[NOTE: This post has been UPDATED]
Two days ago Fox News reported a growing controversy over an un-diverse “diversity” committee at the Federal Communications Commission (HatTip to InstaPundit).
A diversity committee at the Federal Communications Commission is raising the hackles of conservative watchdogs who say its ideological makeup is hardly diverse.
The FCC recently renewed the charter of its 31-member Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age, which is set to convene in Washington Thursday.
The committee’s mission is to help “enhance the ability of minorities and women to participate in telecommunications and related industries,” according to the FCC. In past years the committee has suggested remedies like changing the tax code to help minorities purchase radio and television stations.
But conservatives say the committee is one-sided and made up primarily of liberal activists who have something more than diversity in mind.
That “something more,” conservative critics charge, is “a back-door campaign to revive the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which mandated equal time for opposing viewpoints during radio and television broadcasts, and whose demise in 1987 led to the explosion of conservative radio networks and programming.”
Are opposing viewpoints — about “diversity,” about the fairness doctrine — equally represented on the FCC’s “diversity” committee?
More troubling than the makeup of this committee, in my view, is what a Democrat-dominated FCC determined to produce more “diversity” will actually do. As an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal noted:
The president himself is on record as opposing the Fairness Doctrine but favoring media ownership caps and “opening up the airwaves . . . to as many diverse viewpoints as possible.” In February, Michael Copps, a Democrat currently serving as acting chairman of the FCC, echoed Mr. Obama when he told CNSNews.com: “If markets cannot produce what society really cares about, like a media that reflects the true diversity and spirit of our country, then government has a legitimate role to play.”
And what role might that be and how would it actually be played? The Fox News article quoted above gives one example: “In past years the [“diversity”] committee has suggested remedies like changing the tax code to help minorities purchase radio and television stations.”
Having one’s taxes determined by race is a pretty drastic step. Perhaps the FCC can have the IRS issue racial identity cards to make the process easier.
At least the president gave lip service to “diverse viewpoints,” but when Chairman Copps threatens (promises?) to have the FCC produce the “true diversity” that market will not, does anyone think he means “diversity” of anything over pigmentation? Of course, if Chairman Copps, the cop of the airwaves, really believes in the racialist essentialism underlying the “diversity” mantra — that minorities, especially, blacks are “different” in essential and important ways — then he may well believe that pigmentation is a valid proxy for viewpoint.
UPDATE [8 May]
Yesterday I discussed (here) the un-diverse “diversity” committee at the FCC and the unbalanced argument for “balance” that is at the heart of the demand to re-instate the “Fairness Doctrine,” or something equally unfair.
As usual, Roger Clegg has something worthwhile to say on this matter, quoting the hapless Sen. Dick Durbin (D, Dunce) who sponsored a Senate amendment to promote diversity in media ownership and pointed out, presumably to his less astute colleagues, that “[w]hen we talk about diversity in media ownership, it relates primarily to gender, race, and other characteristics of that nature.”
And what might those “other characteristics of that nature” be? If we’re going to give preferences, tax breaks, etc., to people who have them we should at least know what they are.
While I’m here, let me mention one other thing, highlighted in the Wall Street Journal I quoted above, that I neglected to discuss yesterday. If the Democrats are not able to impose “fairness,” i.e., silencing conservative talk radio, directly through a “fairness doctrine,” they may be far more effective in doing so through the creation of “local advisory boards.”
The real threat to talk radio comes from regulators and activists who favor government control of broadcast content by other means. Most notable of these is the proposed “localism” policy now wending its way through the FCC rule-making process…. Once the panels were established, the FCC could dramatically boost their influence by giving them a role in the license-renewal process…. [E]ven if the advisory boards didn’t have that kind of power, they would still be problematic. Radio stations succeed by identifying a segment of the audience and super-serving it around the clock. Are they supposed to alter programming to serve other segments of the community? How would that affect their business? What if a Christian station’s advisory board decides that its programming should be more “inclusive”?
Of course, if through either the Fairness Doctrine or these local advisory boards the FCC can, say, force a local radio station serving up a red meat diet heavy with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc., to provide “balance” by dropping some of that red meat and adding some tofu imported from MSNBC or other affiliates of the Democrats, it would also tell a black-owned radio station serving a black inner city audience that it needs to be more “inclusive” or lose its license.
That would be fun to watch.
