What Does Obama Mean for PubRadio?
What does President-Elect Barack Obama’s win mean for public radio?
BusinessWeek recently posted a piece on the Obama transition team’s task in finding a new Federal Communications Commission chair. That’s welcome news for many media organizations, not the least of which are non-commercial outlets.
The Obama selection team is led by Henry Rivera, of the law firm Wiley Rein. Rivera’s firm has represented the big telcos, which might not bode well. However, BusinessWeek notes two African-American women lead the short list of candidates.
The Obama team is reportedly considering, among others, Julia Johnson of Video Access Alliance and Mignon Clyburn, a commissioner for the Public Service Commission of South Carolina since 1998. Both candidates bring considerable non-profit experience, and represent a potentially massive shift from the politics practiced by outgoing FCC chair Kevin Martin, blasted by many quarters (including FCC colleague Michael Copps on Democracy Now!) for giving up much ground to commercial media and megacorporations. If either Johnson or Clyburn is chosen, she would be the first African-American woman to head the FCC.
Om Malik rightly points out the obvious: the Obama team needs to look beyond the Beltway. That said, these choices are encouraging.
The FCC’s role in the coming years is going to be critical for the public and non-commercial media. The Obama Administration, for its part, has pledged to take an aggressive stance on the tech issues the FCC oversees (even asking for public feedback), though how much regulation will happen remains unclear. Meanwhile, FreePress has led the charge in calling for stronger efforts against big telcos on issues like network neutrality. More recently, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has offered up an agenda for the president-elect that includes dealing with the sticky copyright issues that have hampered many a non-commercial station’s desire to webstream.
The coming weeks will be fascinating to watch, for sure.
