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Media Diversity Czar: Mark Lloyd
Published in August 18th, 2009
By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
http://noisyroom.net/blog/2009/08/18/media-diversity-czar-mark-lloyd/
Meet your new Media Diversity Czar: Mark Lloyd.

Mr. Lloyd’s actual title is FCC Associate General Counsel and Chief
Diversity Officer. Lloyd plans to implement what I call the reincarnation of
the Fairness Doctrine. Lloyd is a staunch proponent on the enforcement of
the FCC regulations known as “media diversity” and “localism.”
Background from NewsBusters:

But Doctor of Jurisprudence Lloyd is far more than merely a communications
attorney. He was at one time a Senior Fellow at the uber-liberal Center for
American Progress (CAP), for whom he co-wrote a June 2007 report entitled
“The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.”

From NewsBusters:

Chief Diversity Officer Lloyd is virulently anti-capitalist, almost
myopically racially fixated and exuberantly pro-regulation. He is a
frightening guy to have having any power at the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC). And yet that is exactly where he currently stands, astride
the private radio industry he loathes like a Socialist Colossus.

During an online interview with Glenn Beck, Seton Motley, the Media Research
Center’s Director of Communications, stated the following:

It does not bode well for free speech on the radio airwaves, but as Seton
says to Glenn during this appearance, “That’s irrelevent to these people.”

More from Mr. Motley:

“They don’t want equality of opportunity, they want equality of outcomes -
giving equal time for people who get listeners and people who don’t,” he
said.

And yet more from NewsBusters:

This is insane. The “Chief Diversity Officer” in question, Mark Lloyd, is
calling for the gross operating budget for every private radio station each
year to be the fee (tax) they pay for their broadcast license for the year,
with the monies going to the always liberal public stations. With whom they
then must compete for listeners.

More from CNSNews on Lloyd’s views on CPB:

“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) must be reformed along
democratic lines and funded on a substantial level,” Lloyd wrote in his
book.

“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 this money, Lloyd would regulate much of the programming on
these stations to make sure they focused on “diverse views” and government
activities.

Get the picture? Lloyd wants to control all content on radio, bankrupt
Conservative and Christian broadcasting and give it to public broadcasting.
He is playing the part of some twisted, fascist Robin Hood who takes from
the right and gives to the left in the extreme and with the added benefit of
wiping out conservative radio.

And straight from the progressive’s mouth so-to-speak, from CNSNews:

Lloyd wrote Prologue to a Farce while a senior fellow at the liberal
Center for American Progress. In that capacity, he co-authored the 2007
report The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, which concluded
that 91% of talk radio programming is conservative and 9% is “progressive.”

The report argued that large corporate broadcasting networks had driven
liberals off the radio, and that diversity of ownership would increase
diversity of broadcasting voices.

In other words, enforced programming through your government and the end of
free speech. The hell with the Constitution and our rights, or at least
Lloyd would like to see it that way if the government can pull it off and I
fear they may just do that.

From NewsBusters:

Which rails against the fact that the American people overwhelmingly
prefer to listen to conservative (and Christian) talk radio rather than the
liberal alternative, and suggests ways the federal government can remedy
this free-market created “problem.”

a.. Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio
stations.
b.. Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing.
c.. Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public
interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.
These last two get perilously close to the use of “localism” to silence
conservative (and Christian) radio stations, about which we have been
warning for quite some time.

Jillian Bandes wrote a great article at Townhall.com:

Lloyd’s past work includes stints at the Center for American Progress
(CAP) and vice president of strategic initiatives at the Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). CAP is funded by the liberal financier
George Soros and LCCR focuses on representing “persons of color, women,
children, labor unions, individuals with disabilities, older Americans,
major religious groups, gays and lesbians and civil liberties and human
rights groups.”

In a blog post, LCCR praised the selection of Lloyd by saying that he will
“help the FCC to develop communications policy that will increase media
diversity and address the needs of low-income people, women, minorities,
people with disabilities.” The LCCR and Lloyd have been careful to distance
themselves from the notion that they support the Fairness Doctrine, while
actually backing every principle the doctrine stands for.

“We call for ownership rules that we think will create greater local
diversity of programming, news, and commentary. And we call for more
localism by putting teeth into the licensing rules,” he wrote in an article
on CAP’s website titled “Forget the Fairness Doctrine.” “But we do not call
for a return to the Fairness Doctrine.”

Perhaps The Anchoress puts it best (and I love this):

On the horizon: More czars and “Diversity Officers.” Does it seem to you
that the Obama administration makes up titles and offices the way Bluto made
up new names for Animal House Pledges?

“You’ll be.the Chief Diversity Officer!”

“Why?”

“Why the hell not?”

Indeed. When you’ve “won” and you’ve got both houses, (and soon the
SCOTUS) and you’ve taken control of the census, why the hell not? Now go
shut those guys up!

STOPTHEACLU is hopping mad and suggests that “diversity” under Lloyd may
fall along typical liberal lines, meaning diversity of tone will be
celebrated, but not of thought.

And personally I love listening to Rush, Beck and Levine. Do you honestly
believe that anyone, I mean ANYONE wants to listen to Air America again? It
would be the death of talk radio to impose stringent diversity regulation
and enforced programming on it. Our founding fathers must be rolling over in
their graves. Not even the dead want to listen to the likes of Daschle and
Franken, among a whole array of media flops to air on liberal radio.

Folks, you are looking at a form of totalitarianism that will rip our
republic apart. First they came for Beck and the other heavy weights of talk
radio. Then they will take apart our second amendment rights and on and on.
If this administration gets its way, you really won’t recognize America at
the end of this four year term. Lloyd is the new Media Diversity Czar and he
will wield tremendous power - we have no idea exactly what he will do yet,
but he’s breathing down talk radio’s neck and raising an iron fist ready to
squelch free speech.

—
CB
Today he (Glenn Beck) showed Mark Lloyd, Obama’s “FCC diversity czar,”
militantly
opposing ANY private ownership of media! Praising communist dictator Chavez
for his seizing of the media in Venezuela. He praised Chavez’s “incredible
democratic revolution.”

Refute this libs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7a8SQ2d_fg
—Posted by seon