PS: So what do you think is behind the FCC’s vote on June 2. Mere greed?

BM: There’s absolutely no element of surprise about what the FCC did. The shock would’ve been if they voted any other way… It’d be impossible to know anything whatsoever—one one-millionth of one percent—about the FCC and be surprised by what they did on June 2nd. The shock on June 2nd was that two of the five members so adamantly opposed what was done, in the strongest and most principled language imaginable. That’s what was unprecedented in FCC history. The shock on June 2nd was that 750,000 Americans e-mailed, wrote and telephoned the FCC saying “We don’t approve of this”—and maybe 10 Americans wrote, emailed, and telephoned saying “We do”—despite the fact that the chair of the FCC, Michael Powell, exclusively asked Americans to contact him and tell them what he thought. He found out, and he ignored him. That’s what was surprising.

There’s absolutely no element of surprise about what the FCC did. The shock on June 2nd was that 750,000 Americans e-mailed, wrote and telephoned the FCC saying “We don’t approve of this."

The way the FCC has always worked has been exceptionally corrupt throughout its history. This is no change in pattern. Traditionally the FCC is your classic “captured” regulatory agency: it has internalized the values of the industry it regulates. So Michael Powell naturally thinks what makes money for the biggest media companies means they’re doing a better job of serving the public, so my job is to help them to get bigger and richer. The empirical evidence—as in the case of radio that shows that making the biggest companies richer doesn’t serve the public—he just basically ignores or dismisses as baloney. But he doesn’t face up to that because he’s so captured by this mindset. This mindset has traditionally been encouraged as well by the pattern of most members of the FCC, upon leaving the FCC, accepting very lucrative positions with the very industries they were once regulating. That’s been the pattern, and Michael Powell will probably follow in that pattern; unless he wants a political career, he almost certainly will… Is it greed? Greed? Yes, but that’s not really the correct word. The correct word is corruption. That’s the accurate term to describe what the FCC has done. Exceptional corruption. World-class, major-league, in-your-face corruption. And that’s the only way to understand it. It’s the perfect word to describe it.

Is it greed? Yes, but that’s not really the correct word. The correct word is corruption. That’s the accurate term to describe what the FCC has done. Exceptional corruption. World-class, major-league, in-your-face corruption.

PS: How would you respond to Michael Powell who famously admitted his ignorance about what “public interest” means? I think if it’s the guy’s job, he should come to an opinion about this. He also says it’s Congress’ job to respond to the will of the people, not his, as the head of a regulatory agency.

BM: It’s his job, theoretically, to do what Congress tells him to do… Congress is supposed to give him general guidelines and he’s supposed to implement these guidelines. Where Congress ends and the FCC begins, of course, is a gray area that’s subject to debate and interpretation. But, he’s correct: he’s not supposed to be making fundamental philosophical decisions. Those are supposed to be made by our representatives… The fact, though, is that the Congress sends mixed messages, and it gives him an enormous amount of gray area to move in a direction he’s most comfortable. And his comfort zone is serving the big corporate media owners, pure and simple. And that’s where he’s naturally going to gravitate, unless he gets explicit wording to the contrary out of Congress. Congress has woken up on this issue. And what they’ve done the past two months has been extraordinary. But traditionally Congress has not been a place you’re going to get a lot of criticism of commercial media. It’s just not going to happen there. Politicians depend on commercial media for coverage. There’s a very powerful lobby. They don’t want to mess with it. And there’s nothing to be gained by messing with it. You’re not going to get any votes for doing it, generally speaking. These issues are off limits, they’re usually behind closed doors. Once again, what’s striking in the last few months has been the huge increase in the number of members of Congress who are willing to stand up to that lobby.

But traditionally Congress has not been a place you’re going to get a lot of criticism of commercial media. Politicians depend on commercial media for coverage. There’s a very powerful lobby. They don’t want to mess with it.

PS: I’m trying to look at the big-picture issue here, and I’ve been reading a lot of what you’ve written (on Upton Sinclair’s critique of Progressive Era newspapers and your report to the UN Research Institute on Social Development on global media ownership trends). I’m wondering if this whole FCC debate is the harbinger of bad things to come or does represent a nearing culmination of actions under way.

BM: I look at the glass as being half-full. Harbinger of bad things? Nothing about what the FCC did should surprise anyone who’s studied this, as I’ve said before. This is the logical culmination of what’s been going on the last 5, 10, 15, 20 years. There’s no grounds for getting upset about this today any more than there was three years ago or seven years ago. In fact, a year ago when the FCC announced it was going to do this review, I wrote an article saying, “It’s done. The fix is in. We have no hope.” The real story here is how the fix wasn’t in. They couldn’t pull it off so smoothly. That, in fact for the first time in US history, there was an enormous grassroots campaign to oppose it. Unprecedented! And it still blows the minds of everyone in Washington. William Safire, the conservative columnist who writes for the New York Times, has written three or four columns critical of the FCC [and] he said in his last column he’s never written articles that have gotten so much popular response—letters, e-mails he’s received, all favorable. This is an issue that’s just simply exploded in our society. Common Cause, the group that does public interest lobbying in Washington, their head, Chellie Pingree, said that by far this issue is the one that their membership has been most excited about of any thing they’ve ever worked on. It’s just exploded. People get it.

We might not succeed. But what we’ve done already is throw a few hand grenades and raised a little bit of hell in a way that no one anticipated.

And the real story here is exactly how the path we’ve been on is now being challenged. Now, we might not succeed. But what we’ve done already is throw a few hand grenades and raised a little bit of hell in a way that no one anticipated. All the smart money thought the fix was in, I thought the fix was in. This is what’s exciting. We don’t know where it’s going to go. But we do know nothing will ever be the same again. We do know that there are going to be lots of people organizing on this issue in Washington and around the country to reform our media system in a way that was unthinkable three years ago. That’s what we do know.