Kevin Martin Appointed FCC Chairman

President Bush named conservative commissioner Kevin Martin to head the Federal Communications Commission. Separately, Ken Ferree was named as Chief Operating Officer for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We speak with Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy. Yesterday, President Bush announced the appointment of Kevin Martin to head the Federal Communications Commission. He will replace Michael Powell as the chairman of the organization. Powell is leaving after seven and a half years on the commission including four years as chairman. Kevin Martin was appointed to the FCC in 2001. Martin is considered an advocate of reducing government's regulation of telecommunication companies and increasing the monitoring and enforcement of so-called indecent content on the airwaves. [more]

DIGITAL DIVIDE WIDENS: During Powell's tenure, the gap between the technological haves and have-nots widened. Powell made it clear from the beginning that he didn't care. Shortly after assuming the chairmanship of the FCC, Powell attacked the notion that the digital divide was a problem, declaring, "I think there's a Mercedes Benz divide, I'd like one, but I can't afford it." As a result, during Powell's tenure "there has been almost no increase in the percentage of households with Internet access at home. Penetration has been stuck at 60 percent." Of households that lack Internet access, four-fifths have incomes below $50,000. The FCC's policies under Powell created "a cozy duopoly of broadband providers: the Bells and the cable-TV companies ... [which] have been slow to push for higher broadband speeds or fast price declines." The result: "Americans pay ten and twenty times as much, on a megabit basis, as consumers in Korea and Japan pay. Three years ago the price gap was half as large." [more]

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ONE STATION FOR THE NATION?: Though the "FCC's main duty is to manage the public airwaves," Powell's ideology came under fire for his tendency to place commercial interests "first, second and third among priorities." This observation was highlighted by his attempts to pass through "the most significant relaxation of media ownership rules in three decades." The drastic rewrite of the media consolidation rules included allowing "a single TV network to acquire local stations that reach up to 45% of the national audience" and a partial lifting of cross ownership restrictions on broadcast and print organizations in the same market. Right now, five companies from the "Big Ten" already control an "approximately 75 percent share of broadcast and cable prime-time viewing."

MARTIN MIGHT MAKE IT HAPPEN: After an overwhelming public pushback, a federal appeals court ordered the FCC to reconsider the rules which employed "several irrational assumptions and inconsistencies." Unfortunately, the court-ordered and public-demanded rewrite will now be headed by new FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a "free-market conservative" who "doesn't oppose consolidation" and has made "arguments for eliminating" the cross-ownership rules.

PLAYING CULTURE COP: With the time he freed up by letting media consolidation run wild, Powell utilized an arbitrary and overly "vague standard of indecency" to start a witch hunt of broadcasters and entertainers – in four years, total FCC fines levied soared from $48,000 in one year to over $7.7 million last year. Yet, in commenting on the Powell-Martin transition, the Parents Television Council stated, "the FCC has been delinquent in its stewardship of the public airwaves" and applauded the new chairman as "a stalwart leader on the issue of indecency." Martin is supported by this group – which "has been second to none in increasing the number of annual indecency complaints from 111 in 2000 to a million-plus last year" – because of his "aggressive approach in the so-called indecency cases," often dissenting when the rest of the FCC did not punish or did not punish enough.

SETTING PRIORITIES, RESTORING MEDIA DEMOCRACY: When the House was debating legislation "vastly increasing the fines" the FCC may impose for violation of indecency laws, Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) bemoaned, "If this legislation is enacted, the real victim will be free expression and Americans' First Amendment rights," since "broadcasters, particularly small broadcasters, will have no choice but to engage in a very dangerous cycle of self-censorship." (Look what happened to Buster.) With media consolidation and the threat of egregious fines, the government is effectively allowing a "small handful of individuals to decide what the whole nation is permitted to see, hear or think." And for all their focus on what is appropriate viewing for the people, Powell and the FCC have neglected Sinclair Broadcasting's "Sovietization" of the airwaves, the administration's obsession with payola and taxpayer funded propaganda scandals. If he is truly committed to working in the public's interests, Martin needs to address those issues, as well as the ever growing digital divide, to really start fixing our media.
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