Obama’s “Communications Diversity Czar”

The next step in Obama’s efforts to squelch the First Amendment.

Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), called for a “confrontational movement” to combat what he claimed was control of the media by international corporations and to re-establish the regulatory power of government through robust public broadcasting and a more powerful FCC.

Lloyd expressed his regulatory call to arms in his 2006 book, “Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America” (University of Illinois Press).

In the book, Lloyd also said that public broadcasting should be funded through new license fees charged to the nation’s private radio and television broadcasters, and that new regulatory fees should be used to fund eight new regional FCC offices.

These offices would be responsible for monitoring political advertising and commentary, children’s educational programs, number of commercials, and content ratings of the programs.

Frequently referencing one of his heroes, left-wing activist Saul Alinsky, Lloyd claims in his book that the history of American communications policy has been one of continued corporate control of every form of communication from the telegraph to the Internet.

“Citizen access to popular information has been undermined by bad political decisions,” Lloyd wrote. “These decisions date back to the Jacksonian Democrats’ refusal to allow the Post Office to continue to operate the telegraph service.”

Lloyd claimed that neither technology nor liberal reforms have been able to overcome the damage caused when government fails to give everyone an equal voice.

This ploy of his has little to do with “control of the media by international corporations”. Lloyd’s objective is to force the diminishing of conservative media—talk radio in particular—because of its popularity and effectiveness at countering leftwing propaganda.  The media is already regulated by the FCC.  The ultimate goal is a  State-run media.

……”Government, Lloyd said in his book, is the “only” institution that can manage the communications of the public, arguing that Washington must “ensure” that everyone has an equal ability to communicate.

“The American republic requires the active deliberation of a diverse citizenry, and this, I argue, can be ensured only by our government,” he says. “Put another way, providing for the equal capability of citizens to participate effectively in democratic deliberation is our collective responsibility.”

……To combat the control of international business and restore government to what he sees as its rightful place in managing public communications, Lloyd calls for a “confrontational movement” to protest the present order and organize a political movement that could force government to rein the businesses in.

Hugo Chavez did the same thing. Venezuelan media is now state-owned.

 

……To do this, Lloyd draws on his experience lobbying the FCC during the Clinton administration, counseling would-be revolutionaries to follow the tactics used by other left-wing movements, such as the followers of Saul Alinsky and the people who ran the campaign to block Republican Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

“We understood at the beginning, and were certainly reminded in the course of the campaign,” wrote Lloyd, “that our work was not simply convincing policy makers of the logic or morality of our arguments. We understood that we were in a struggle for power against an opponent, the commercial broadcasters ….”

“We looked to successful political campaigns and organizers as a guide, especially the civil rights movement, Saul Alinsky, and the campaign to prevent the Supreme Court nomination of the ultra-conservative jurist Robert Bork,” wrote Lloyd. “From those sources we drew inspiration and guidance.”

Lloyd proposes six initial goals for wresting control of communications from the corporate interests he claims control it. As his book details:

1. “End the federal subsidy of commercial media, particularly cable and broadcast television. Broadcasters should pay for the great privileges of a federally protected license to operate a business by using the publicly owned [radio or television] spectrum.”

2. “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) must be reformed along democratic lines and funded at a substantial level. The CPB board should be elected, [with] eight members representing eight regions of the country (New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Midwest, Plains States, Southwest, Mountain States, and the Pacific Coast) and a chairman appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

The irony there is that PBS has always received government subsidies, and the overall political content of its broadcasting is definitively liberal.

……“Clear federal regulations over commercial broadcast and cable programs regarding political advertising and commentary, educational programming for children, the number of commercials, ratings information about programs before they are broadcast, and the accessibility of services to the disabled should be established and widely promoted.”

……6. “Public secondary schools should be required to include civics and media literacy as part of their core curriculum. Testing on civic, media, and computer literacy should be required and national standards set.”

For those who think any or all of these recommendations might infringe on the free speech rights of broadcasters, Lloyd says his concern is not the “exaggerated” concerns over the First Amendment.

“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press,” he said. “This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.”

“[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance,” said Lloyd. “[T]he problem is not only the warp to our public philosophy of free speech, but that the government has abandoned its role of advancing the communications capabilities of real people.”
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53055

Pay close attention to this particular quote:

“Blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies”.

What he proposes is neither “democratic” nor conducive to “advancing the communications capabilities of real people.”  It’s a way to control criticism of the government, once socialists seize enough control.

His “confrontational movement” would only be applied as a government censorship tool against popular libertarian and conservative media pundits—like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Neal Boortz, and Michelle Malkin—thus, restricting the ability to expose and dissect the malevolent leftwing fringe.  

Moonbats like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Paul Krugman, and  Frank Rich won’t have much to worry about. Neither will their leftwing media corporations like NBC, MSNBC, or The New York Times.

Bloggers, who use  internet media as a voice of protest, will be the next target of this new crackdown on dissent and freedom of speech.  If he succeeds in making “our public philosophy of free speech”, meaning Alinsky’s rules into law, you can count on it.

What horrifies communist assclowns like Lloyd, is the explosion of the internet; which has indeed “advanced the communications capabilities of real people.”  Those real people include yours truly.

He may try to usurp our right to free speech, but he’s going to have on hell of a fight on his hands.