FCC Associate General Counsel appointment re-ignites Fairness Doctrine concerns
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 4:25PM by Chris Carter
TUSR contributor Chris Carter is following issues related to Constitutional limits on government intrusion into freedom of speech. As we predicted, the Obama administration appears to ignore limits on government intrusion by appointing a "Chief Diversity Officer" who wants radio stations to pay more fees in the interest of diversity. A tax by any other name would stink the same.--The EditorsDemocrats continually tell America the Fairness Doctrine is dead. But if the threat of the return of government broadcast censorship was truly dead, there would be no need to keep reminding us.
The latest reminder that the threat of the Fairness Doctrine survives, or more accurately its intended result – the destruction of conservative and Christian talk radio—is the appointment of Mark Lloyd as the FCC's new Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer. Prior to his appointment, Lloyd was a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank funded by far-left billionaire George Soros and others. Lloyd was also a broadcast journalist with NBC and CNN – adding another name to a long list of former journalists now working for President Barack Obama's administration.
A look into the past writings of Lloyd shows that he intends to use FCC regulations as a means to redistribute hundreds of millions of dollars from private broadcasters to public broadcasting. While at CAP, Lloyd wrote numerous reports on the Fairness Doctrine. One, The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, introduces the Fairness Doctrine's 'Trojan Horse' of localism and diversity requirements, and was parroted by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign.
Lloyd wrote in the 2007 report that private broadcasters would be subjected to new regulations that if not met, or if the FCC “could not effectively regulate in the public interest,” would generate an estimated $100 to $250 million in fines.
