Exposing Mark Lloyd - Obama's Chief Diversity Officer at the FCC

Mark Lloyd is another of Obama's Czar's, one of the people he keeps around as an advisor, and confidant. Lloyd is the Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer at the FCC.

Here is what the FCC website has to say about him:

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.

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In 2006, Mark Lloyd wrote a book entitled "Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America." In the book, he made a policy suggestion similar to what he wrote in his report "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio." The suggestion? Corporate redistribution of wealth, specifically, making private broadcasting companies pay licensing fees equal to their total operating costs, and giving those fees to public broadcasting.

“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) must be reformed along democratic lines and funded on a substantial level.”

“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. Sponsorship should be prohibited at all public broadcasters.”

Along with the private money being paid to public broadcasting, Lloyd would regulate much of the programming on these stations to make sure they focused on “diverse views” (code word for liberal, or progressive) and government activities.

“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.

In his book, Lloyd also 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.”

Read more about his book here.

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Previous to his work with the FCC, Lloyd was general counsel to the Benton Foundation. What is the Benton Foundation? Well, according to their website:

"The Benton Foundation works to ensure that media and telecommunications serve
the public interest and enhance our democracy. We pursue this mission by seeking
policy solutions that support the values of access, diversity and equity, and by
demonstrating the value of media and telecommunications for improving the
quality of life for all."

There is that word again, diversity. Diversity is liberal code word for eliminating conservative voices. It's nothing short of social re engineering through media control.

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In June, 2007, Lloyd co-wrote a report entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” The report outlines the disproportionate number of conservative radio shows, to liberal radio shows. It also outlines battle plans to change this disproportion.

This analysis suggests that any effort to encourage more responsive and balanced radio programming will first require steps to increase localism and diversify radio station ownership to better meet local and community needs. We suggest three ways to accomplish this:

Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations.

Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing.

Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.

So his solution is to take away ownership from private companies, and to force private companies to finance "public" broadcasting. In other words, corporate redistribution of wealth. Hmmm, socialist much?

There are two primary explanations typically put forth to explain the disparities between conservative and progressive talk radio programming:

The “repeal” of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 gave station owners and hosts free reign to fill their programming with ideologically conservative content.

The demands of the marketplace favor conservative shows and audiences over progressive ones.

In the last paragraph, he does acknowledge that the people demand conservative radio, not progressive radio. Thus, progressive radio doesn't make the stations any money, but that doesn't matter, they should be forced to carry it anyway.

You can read the whole report here.

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In a follow up to his 2007 report, “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio,” Lloyd wrote a paper entitled "Forget the Fairness Doctrine."

From Lloyd's piece:

To be fair, even some progressives are confused about the Fairness Doctrine. A recent news story reported that the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC for short, has asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine—even as the same article reports on a speech to LULAC by ABC News correspondent John Quinones, who spoke of his work bringing to audiences a hard-earned perspective to the long-running immigration debate.

Quinones told the LULAC audience that he got his start because a San Antonio community organization threatened that if the stations didn't hire more Latinos, the group would go to the FCC and challenge their licenses. "Thank God for them," Quinones said. "I wouldn't be here."

Equal opportunity employment policies. Local engagement. License challenges. Nothing in there about the Fairness Doctrine.

What does this mean? It means using the FCC regulatory requirement "localism" to harass conservative stations by filing complaints with the FCC. The FCC, in turn, would assess fines on these stations, with the fine money going to public broadcasting. The best part? It's not called the fairness doctrine.

More from his piece:

The other part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads (i.e. Rush Limbaugh fans, meant here by Lloyd to more broadly refer to fans of all conservative talk) 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.

In other words, pay the thugs after they break your legs, or before they break your legs, it's your choice.

So after encouraging liberals to harass radio stations by using the FCC, Lloyd now works for the FCC. I wonder if he will be doing an harassing?

Read more about his report here.

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From the June 10, 2008 National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) in Minneapolis, Minnesota:

"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."

"(...) Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country." What exactly is it that Lloyd loves about Chavez's has done for his countries media?

NGOs Warn of Restrictions in Pending Venezuela Law

Associated Press - May 7, 2009

Prominent Venezuelan nongovernmental organizations warned Thursday that a bill
being drafted by lawmakers loyal to President Hugo Chavez could be used to financially strangle groups that criticize the government.

Chavez clamps down on broadcast media

Irish Examiner - Friday, July 10, 2009

President Hugo Chavez's government is imposing tough new regulations on Venezuela's cable television while revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio
stations.

Report: Venezuela's Hugo Chávez aggressively seizing control of media

Miami Herald - August 14, 2009

An unclassified report lists examples of Venezuelan government efforts to crack
down on or seize control of media outlets to stifle criticism.

Remember, Lloyd is the Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer at the FCC. Awesome.

Via

I urge all of you to contact your local representatives, radio stations, TV stations, newspapers, etc., and voice your concern over Mark Lloyd being in charge of our airwaves. We need to act quickly, before our conservative voices are silenced.