The FCC on Its Knees

"It's time to move away from thinking of broadcasters as trustees and time to treat them the way that everyone else in this society does, that is, as a business. Television is just another appliance. It's a toaster with pictures."

Those were the memorable droppings of a man named Mark Fowler. Ronald Reagan picked him to run the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the U.S.'s poor excuse for a media regulatory body. Echoing a historic Republican theme that "the business of America is business," he summed up how corporate think had insinuated itself into the work of an agency set up to protect the public interest from corporate self-interest.

Fowler's candor was expressed back in that watershed year of 1984, an irony that George Orwell, the author of the book that made that year infamous, would have found delicious. Perhaps it is fitting that in a sizzling summer in which folks in our nation's capital say they feel like they live in a toaster, Mark Fowler has reemerged.

Only this time his name is Michael Powell.

And its toaster time again.

Michael is an "SOG," a 38-year-old Son of a General -- Gulf War leader and current Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell the Younger is the current chair of the FCC; according to Brendan Kerner's informative story in New York's venerable Village Voice, "If he plays his cards right, he could well become the first African-American president." Among Powell Jr.'s claims to fame, Kerner writes, is that he is a "younger and brighter version of George W. Bush," as if that is saying much.

A typical Powellism does to logic what Bush does to language. When asked about the Digital Divide, he quipped: "I think there's a Mercedes divide. I'd like to have one; I can't afford one." His salary is $133,700 a year.

Brace yourself, America. You have been warned.

A Nation Asleep

Most of America is sleeping when it comes to understanding how what we see and hear on TV and radio every day is affected by what a bunch of lawyers decide in a boardroom in Washington. And it is certainly true that arcane talk of the "deployment of the infrastructure" and complicated, Byzantine standards are hard to fathom, much less keep you from dozing.

The media industries understand just how essential control over regulatory bodies is in their bid to aggregate more power. That's why they spend so much money on political contributions to congressional representatives and senators who sit on regulatory committees, and why, while media jobs are disappearing in outlets worldwide, media lobbyists are building extensions on their patios because of all the work that's being tossed their way.

These lobbyists are like bagmen spreading manna from media heaven. Media companies gave the Bush campaign over a million dollars, but there is more to it than campaign contributions. They regularly dispense favors, such as a fully paid Paris junket costing $18,910 that recently went to Powell's patron, Republican Representative Billy Tauzin, a good old boy from Louisiana and chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

But this is chump change compared to how media companies benefit when FCC decisions go their way. A recent example was the gift bestowed by the FCC on Republican Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News practically got Dubya elected (while G.W.B.'s first cousin John Ellis ran some of the right-wing network's campaign coverage). Murdoch was just given a waiver of cross-ownership rules permitting him to buy two local TV stations in New York, el numero uno media market. This despite his already owning The New York Post, a political pulpit posing as a newspaper. (Rupert's son Lachlan recently engineered the firing of that paper's best-known -- well, only -- liberal columnist, Jack Newfield, replacing him with Victoria Gotti, daughter of jailed Mafia don John Gotti. Is it possible that children, in this case Michael and Lachlan, are even more rabid than their fathers?)