Iowan on FCC Reform Panel to Advise Obama Transition Team
As promised, Blog for Iowa intends to make reforming the broken media our new hobby! And as previously reported here, we have reason to believe that the Obama administration intends to be media reform friendly.Iowa's own Nicholas Johnson, a former FCC Commissioner, was a panelist this week at a C-Span covered conference on Reforming the Federal Communications Commmission. For details of the Washington, DC conference, its participants and video links, go to Nick's blog, FromDC2Iowa. BFIA brings you a brief excerpt.
Can We Reform the FCC? “Yes We Can!”
by Nicholas Johnson
The purpose of the FCC conference is to provide the Obama Transition Team with some suggestions regarding reforms of the FCC's organization, management, process and administrative procedure – a subject that turns out to be much more interesting, and significant for the U.S. economy (among other things) than one might first suspect.
Yesterday's (January 5) effort, held at the National Press Club before an overflow crowd, was only the beginning of….a Web site, FCC-reform.org, with papers presented for the conference and ongoing discussion.
The event was organized….by two leading telecommunications public advocates, Gigi Sohn….president and founder of Public Knowledge, which is offering the transition team some suggestions for substantive FCC policies as well (open broadband; balanced copyright; nondiscriminatory text messaging)…. and Phil Weiser, professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the executive director of its Silicon Flatirons: A Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship.
The panel on which I participated, “Historical Perspectives on the Federal Communications Commission,” or “The Past as Prologue: Lessons From History on the Road to Reform” was moderated by Phil, whose substantial paper (soon to be available on the Web site) was the focus of the conference.
Here is the C-SPAN main page for the panel; and this is a link to the C-SPAN video [where you may also buy the DVD for $29.95]. And for a blogger's running report of participants' comments see also Mehan Jayasuriya, “Liveblog: Reforming the FCC,” at PublicKnowledge.org.
11:15 am – Nick Johnson: “The point is that to break out of this cocoon, you need to look beyond the filings, the court decisions, the trade press…you need to reach beyond that, to read the academic material, the blogs, the general press…to read widely about relevant issues that concern the FCC, pieces that no staffer is going to bring you, that no lobbyist is going to bring you…”
Media Reform Now!
Blog For Iowa 