When Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission announced on Thursday that he would leave the agency on the day Donald Trump is sworn in, it was not a total surprise. There were rumors circulating about his plans for several months, and it is not uncommon for an FCC chair to step down when a new President takes office, but the stakes are higher this time.
The Senate’s failure to confirm Jessica Rosenworcel for a second term before going into recess means the Commission will be left with one Democrat and two Republican commissioners, along with two vacancies that will be filled by the new Trump administration. Activists worry that recent commission actions, including classifying the Internet as a common carrier (like telephone service) under Title II of the Communications Act will be reversed. A February 2015 ruling allowed for the protection of “Net Neutrality” instead of a system of tiered access where better quality service could be sold for a higher price.
Wheeler, in a statement on the FCC’s website, said: “It has been a privilege to work with my fellow Commissioners to help protect consumers, strengthen public safety and cybersecurity, and ensure fast, fair and open networks for all Americans.”
On the day Wheeler’s announced he was stepping down, former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps tweeted:
“It is going to take energizing a grassroots mass movement to protect [net neutrality],” Copps told The Progressive by phone on Friday.
“You’ll never get reform in this country until you have media reform, and you’ll never get real democracy until you have something more closely resembling media democracy.”
Copps is no stranger to grassroots movements. When he was an FCC commissioner in 2003, the Bush Administration tried to loosen the rules to allow for greater media consolidation. The FCC received more than half a million letters opposing the change. It was the largest number of comments the Commission had ever received on an issue. The media reform movement that emerged from that effort gave rise to watchdog groups including Free Press, which continues that work today.
“There was even more messaging coming into the FCC on Net Neutrality,” says Copps, who now serves as senior advisor for media and democracy reform for the group Common Cause.
When Wheeler was nominated by President Obama, activist groups feared that his background as a lobbyist for the telecommunications industry would make him an enemy of the public interest. But as FreePress president Craig Aaron said in a press statement:
“Wheeler showed a willingness to stand up to industry pressure, listen to voices outside the Beltway and — perhaps most importantly — to change his mind.” According to Copps, “he told me he really wanted to do a good job and serve the public interest, and I think for the most part he made good on that. Net Neutrality was historic, certainly the primary achievement of his years there, but he did a lot other things as well on broadband, E-rate, privacy, and universal service. I think it was the most successful chairmanship in many years.”
Copps is not sure what will happen once Trump is in office, but he is concerned about the partisan imbalance in Congress, and on the Commission. He calls the Senate’s failure to confirm Rosenworcel “a travesty.”
“I don’t think anyone ever came to the FCC with more communications knowledge than she had,” Copps says. “She just got caught in this awful hyper-partisanship. It is a dark cloud for the Senate, there was no excuse for them not re-confirming her. It was shameful.”
“This is up to us, people have to speak up. . . . nothing is going to come from a beneficent Congress,” says Copps. “A lot of Trump’s votes came from working class, middle America. I don’t think a lot of those people are interested in telecom monopolies.”
“In the final analysis, when these Congressmen go home to their districts, people need to turn up and say ‘what about this Net Neutrality, why are you against it?’ That’s the only way you ever get reform,” Copps says. “Civil rights, or worker rights, or disability rights, it’s got to come from down below. It’s going to be difficult to do, but I think this administration is going to be so controversial once it gets going and people realize that these people are turning back the clock on education, on climate change, on energy, on health, and, add in media and communications.”
Copps is determined to be part of the resistance:
“It’s going to take a lot of work. Public interest groups need to coordinate and people out in the grassroots need to talk to their families and colleagues, go on local radio, write a letter to the editor, march, sing a song, do what they can do. That’s what keeps me going now, it’s not a happy time, but it’s not a completely hopeless time.”
Norman Stockwell is publisher of The Progressive