FCC Official Comes Under Fire for Past Statements

WASHINGTON -- New Federal Communications Commission chief Julius Genachowski says he wants to promote diversity in media ownership, but his recent decision to hire Mark Lloyd, a civil-rights attorney critical of corporate-owned media, to help with that effort has riled some talk-radio hosts who fear the agency is planning to go after them.

The criticism comes as another Obama administration appointee, environmental jobs adviser Van Jones, resigned over the weekend following an outcry over things he said before joining the government.

Jumpkari/YouTube - Mark Lloyd at a 2008 conference.

Mr. Lloyd was named in July to the new FCC post of chief diversity officer as part of what agency Chairman Julius Genachowski called an effort to "expand opportunities for women, minorities and small businesses to participate in the communications marketplace."

FCC chief of staff Edward Lazarus said Mr. Lloyd is currently working, for example, on how to increase broadband adoption in minority communities and by small businesses. Through an FCC spokeswoman, Mr. Lloyd declined to comment.

But Mr. Lloyd in the past has criticized corporate ownership of media outlets, saying it has led to conservative dominance of talk radio, among other things. He has called for a broader range of voices in the media and advocated taxing station owners to subsidize public broadcasters and local media.

"If we as a nation...fully funded a broadcaster like the British citizens fund BBC, we might have an impact on what they cover and have more power to demand that they cover everything," Mr. Lloyd said at a 2008 media conference.

In 2007, while a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank with close ties to the Obama administration, Mr. Lloyd co-authored a report that proposed ways the FCC could change the balance of conservatives to progressives on talk radio by imposing new rules on the radio industry, such as more frequent license renewals and a national radio-ownership cap.

Mr. Lloyd has no authority to set policy at the FCC, and his appointment has drawn little reaction so far from companies. Nevertheless, his past statements have fueled an outcry among conservative commentators and lawmakers concerned that Mr. Lloyd's hiring signals the FCC will change rules to make it easier for interest groups unhappy with a local station's programming to threaten its license.

The administration "is trying to stifle dissenting voices," said radio host Rush Limbaugh, discussing Mr. Lloyd with Fox News host Glenn Beck last month. (Fox News is owned by News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal.)

"He doesn't like corporate ownership of media," said Seton Motley, communications director of the Media Research Center, a conservative interest group that has been critical of Mr. Lloyd. "He wants to use the vast power of the FCC to hammerlock the radio industry."

Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley in a letter last month to Mr. Genachowski said that "given the appointment of Mr. Lloyd," he was concerned that the FCC chairman was moving away from pledges not to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, a policy abandoned in 1987 that required licensed broadcasters to give equal time to differing political views.

Mr. Lloyd has said there is no reason to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, but his critics fear a similar policy under a different name. Mr. Genachowski told Mr. Grassley that he does "not support policies intended to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine through a back door or otherwise," and Mr. Lazarus said that Mr. Lloyd's work at the FCC "has nothing to do with the Fairness Doctrine or the content of radio or television broadcasting."

The uproar over Mr. Lloyd's appointment foreshadows what could be a messy fight next year when the FCC launches a broad review of media-ownership rules.

Broadcasters helped derail the FCC's attempt last year to impose new requirements on stations to make sure they are serving local communities' needs, and they are prepared to fight any effort to impose new fees on stations.

Companies "support a strong public broadcasting system. However, we would oppose efforts to fund that system through fees on free and local broadcast stations now emerging from one of the more challenging advertising recessions in history," said National Association of Broadcasters spokesman Dennis Wharton.

Some contend the concerns about Mr. Lloyd are overblown.

"His writings, while tending to be liberal, aren't anything anyone regarded as radical or outside the mainstream," said David Honig, executive director of the nonpartisan group Minority Media and Telecommunications Council. "He's a midlevel staff member at the FCC. It doesn't come with a big corner office. He certainly doesn't set policy."

By: Amy Schatz at Amy.Schatz@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A4