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FCC Commissioner Laments the State of TV News, Partially Blames Government

Dec 2, 2010  •  Post A Comment

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps is lamenting the state of television news, which he says is "in its hour of grave peril," Joe Flint reports in the Los Angeles Times Company Town blog.

Copps charges that the media is falling far short when it comes to serving the public, the report said, citing both a BBC World News America interview that aired yesterday and a speech Copps was scheduled to deliver today at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. 

"American media is not ‘producing the body of news and information that democracy needs to conduct its civic dialogue,’ Copps said in an interview with the BBC’s Katty Kay," the Times reported. "That trend, he added, has to be reversed or ‘we are going to be pretty close to denying our citizens the essential news and information that they need to have in order to make intelligent decisions about the future direction of their country.’"

The report added, "But Copps, who has never been shy about criticizing big media, doesn’t just point the finger at them. He says his own regulatory agency allowed much of it to happen through deregulation that cleared the way for a massive consolidation in the industry."

9 Comments

  1. Who is this punk?
    News is nothing but information passed from one person to another.
    His obvious underlying goal, since he equates news with “American media”, is to filter that information through his own approved lense.
    What he is worried about is opinion, not news. Opinion, as the saying goes, is like ***holes; everybody has one and thank God for that.
    I’m quite sure the American public can winnow for themselves the wheat from the chaff.
    We need no bureaucratic functionary with an alien agenda to lecture us regarding what we should or should not hear, see, and read to remain intelligently informed.

  2. 5 Rings, and all those that believe the marketplace(viewing public)will be able to sort the wheat from the chaff are dead wrong.
    As a person who did news during the era of the Fairness Doctrine, there was no better way to make sure the news gave both sides of a story. Opinions were perfectly fine but had to be labelled as editorial or opinion. Other therefore EVERYONE watching new whether they were hearing fact or something else. It WAS a beautifully self correcting system. If you did not give equal time to both sides you were immediately called by someone on that side of a story and you corrected the problem right away. The system was dumped in order to go to the lowest common denominator system we have now. Infotainment takes precedent because it gets bigger ratings not better product and sensationalism rules the day.
    If you think the public can differentiate, we would not have 20% +- that still believe President OBama was Muslim or born in another country.
    This country was much better informed and intelligent with it.
    By the way, the system we have now allows an Australian tabloid king (alien)running a network for one party and his biggest shareholder is a Saudi.

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  5. 5 Rings, You are giving the public far too much credit by stating that they can sift through the chaff to find the wheat. Most Ameriacans haven’t got a clue about what effects their lives.
    I’m sorry but I think you should take one of those rings and hang from it via your neck.

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