agency decision making.

Craig Aaron, the co-CEO of Free Press Action, said an example of the public advocate model for a commissioner pick would be Michael Copps, who served at the FCC from 2001 to 2011. Copps opposed a 2002 FCC rule where it classified cable modems services as an "information service" and not subject to Title II common carrier regulation. Copps has been a vocal supporter of net neutrality since leaving the agency. Copps is now a board member for Free Press Action and Public Knowledge and is a special adviser to Common Cause’s Media and Democracy Reform Initiative. "When I think about the potential of that seat, it's somebody like Michael Copps—who was there for a decade and really put the 'public' in 'public servant,'" Aaron said, adding that he was "one of the few commissioners to depart and go into the public interest."