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Michael Powell’s Bad Cards

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell’s legacy, unfortunately, will be defined by his overboard reaction to Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” shock jock Howard Stern’s banalities and rock star Bono’s ill-advised adjective. That’s a shame, given that Powell was right about what really matters: Regulators aren’t keeping up with changes in technology and society, making it time for a revolutionary change in our approach.

Powell played the hand he was dealt, and the cards that the Bush administration and Congress flipped weren’t much to look at. The rest of Washington opted to stay out of the FCC’s complex arena except when there was political hay to be made -- in short, whenever Powell got caught in the klieg lights. And, given the FCC’s broad mandate -- in addition to indecency, Powell confronted the need to modernize outdated media ownership rules, update a telecom regulatory scheme that badly lags behind technological advances, slap limits on telemarketers and oversee the costly conversion to a digital television system -- the chairman spent way too much time under those lights.

Start with his ill-advised role as censor of the publicly owned airwaves. It’s hard to argue with Stern’s succinct reaction to Powell’s planned March departure: “Thank God he’s gone. But God help us with what’s next.” Congress and the White House can’t continue to shirk their duty by expecting Powell’s successor to bridge the gap between 1st Amendment rights and increasingly shrill demands for decency standards.

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Rather than supporting the FCC’s proposal to bring outdated media consolidation rules into the 21st century, many in Congress instead turned the subsequent controversy into a political football. The old rules are unfair and should have been changed years ago to reflect a world where cable television and satellite services are reshaping how news and entertainment are distributed. (Full disclosure: Tribune Corp., which owns the Los Angeles Times, would benefit from the rules that Powell proposed.)

The rest of Washington also has been AWOL on the tough work of establishing broad policy guidelines for a communications industry in flux. It’s one thing to call for a level playing field for competing broadband technologies; it’s another to do the homework and craft legislation to give the industry market-based rules without jeopardizing consumer protections. Legislation that Congress passed in 1996 was outdated before the ink was dry, yet nearly a decade later it’s still the law. Try as it might, Washington can’t blame the Telecommunications Act’s shortcomings on Powell.

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