When I started at XCRF in 1960, Mexico was the most lenient country in the world when it came to radio.
Television should be regulated like a toaster.
The FCC, under my leadership, will stand for the First Amendment.
The media has changed. We now give broadcast licenses to philosophies instead of people. People get confused and think there is no difference between news and entertainment. People who project themselves as journalists on television don't know the first thing about journalism. They are just there stirring up a hockey game.
If you operate a TV or radio station, you have to have a license. It has nothing to do with fundamental freedom. It has to do with protection of the average citizen against abuses.
TV broadcasting is owned, in the sense that governments around the world have asserted power over the airwaves that permeate their territories, deciding who can use what bandwidth and why - and those with licenses then, with exceptions determined by regulators, decide what to broadcast.
Our existing media system today is the direct result of government laws and subsidies that created it.
The public gets not one penny from them in return for those airwaves.
So the system we have in radio and television today is the direct result of government policies that have been made in our name, in the name of the people, on our behalf, but without our informed consent.
I think if you open the door to government control of television, then you let in a host of questions about rights.
Isn't it only appropriate that, in return for the free use of the public spectrum, broadcasters provide something substantial, something that wouldn't otherwise be provided by marketplace competition?
If you look at the history of broadcasting, what you find is the National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association whose mission is to protect the interests of the commercial broadcasters.
Broadcasting began, essentially, in the hands of very, very few players - actually two - and when television came along, there were two networks, then three. Rules began to get formulated that essentially protected that concentrated group.
For those broadcasters who are less than responsible, the FCC needs to have sharper teeth to enforce the law.
Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.
So the competition isn't once you got the license, running the station; it's getting the license.
