FCC commissioner Michael Copps vs. "Big Media"

What do you mean by "localism"?

I mean that that in the face of consolidation too much of the programming comes from the networks or comes from afar. The owners, instead of being members of the community, are often people who live hundreds or thousands of miles away. Too many stations aren't even inhabited by human beings. They're run by computers or by mechanical means. That's why nobody's there. Localism means that you go out and talk to people locally about the kinds of issues and programming that they want. We don't do that anymore.

Martin wants a ruling by Dec. 18. Why do you think he wants it so soon?

Well, the rush is on. I can't speak for him or his motivations, but people have said that this could be a really politically hot potato if decided next year during the campaign season. Three million Americans contacted the FCC and the Congress in 2003, when [former FCC chairman Michael Powell wanted to loosen ownership rules]. And 99.9 percent were against what Powell was doing. There is a realization that this is a grass-roots issue and that it does spark some volatility. Some folks are at least implying that they want to get this out of the way before then. Do it in mid-December, and maybe Congress is going home and maybe we'll be wrapping our holiday gifts and not paying attention to it.

Who would be the beneficiaries if these new rules take effect?

I think there would be lots of them. Most of the major newspaper chains would be looking to buy some of these very profitable broadcast outlets. Although you have to be careful that you don't fall too easily to the newspaper [companies'] claim that they're essentially a hemorrhaging industry. I think Merrill Lynch put the average return on newspapers at 17 or 18 percent. I wish I had some investments that were making 17 or 18 percent. In addition to outright transactions, there will be all kinds of swaps. I'll give you my station here for your station there, and then I'll have a newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. All of that is going to drive out a lot of smaller stations from the news business. They'll figure, "How can I compete now if they have the newspaper and television station in town? I might as well get out of this business." Oddly enough, not oddly, but interesting, a lot of those tier-four and below stations will be the ones that are going to be allowed to be sold. If women and minorities are lucky enough to own stations, that's where they are. So we're encouraging the buyouts of those stations too. We could wind up with a real loss of diversity.

What about Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation? You expressed reservations about its purchase of Dow Jones, which owns the Wall Street Journal.

I'm so disappointed in that. This is a major transaction involving a company that owns 35 television stations, studios, and so many other different things. And now they're going to take over Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal in New York City, where they already own a couple of television stations and the New York Post. The Federal Communications Commission says we don't have any jurisdiction to look at that, so we're not even going to examine that. I think that's irresponsible. They based that on some kind of precedent from the 1980s, when the commission decided in a very different media environment that USA Today was a national newspaper and not a local newspaper. I think, number one, our public interest obligations give us ample room to look at that merger. But number two, and even more importantly, we ignored the local impact that that merger has in New York City. That's squarely in our jurisdiction. I don't think anyone should be able to get away with denying that. There are hundreds of thousands of issues of the Wall Street Journal that get circulated in New York City every day. Don't tell me that doesn't have some effect on control in New York, loss of diversity and all the rest.

Do you think that the Bush administration has made it a priority to put these changes into effect before the end of his presidency?

Clearly it's a priority for Chairman Martin to get these adopted as early as he can. Now I must say, they might have gone even further if the political environment hadn't changed a year ago in Washington. If we had less congressional oversight than we're getting right now, I suspect the forces of consolidation would probably have asked for more.

Do you see yourself as being on a crusade?

That [word] is invested with religious overtones. My No. 1 priority issue at the FCC has been the media environment. I find abhorrent what some of the effects of consolidation have been upon our culture, our entertainment and our civic dialogue. I think it's important for our country to change that.

When I go around and talk to people, I say, people in this audience may have a lot of different issues that they think are the most important issue confronting America. Maybe it's the war in Iraq, or maybe it's, how do we create high-paying jobs? or how do we insure our 40 million people who don't have healthcare? how do we educate our kids? how do we pry open the doors of equal opportunity further? If those are your priorities, that's fine.

But then I say, your No. 2 issue has to be this media issue, because all those other issues you care about that I just mentioned are funneled and filtered through big media, if they're lucky enough to get in that funnel at all. They're lucky to even be covered by big media. Then they're covered with the slant of a few particular companies. And it's not so much a political slant as it is a commercial slant. It's a commercial bias of all this that I think is the problem, selling products to a particular demographic.

So you're not a crusader, but at a conference in New York earlier this month, you said you were sounding a "call to battle" and "blowing a loud trumpet."

You've got to do that if the media is not giving you coverage. You've got to rely on using your bully pulpit. There are a lot of good groups that are working on this issue. The Internet is a marvelous tool for getting this story out. And the folks on the Internet side are beginning to see that their new media is beginning to be compromised by consolidation too. A lot of content is being bought up by people who have too much control over distribution, so I think Internet outlets are getting worried about their future. This is a not a debate about yesterday's media or about something passing into history. This is about new media as much as it is about old media. If you're interested in the future of the Internet, you ought to be mightily involved in this issue over media consolidation.

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