Chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Kevin Martin has been excoriated in a congressional report for running a dysfunctional agency.
The110-page report, issued yesterday, takes him to task for allegedly suppressing and manipulating public records and failing to carry out some of the jobs allocated to the FCC. The report, entitled Deception and Distrust: The FCC Under Chairman Kevin J Martin, was written by the majority staff of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the US House of Representatives.
Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI), chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, said that the investigation confirmed a number of troubling allegations raised by individuals inside and outside the FCC. Commerce Committee chairman representative John Dingell (D-MI), added that the findings suggest, in recent years, that the FCC has operated in a dysfunctional manner and Commission business has suffered as a result.
 The report says that Martin (left) deliberately interfered with reports on providing cable television service "a la carte." He went so far as to order that a report commissioned by his predecessor Michael Powell be revised and republished, without soliciting additional public comment. Whereas the first report said that a la carte programming would not offer substantial benefits to consumers, the second report made the opposite conclusion, which Martin - a staunch advocate of a la carte service - favoured.
It says that under Martin's direction, the FCC allegedly manipulated or withheld data on broadband over powerlines (BPL technology) from the public, in an effort to push it as an alternative to regular cable or telecom Internet service. Although BPL technology has improved since the time of the report, it is still not considered advanced enough to be an effective means to deliver internet access.
Last year, House Commerce Committee member Joe Barton (R-TX) said that it baffles him how the same FCC can appropriately eliminate regulations for some segments of industry because of increased competition. He added that at the very same time (the FCC) refused to deregulate or even impose more regulation on segments of industry that were creating that very competition.
Martin appears to have exceeded his authority when the FCC's Enforcement Bureau attempted to levy a $1.3 million fine against T-Mobile for violations of the Do Not Call Act. The action was leaked to T-Mobile prior to full adoption by the Commission. Martin and his staff then stepped in to help T-Mobile reduce the fine to $100,000.
Martin and his fellow commissioners were also criticised by the House's Subcommittee on Telecommunications for the failure of the recent wireless spectrum auction to net any bidders for creating a public safety network for first responders to use.
Recently, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the FCC was failing to follow through and resolve effectively many of the thousands of consumer complaints it receives. The GAO said that the agency used multiple separate, incompatible systems, and relied too heavily on paper documents for noting and tracking complaints.
There is an interesting tie-in between the nearly one-year-ago-to-the-day actions of FCC Chairman Martin and this week's filing for bankruptcy protection by the Chicago based Tribune newspaper and television company. Last fall, Chairman Martin spearheaded the lifting of rules regarding joint ownership of newspapers and TV stations in a local market. This allowed Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell to buy the Tribune media empire for $1.6 billion (US).
On Monday, Zell, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. He loaded up the privately held publisher with about $8 billion in additional debt when he took the company private in a transaction largely financed by company contributions to an employee stock option plan and borrowing from future pension contributions. X |