Kevin Martin: Get in Bed with the Public

Posted July 10th, 2006 by Craig Aaron

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin offers a perhaps unwitting illustration of how media policy is made in the new issue of Details.

As part of its report on the 21 “mavericks who are secretly controlling your life,” the magazine prints a full-page picture showing Martin literally in bed with a media executive and an industry lobbyist. You can’t make this stuff up.

Some may wonder whether it’s appropriate for the “Harry Potter of the Beltway” (far right) to be snapped in the sack with those he’s supposed to regulate. But an FCC spokeswoman told the Washington Post: “We’re FCC bureaucrats. We were happy to be with Ashton Kutcher” – who was also part of the package.

But it’s the public who’s really getting punk’d here. When the FCC launched it latest attempt to undo media ownership rules two weeks ago, Martin promised at least “half a dozen” public hearings before the FCC moved forward. Yet details on a schedule, time or place for these events is still a mystery.

In fact, Martin turned down an invitation from Free Press and an array of local groups in his home state of North Carolina to come out for a Town Meeting on the Future of Media in Asheville on June 28.

FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein turned out for the event – and heard hundreds of concerned citizens from as far away as Tennessee to tell them that we need more local, independent and diverse voices, not bigger media.

So we were wondering: When might the chairman find time for a little pillow talk with the public?

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