Asleep at the Digital Switch

Last Monday, members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) came to Boston to hold hearings on an important subject: whether broadband providers like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast should be allowed to manage Internet traffic for efficiency’s sake. It’s a useful question, and one that abuts the controversial debate on network neutrality: the idea that broadband networks should blindly treat each bit of information on the Internet equally.

To be sure, we shouldn’t allow broadband providers to act in an anti-competitive fashion by discriminating against particular content—for instance, blocking a Democratic blog and giving priority to a Republican website. However, most experts agree that broadband providers should be allowed to reasonably manage their networks to confront a looming threat: A relatively small set of users are downloading unprecedented volumes of video and music with “peer-to-peer” software, creating an online traffic jam and slowing down connection speeds for everyone.

And while this is an important debate, it’s largely one for academics and engineers, who need to hammer out the details of what passes for acceptable network management. But the FCC’s seemingly obsequious effort to reassure Silicon Valley special interests—like Google—that enough fast lanes will be preserved for their latest application is in stark contrast to the war on civil rights and diversity that the FCC has declared of late.

And the reality is that the FCC will shy away from addressing these more important issues, hoping that its academic debate about network management might serve as a salve for the widespread criticism that it’s asleep at the digital switch.

Indeed, we are today facing an ownership crisis in broadcast television. People of color make up 33 percent of our population but own just three percent of all broadcast TV stations—and research shows that the number of owners is plummeting at alarming levels. Despite repeated requests from more than 20 civil rights organizations, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has placed the future of media diversity in greater jeopardy by asking programmers of color to take a back seat to his favored special interests.

In the waning days of 2007, as the Washington political set scurried to get out of town for holiday vacations, Martin bulldozed through a dramatic relaxation of the cross-ownership rules that ensure a diversity of voices in our local media markets. Now, local media moguls can buy both a television station and the major newspaper in the local market. And because people of color and women are more likely to be single-station owners, they are especially susceptible to local consolidation efforts.

Indeed, in the hours preceding the FCC vote, Martin blithely acknowledged that the new rule would make it harder for people of color and women to own broadcast stations. Martin has also been the subject of widespread criticism from the civil rights community for other efforts that would hamper African-American television programmers such as a la carte pricing and his campaign to award large swaths of cable channel space to incumbent broadcasters at the potential expense of programmers of color. The civil rights community accused the FCC and its chairman of aping an “anti-diversity agenda.” Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein likened some of the chairman’s ideas to “digital sharecropping.” To put it bluntly, Martin’s policies are leading us down the road to media fascism, where only one viewpoint will be heard.

Martin and his ever-dwindling allies in Congress argue that this kind of government-encouraged media consolidation policy is needed to help newspapers ailing in the Internet revolution. However, instead of addressing these new challenges, the policy represents a continuation of media concentration that we have already seen in ownership in the large radio companies like Clear Channel.

Congressional leaders such as Representatives John Dingell, Ed Markey, John Conyers, Marsha Blackburn and Senators John Kerry and Barack Obama have raised strong objections to they way the chairman is conducting FCC business, suggesting additional independent panels, investigations into process, and even legislation to curb the commission’s powers.

It is high time. The public is depending on an FCC that protects diversity and localism, that encourages a wealth of viewpoints, and that protects consumers. By this measure, the current FCC is dangerously far off track.

It’s all fine and good for the FCC to have dog and pony shows to respond to Silicon Valley lobbyists. But the real business of the FCC—ensuring a widespread diversity of voices on the nation’s airways—is under attack. The FCC would better serve the public by staying home and attending to real business of the people.

Mel King is currently the Director of the South End Technology Center @ Tent City in Boston, MA. He has taught as an Adjunct Professor at MIT and served as a State Representative in the Massachusetts Legislature.