News Clips

Former FCC Chairman Michael Copps found the news disappointing. He 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. “We have a serious revolving door problem at the FCC,” Copps told The Post. “This is not encouraging.” Private equity firms often put too much debt on media companies and do not have the public interest in mind, according to Copps. He raised the present example of Alden Global Capital buying up many of the country’s newspapers and firing reporters. Two of the four FCC chairs who joined private equity firms since 2001 were Democrats and two Republicans so the revolving door is not about party affiliation, he said.

In our democracy, we deserve to have political debates based in truth, but as we saw in the 2020 election, Americans are increasingly dealt a deluge of disinformation that comes at them in all forms: online, television ads, and from politicians and our elected officials themselves. If we are going to have a real democracy that is truly of, by, and for the people, then we need solutions and accountability to combat the growing cancer of disinformation. We can start with a bill moving through Congress right now: the For the People Act.

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.

On Jan. 6, a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The attack was fueled by a constant stream of disinformation and hate speech President Donald Trump and other bad actors flooded across social media platforms before, during and after the election. Despite their civic integrity and content moderation policies, platforms have been slow to take action to limit the spread of content designed to disrupt our democracy.

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."