SEPTEMBER 8, 2003
MOVEABLE FEAST
By Thane Peterson
Why the FCC Needs a New Chief | Michael Powell's ill-advised efforts to help Big Media united left and right alike. After such a fiasco, resignation is the honorable option
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Enough already. Michael Powell should resign as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Ever since President Bush named him FCC head in January, 2001 (he had been a minority GOP commissioner for three-and-a-half years under Bill Clinton), Powell has tried to push through new rules that would allow more ownership concentration in American media. His efforts have been a bit like Silent Tom Smith trying to saddle Seabiscuit with a 250-pound jockey.
Powell's No. 1 policy initiative has been repeatedly rebuked. Over the summer, the House of Representatives voted to roll back his regulatory easement. On Sept. 3, a U.S. Appeals Court in Philadelphia blocked Powell's rule changes. And on Sept. 4, a Senate committee joined the House in moving to halt a key part of Powell's plan, which would raise the market share of TV stations that one company can own from 35% to 45% of U.S. households.
Powell has generated unprecedented opposition across the political spectrum, from the conservative National Rifle Assn.. to the liberal National Organization for Women. By the FCC's own count, it has received some 2 million calls, faxes, e-mails, and letters opposing the changes. This is failed leadership.
STAYING PUT. An FCC spokesman says Powell has no plans to resign and directed me to a prerecorded appearance on John McLaughlin's TV show One on One, broadcast on Sept. 7. On the show, Powell forcefully reaffirmed that he plans to stay on.
He should reconsider, and if he doesn't, President Bush should ask for his resignation. "He has not appeared efficient or effective," says Mark Cooper, research director of the Consumer Federation of America, which is calling on the FCC to revisit and rewrite its proposed ownership changes. "He hasn't been able to get anything done."
The Sept. 3 Appeals Court decision surprised even Powell's harshest critics. The court still has to decide on the merits of the legal challenge to the rules, which would make it far easier for media giants such as Disney (DIS ), AOL Time Warner (AOL ), and News Corp. (NWS ) to continue expanding into new markets and businesses. Says Celia Wexler, research director of the Washington (D.C.)-based public-interest group Common Cause: "The court understood that if the NRA, NOW, Common Cause, and all the other [disparate] groups oppose the [rules changes], it means there really is a problem."
WORKING VACATIONS. This isn't an antibusiness issue. The problem is Powell himself. At best, he has a tin ear for public relations, at worst, he seems to go out of his way to antagonize friend and foe alike. For instance, before the FCC passed the media consolidation changes on June 2, he refused to make public the 250-page FCC document that formed the justification for the move. He also held only one public hearing on the media rules changes. Later, he sought to justify that by saying that public hearings, at about $20,000 each, were too expensive.
Imagine that -- major changes in the rules governing media ownership of newspapers, radio, and TV, and the champion of the effort says a public airing of the merits of the case is too expensive. This rings a tad hollow, given that FCC commissioners and staffers accepted $2.8 million in freebie trips over the last eight years from the industry, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan Washington (D.C.) research organization. The favored destination for these "research" forays: Las Vegas. The trips continued at least through mid-June, the center says, though Powell has since promised to end the practice.
Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, the two Democrats on the commission, were so incensed that they began holding ad hoc hearings around the country on their own (most of which Powell refused to attend). A firestorm of opposition erupted.
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Copyright 2003, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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