FCC “Speech Czar”? No, But That’s Not the Problem
James Gattuso /
Does the Federal Communications Commission have a “speech czar”? That was the question before Julius Genachowski yesterday, as he testified for the first time before Congress as FCC chairman. At issue was the appointment of ex-journalist Mark Lloyd to be the agency’s “chief diversity officer,” a position quickly dubbed “the diversity czar,” or the “speech czar.” For weeks now, Lloyd has been a cause celebre on conservative talk radio and other media, where he has been portrayed as yet another in a long line of powerful and unaccountable Obama policy czars and – in light of his support of government regulation of TV and radio content – a threat to free speech.
On the first point the critics are clearly wrong. Lloyd was never a “czar” of anything. That regal title – and its connotations of unlimited influence — seems to have been entirely invented by overactive imaginations in the media. Lloyd’s actual position in the FCC bureaucracy is much more prosaic — “associate general counsel.” He serves in that position along with three other associate general counsel, and three deputy general counsels. His role as “chief diversity officer” is a little less clear. It’s a new position for the FCC, but in the private sector it is an increasingly common one, essentially coordinating internal workplace initiatives, with no specific role in media content issues.
Nevertheless, Lloyd has written extensively in favor of regulation of media. Perhaps most notably, in 2007, he co-authored a piece on the “Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio,” arguing that talk radio is disproportionately conservative in tone, and suggesting steps government could take to “address the imbalance.” Among them: stricter requirements that radio stations address the “needs and interests” of their communities,” and show they are operating in the “public interest.” And if they don’t? They would pay fines, which would be used to fund public broadcasting (discussed here). In practice, this would likely amount to a tax on conservative speech.
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