Meet The New FCC Diversity Officer

I don't know if the FCC had a Diversity Officer before, but they have one now. Here's a brief biography of Mark Lloyd, the newly appointed assoiciate general counsel and chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission.

"Mr. Lloyd was most recently the Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights/ Education Fund, where he oversaw media and telecom initiatives. Mr. Lloyd was also an adjunct professor of public policy at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, and from 2002-2004 a visiting scholar at MIT where he conducted research and taught communications policy. Previously Mr. Lloyd has been a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the General Counsel of the Benton Foundation, and an attorney at Dow, Lohnes & Albertson. Before becoming a communications lawyer, Mr. Lloyd had a distinguished career as a broadcast journalist, including work at NBC and CNN." – FCC

As the FCC's chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd's mission is to destroy conservative talk radio promote divergent viewpoints that represent the greater community. The fact that Lloyd himself is a liberal (senior fellow at the Soros-funded left-wing Center For American Progress) will in no way affect his mission, I'm sure. As we all know, liberals are the tolerant, open-minded people who are willing to listen to any and all liberal viewpoints.

Lloyd is focused on a serious problem with radio broadcasting – conservative talk radio is beating the pants off of liberal talk radio in the private sector. This is a BIG problem, unlike television, newspapers, movies, and college campuses, where liberals have a large media advantage. There is NO problem there, other than maybe how to get Fox News off the air. Lloyd isn't for a return to the Fairness Doctrine though, because, well, the Fairness Doctrine just wasn't effective enough. Conservative talk might still filter through. Lloyd has some better ideas, and like most liberal ideas, they center around punishing that nasty entity known as the "free market." In a 2007 article titled 'Forget The Fairness Doctrine,' Lloyd says the following:

The Center for American Progress late last month published a widely read report titled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” That report demonstrated the failure of the supposed “free market” regulation of the U.S. radio industry to address the public-interest needs of listeners. Our analysis revealed that conservative talk radio dominates the airwaves of our country—to the detriment of informed public discourse and the First Amendment.

There you go. Those damned Conservatives must be stopped. There's an "imbalance." It's a "detriment." And probably unconstitutional. Unlike newspapers, movies, television, and college campuses, where there is no problem. Lloyd goes on:

In our report, we call for ownership rules that we think will create greater local diversity of programming, news, and commentary. And we call for more localism by putting teeth into the licensing rules. But we do not call for a return to the Fairness Doctrine. Despite what we thought was fairly stark evidence of conservative bias, despite clear proposals to address that bias, Rush Limbaugh and other distortionists insisted that we were calling for a “return” of the Fairness Doctrine

See ? We have conservative "bias" in talk radio, unlike newspapers, television, movies, and college campuses (where we have liberal bias), and those conservative talk radio folks are "distortionists." They lied and said liberals wanted a return to the Fairness Doctrine (how that is supposed to be a lie, I have no idea. All kinds of liberals DID want a return to the Fairness Doctrine).

But as I said before, Lloyd has better ideas than the Fairness Doctrine. Here he is promoting one such idea, which is, file lawsuits to force conservative talk radio into submission:

Here’s the history that matters. In the late 1960s the United Church of Christ successfully challenged the Federal Communications Commission over the lack of local input in FCC decisions. A moderate Republican judge, Warren Burger, whom Nixon later appointed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, sided with the church group. As a result of that ruling, a whole slew of rules were put in place to give local communities power in the licensing of broadcasters.

Yes, let's get liberal groups to sue and threaten the licenses of the conservative talk radio stations ! Lloyd expounds on that theme:

In their engagement in the licensing process many of those [suing threatening] groups cited the responsibility of the broadcaster to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of issues of public importance…this core responsibility remains in the Communications Act today.”

Here's Lloyd's bestest idea of all – Make them pay:

The other part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don’t want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community. Commercial broadcasters want to be trustees of public property but without responsibility.

Yeah, it's only those "dittoheads" who get all upset when you want commercial radio stations (aka, conservative talk radio) to fund public radio stations (aka, liberal talk radio). That's the ticket. Lloyd actually wants private conservative talk radio stations to fund their direct competition. Only a liberal mind could dream up something this perverse. This all happens under the mirage of promoting divergent opinions. Let's take a look at existing public broadcasting on political issues. As we all know, NPR plays it straight down the middle, politically speaking, as long as by "straight down the middle," you mean "promotes the liberal view."

Now for the piece de resistance. Guess how much Lloyd wants commercial radio stations to pay to fund their public radio station competition ? You're gonna love this. In his 2006 book, Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America, Lloyd called for making private broadcasting companies pay licensing fees equal to their total operating costs to allow public broadcasting outlets to spend the same on their operations as the private companies do: Here's the communist Lloyd, from his book:

“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) must be reformed along democratic lines and funded on a substantial level,” Lloyd wrote in his book. “Federal and regional broadcast operations and local stations should be funded at levels commensurate with or above those spending levels at which commercial operations are funded,” Lloyd wrote. “This funding should come from license fees charged to commercial broadcasters. Funding should not come from congressional appropriations. (link)

How many private conservative talk radio stations would choose to stay in business with such exorbitant fees ? I'm thinking – NONE. I'm also thinking that's the whole idea behind Lloyd's bs.

But our new Diversity Czar doesn't stop there. He also wants to dictate programming content as well:

“Local public broadcasters and regional and national communications operations should be required to encourage and broadcast diverse views and programs,” wrote Lloyd. “These programs should include coverage of all local, state and federal government meetings, as well as daily news and public issues programming. “In addition, educational programs for children and adults, and diverse, independent personal and cultural expression should be encouraged,” he wrote.

What's ostensibly crazy about Lloyd's crapola is, we have more divergent viewpoints being heard in our society than we ever have. With the rise of the internet and alternative media, cable television, etc., it's not difficult to find somebody somewhere catering to your particular political stripe. It's easier than in ever was. Mark Lloyd just doesn't like it that conservatives have carved out a niche for themselves on the radio. Think of all the radio stations on the air in your locality. How many of them are conservative talk radio ? One, maybe two out of dozens ? Yet, this is the BIG PROBLEM that Lloyd thinks we need to address ? Ridiculous. Mark Lloyd is disseminating disinformation. Mark Lloyd is just one more in a long line of double-talking, anti-free market, anti-free speech, pro-government control, pinhead bureaucrats who wants to censor any opinions he doesn't like. Because the liberal talk radio that Mark Lloyd wants has not succeeded on as big a scale as has conservative talk radio up until now, Lloyd wants to bully it into submission. Screw him and the horse he rode in on. He's a Nazi. This is all about censorship and nothing else. Have you ever heard a liberal like Lloyd complain about the imbalance of liberal college professors over conservative college professors at state-run universities ? Of course you haven't, and you never will. Those like Lloyd don't care about anything other than shutting up those conservatives. If they can't win in the open market of ideas, they want to close the market.