Tyranny in Lloyd's Venezuelan utopia

FCC watcher Seton Motley has a great piece up at Newsbusters about just how Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd's Venezuelan media paradise is shaping up. Lloyd has lauded Hugo Chavez for seizing control of his country's TV and radio stations.

Here's the latest out of Venezuela from the AP:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday defended the arrest of a major TV channel owner, calling him a criminal and denying the government is carrying out an assault on press freedom.

The back-to-back arrests this week of two government opponents - including the owner of Venezuela's only remaining anti-Chavez TV channel - have drawn accusations that Chavez is growing increasingly intolerant and authoritarian as his popular support has slipped.

Click here to read Motley's Newsbusters analysis.

The radio socialism in our future

MSNBC host and progressive radio talker Ed Schultz took to the airwaves earlier this week to call for radio socialism.

The fact is, look, it's not a level playing field when it comes to the audio culture of the country. Ownership has its privileges. When you own, I will be honest, if I owned 500 stations, the drugster wouldn't be on any of 'em. And that's just where it's at right now. But maybe we have reached the point where the Congress needs to equal it out. Equal out the audience.

...

And so, I think that, you know, hell, if we're going to be socialist, let's be socialist all across the board.

Schultz works for the Obama-obsessed MSNBC, which is owned by General Electric. GE's president, Jeffrey Immelt, sits on the Federal Reserve and has secured several special deals for GE from the Obama Administration at the expense of competitors. Both MSNBC and Schultz are lagging behind conservative competitors in the ratings. How long until Immelt leans on Obama to right that wrong? Obama's diversity czar at the FCC is already trying to make Schultz's dream a reality by supporting an initiative to tax large radio companies and redistribute the wealth to smaller, minority-owned stations.

Radio socialism has support in Congress. Rep. Louise Slaughter, of recent health care fame, introduced a bill in 2004 that would reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Under Obama, the Democrats in Congress just nationalized the student loan industry and the health care industry in a single weekend. Does anyone doubt that they would do the same for the country's airwaves?

Don't say we didn't warn you: FCC Commissioner warns of censorship at the FCC

Robert McDowell is one of two Republican commissioners at Barack Obama's Federal Communications Commission. Today, McDowell wrote an op-ed for the Daily Caller warning that the FCC would probably move to promote greater localism in the coming year. "In that arena [of broadcast regulation], we often aren’t talking about the future, or even the present–instead, we keep talking about the past. And so, as the FCC undertakes a new review of its broadcast ownership rules this year, I expect to hear renewed calls for reimposing various 'localism' rules on TV and radio stations."

Localism is a radical codeword for taking power from broadcasting companies and giving it to smaller, minority-owned TV and radio stations. It's a scheme to censor conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh without passing messy legislation like the Fairness Doctrine. It is also a wealth distribution scheme designed to tax private broadcasters and pass the money to NPR. Mark Lloyd, Barack Obama's diversity czar at the FCC, is a huge fan of localism and has even praised Hugo Chavez for shutting down commercial broadcasting stations in Venezuela.

The Diversity Czar lies and lies

The FCC's Mark Lloyd, more commonly known as Barack Obama's radical Diversity Czar, gave a speech at something called the Media Access Project this week. Needless to say, he emitted so many toxic lies, the EPA may need to investigate. Here's a rundown.

Lloyd: "What is diversity? Diversity is not synonymous with minorities. I am not the Chief Minority Officer."

The truth: Lloyd views diversity exclusively in terms of minorities. His background is in civil rights, specifically minority rights for African-Americans. At a speech in 2005, Lloyd discussed why communications must be seen through a racial prism, saying, ""There's nothing more difficult than this. Because we have really, truly good white people in important positions. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions. And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem." His speech focused on ways to get those powerful whites to step down in order to make room for minorities.

Lloyd: "There should be little doubt that the voices of family farmers or recent immigrants or the disabled are barely heard in our local or national media. For all the great diversity of our nation, media voices do not seem particularly diverse."

The truth: Some of the most popular radio personalities in the nation are women (Laura Ingraham, Stephanie Miller), African-Americans (Joe Madison, Larry Elder), and Jewish (Mark Levin, Michael Medved). Sean Hannity is the grandson of impoverished Irish immigrants. Television programming is incredibly diverse as well, with entire channels dedicated to African-Americans (Black Entertainment Television), women (Oxygen, Lifetime), and Catholics (EWTN). Oprah Winfrey, perhaps the most successful TV personality in history, is an African-American woman. Late night TV features a Scottish immigrant (Craig Ferguson), a Jewish liberal (Jon Stewart), and an African-American woman (Wanda Sykes). In fact the problem is the exact opposite of what Lloyd claims. According to news insider Bernard Goldberg's book Bias, TV journalists often blow out of proportion issues that primarily affect the disadvantaged, such as AIDS or homelessness.

Lloyd: "I am not a czar appointed by President Obama."

The truth: "Czar" is shorthand in Washington for an unelected special advisor, which Lloyd most certainly is. And given that he previously served as vice president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an umbrella group of unions and community organizations, it seems very likely that Lloyd got his job through Obama.

Lloyd: "I am not at the FCC to restore the Fairness Doctrine through the front door or the back door, or to carry out a secret plot funded by George Soros to get rid of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or any other conservative talk show host."

The truth: Lloyd has repeatedly says he opposes the Fairness Doctrine legislation, but he agrees with the general premise. He has proposed an 100% tax on the operating costs of radio stations to divert money towards more local (ie: diverse) programming. He sees powerful conservative broadcasters like Limbaugh and Beck to be problematic. He also proposed an FCC plan in 2007 while he was working for the Soros-funded Center for American Progress that counseled the FCC to threaten the licenses of stations with which it disagreed politically.

Lloyd: "I am not a supporter of Hugo Chavez."

The truth: At a 2008 media reform conference, Lloyd said, "In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution - a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela. The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled - worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government - worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country. And we've had complaints about this ever since."

Lloyd: "I do support free speech."

The truth: In his 2006 book Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America, Lloyd wrote, "It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. 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."