By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

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.”

  • 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.

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.

Read The Czar Chronicles

Update: The Anchoress – Equality of Opportunity or of Outcome?

American Thinker – Megaphone Envy and the Fairness Doctrine (Hat Tip: Joseph Whitehall)

NoisyRoom – Who Is Mark Lloyd?

NewsBusters – Video: FCC ‘Diversity’ Czar on Chavez’s Venezuela: ‘Incredible…Democratic Revolution’

CNSNews.com – FCC Diversity Chief Says Republican Communications Policies Hurt Civil Rights

Protein Wisdom – Mark Lloyd, Obama/Soros hitman at the FCC

Family Security Matters – Glenn Beck Targets Pro-Marxist at FCC

NoisyRoom – Mark Lloyd, FCC “Diversity Czar” Media Reform Conference 2005

The Washington Times – ‘Diversity czar’ takes heat over remarks

Pierre LeGrand’s Pink Flamingo Bar – FCC’s Diversity Czar: ‘White People’ Need to be Forced to ‘Step Down’ ‘So Someone Else Can Have Power’

Bookworm Room – Be ever vigilant regarding the current administration’s assaults on free speech

Brutally Honest – Who is Obama’s FCC Diversity Czar

CNSNews.com – FCC Commissioner Says Diversity Chief’s Ideas for Regulating Free Speech Are ‘Troubling’

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