Commissioners Lukewarm to Putting FCC under Cabinet-Level Agency
Four commissioners seemed lukewarm to having a cabinet-level agency oversee telecom and media regulation, a notion the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council said deserves study. The Council wants a “blue ribbon commission” to weigh the cabinet idea. Speaking Monday to the Council’s conference, FCC members agreed on the need to do more to help minorities buy media and other assets. But they disagreed on whether the FCC does enough in that vein.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
The next administration should convene a panel on FCC reform and creation of a Department of Telecommunications, the council said. The FCC should increase efforts to monitor compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity requirements, it said. The next administration should “select a diverse array of FCC commissioners and telecom policy officials,” the group said. “The FCC and NTIA often overlook civil rights priorities because the FCC and NTIA receive relatively little oversight from the White House, the Congress and the mainstream press,” the Council said. “The gold standard for civil rights responsiveness is cabinet status.” Council Executive Director David Honig said “gravitas,” not reduced FCC independence, would come with cabinet status. Cabinet status is something that “the rest of the world has right and we have wrong,” he said in an interview.
Other countries look to the FCC as a “gold standard,” Commissioner Deborah Tate told the conference. “People are trying to recreate the FCC in countries all over the world because it is seen as being an independent body.” Its incorporation into a cabinet agency could further “politicize” the FCC, said Commissioner Michael Copps.
The next president needs to pay better heed to telecom, Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said. He urged creation of a U.S. chief technology officer to oversee broadband and other issues “across different agency boundaries” -- a proposal Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., includes in his presidential campaign’s telecom agenda. The CTO wouldn’t replace the FCC, Adelstein said. FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said a cabinet agency is “something to be debated,” but “we need to beware of the potential for command-and-control industrial policy.”
The FCC Democrats want more done to help minorities and women enter broadcasting and other sectors subject to FCC oversight. Tate thinks the agency has done a good job, she said. McDowell said his colleagues agree on issues like reviving a tax break to companies that sell properties to minorities. “We've had years and years of excuses of not getting it right,” Copps said. “This industry is not as representative of minorities as many other industries in America.” Adelstein agreed that the “airwaves really don’t look like America,” adding that “we haven’t made it a priority.”
“Actually, things get done” on minority issues at the agency, which does enforces its employment rules, charging fines for violations, said Tate. “Troubling statistics” on ownership “stretch across all sectors,” not just media and telecom, she added. “We don’t necessarily take the responsibility for what went on in the 1950s.” Members of both parties back a tax certificate bill, McDowell said. “We all need to ask our members of Congress why haven’t they moved on a tax certificate bill.”