every weekend right here on c-span2. >> coming up next on c-span2, "the communicators" talks with former fcc member michael copps about the state of media and legislation that would consolidate telecommunications firms. then a group of former marine officers talk about why dependence on foreign oil is a national security issue. after that we are live from the holocaust me museum in washington where president obama will deliver commemoration remarks and talk about his strategy to prevent and respond to mass atrocities. and later the senate returns at noon eastern for more debate on programs to prevent violence against women. >> this week on "the communicators," former federal communications member michael copps on legislation to reform the fcc, consolidation of

telecommunications firms and the state of the media. >> host: well, it's been about four months since michael copps is no longer a member of the federal communications commission, but he joins us here on "the communicators" to talk about some of the issues that the fcc is currently facing. michael copps, welcome back to "the communicators." >> guest: delighted to be here. thanks for having me on. >> host: and eliza ceilingman is technology reporter with politico. commissioner copps, if we could start with a bill that's currently working its way through the house, and that's fcc reform. what do you think about that? is it necessary? >> guest: well, there's always room for an agency to reform. i like to think that i contributed some to reform when i was there, when i was acting chairman we opened up the agency, made it a lot more transparent, a lot more participatory. the biggest reform i would like to see would be to empower commissioners to talk to one another as a group so we could sit around a table like this and

talk about some of the momentous issues that are carving the destiny of our future and our kids' future. we're prohibited from doing that by something called government in the sunshine law which was something passed way back in watergate days. it really hobbles the fcc. nobody else operates like that. members of congress talk to one another, cardinals in the church talk to one another, the members of the supreme court who are meeting this week on health care reform will be talking to each other. we can't talk to each other except one-on-one. and you have five people who are selected because they have various and diverse capacities. there's a lot of collegiality there, people get along well, but i think we would have avoided some of the problems that occasionally come up had we been able to talk together. so i'd like to see congress do that. there are other reforms we could do. i think it'd be nice if we put out, for example, an annual report. i think it'd be nice given the

status of where everything is, i think it would be nice to consolidate reports. so that kind of process reform is good. eviscerating the commission, dis'em bowling the commission and trying to keep it from serving the public interest is not process reform and substantive destruction, it's not good for consumers. it's not good for an independent agency. this is an agency that the united states should be proud of. not every country has this where the white house or the minister, the head of government or the minister calls up and tells you what to do. we have an independent agency with 1700 or 800 real experts and are given some real independence so we can serve consumers and help to get the best telecommunications and advanced telecommunications and media out to our people. we ought to be proud and building that up. you have to be careful that you don't, number one, get captured by the folks you're regulating, and, number two, you have to be

able to keep that independence and let us do our job. you can't attach conditions to a her merger. that's a big change in the law, but it's a big change in the way the fcc operates, too, and i think some of the tiplations or proposals in that reform legislation would end up not expediting the business of the fcc, but slowing. i think we'd be in court nor, i think we'd be be in court earlier, i think we'd have to hire more people just to keep up with all of these, all of these requirements. my friend susan crawford wrote a good article about this in "wired" recently. i'm expressing my own opinions, i'm not saying she thinks all of this, but i think we need to tread very carefully before we change the fcc. >> host: well, right after you retired, december 31, 2011, there was an article that came out in telecom a.m., and it was dated january 10, 2012, and the

headline of it was "smooth sailing for corporate deals seen with copps' exit from fcc." i'm sure you've seen this article. what was your reputation, and are you fearful that with you not there as the voice, that there may be some deal making done? >> guest: well, there was a lot of deal making done while i was there. [laughter] much of it was done over my objections. i didn't vote against all consolidation and mergers, but i voted against my share, my share of them. i think consolidation has been the bane of the industry. i think it has taken efficiency out of the industry where it's supposed to inculcate. i think it has put the industry in debt to such an extent as when you talk about media and all the consolidation we've had there, you finance these huge deals, and how do you pay for them? well, let's see. oh, why don't we cut back the newsroom, fire a few reporters and all that. so, yes, some would have you

believe that age of consolidation is over with. that's not so. there's just one merger after another, and as soon as the fcc approves one, another comes through the door and says, well, you're not going to let that fella get bigger, so now we have to get bigger too and either have the outright kind of mergers or deals like verizon and the cable industry in media, we had nbc-u within last year, you've got scripts buying up stations, cumulus, citadel, and as the economy starts to get better, i think you're going to see more rather than less consolidation. at some point we've got to learn to say no to some of these deals while we still have any hope of developing competition and any hope of restoring our media and any hope of really making sure we get advanced telecommunications out to every single american. >> host: e rise ya krigman.

>> host: in order to say no more, cowe need process -- do we need process reform at the fcc, or do the commissioners need to have a stronger back bone on this? >> host: well, you have to have an appreciation of what's at stake in the public interest and what are the goals of the communications act and how you interpret them, but i think the telecommunications act of 996 envisioned all sorts of competition that never saw light of day both in telecom and in media. so there are different mentalities, different arguments about it. maybe some people don't think it's as destructive as i think it's been, but i think we need to have more commissioners there who are skeptical of all of this consolidation, who can look around and see the damage that it's done and see that it's not serving consumers. this is supposed to be a consumer protection agency. and i want it to be a consumer protection agency. and when it is a consumer

protection agency, it's a darn good agency for the people of the country. >> host: let's talk about today's high-profile transaction pending before the fcc, the cable company sale of spectrum to verizon wireless. do you have any concerns about it, and why specifically? >> guest: well, i do. i do. i don't know, call it what you will, some will say it's conspiracy and restraint of trade, some will say cabal, some will say cartel, some will say collusion, all these cs. the c i'm worried about is consumer, and the other c is competition, and i'm skeptical of it. obviously, i'm not at the commission, i haven't looked at all of it, but from my distance it look like verizon will get a pretty good deal on control in the wireless market, and the cable folks will be reigning supreme when it comes to wire line, and then they'll be working amongst themselves with joint marketing agreements. it doesn't strike me as the way to foster competition and bring down prices, and, you know,

prices are going up. there was just a story a week or so again the cable bill again has outstripped the pace of inflation, so we need to reverse that. we need to give competition and edge. you know, if you ever say no to competition, then how can you be thinking about gutting the agency that designs some rules of the road for this industry to operate in? you have to have, you have to have it, you have to have that oversight especially if you're not going to have competition. so the people are talking about all this process reform and eviscerating the fcc, that could, wrongly done, open the worst of both worlds where you don't have any competition, and you don't have any public interest oversight. that's not what was intended. at least i certainly hope that's not what was intensed. >> host: right. it's no secret that you don't think there's enough competition in the communications market. where should the government intervene to incent more

competition, you know, what's your philosophy on that? >> >> guest: well, you know, i was at the commission for ten years. we had lots of opportunities, one of them is to -- the big one is to say no to some of these deals, the other one is to conduct your public interest oversight. there's lots of proceedings that have been pending for a long time that need to be special access is one of them i think we really need to address special access in the telecommunications market because i think that that is disserved the competition and added to the cost of consumers. so i think taking those issues up, and we have a broadband strategy now, that's good for the cup. i was -- for the country. i was lamenting the absence of that for eight years when in the previous administration when the reigning thought was just let the market get all of this out to the american people. took us a long time to realize

the market wasn't going to do that. we started off when i came to the commission, i guess, as number two maybe or number three in the world in broadband population. i don't know where we are now, 15, 20, 24, i don't know exactly, but it's not where your country and my country ought to be. so there is room for positive government policy. the private sector that drives development, the private sector that really fuels it. but always in our history we've had some vision of where we're going, some encourage m, some policy by the government. and if ever we needed that, it's right now when we have this imposing and opportunity-creating infrastructure of the 21st century with broadband and the internet and all that that can just open so many doors of opportunity to so many people. we've got to step up to the plate and say, look, this stuff is really important. this is going to determine if our kids get to jobs, if our country's going to regain its

international competitiveness, and that's a tough one too. there's no problem this country faces that doesn't have as part of its resolution something doing with broadband, so there's a huge public interest in that. and the commission, i think, has to be bold in stepping up to the plate and recognizing that the times have changed and players change and gatekeepers change over the course of years. you've got to be steady in your dedication to the principle, though, of competition, and then you just go from there. >> host: well, michael copps, let's look at the verizon/cable company spectrum issue just a little differently, and that's as a spectrum issue. has the fcc been remiss in making sure spectrum is available so that perhaps this type of marketing deal would not need to be done? >> guest: well, we need to understand where we are with spectrum. we need to have a better inventory of spectrum than we have. of we also, i think, should have

something closer to a use it or lose it policy. you know, why we get into these big things where we're going to let them sell this. you don't sell spectrum, you sell licenses and things although the companies would say my spectrum, my spectrum, my spectrum. it's our spectrum, it's yours and mine and the people who are watching this. there's a lot of spectrum out there today at this hour, i don't think anybody in the united states has really very much of a clue exactly how much spectrum is lying foul. but i bet you it's a whole bunch that could fuel a whole bunch of devices and empower a whole lot of technologies that we need to get a handle on that. but we'll hope that the spectrum auctions can clear up some new spectrum, although we can talk more about that later. i think it has some potential. i think it has some problems attached to it that we need to be very careful. and then there's encouraging new technology, smart technologies and all that and spectrum sharing, so there's lots that we

can do. i think it's high on the agenda of the commission, and i think chairman genachowski and the colleagues down there are very aware of the fact that this is, it's a huge, huge challenge. we are just using up more and more spectrum, so we have to find better uses. there is no silver bullet, there's no one approach that's going to solve it that we have to be moving on all of these fronts. >> host: well, you mentioned the spectrum auctions. do you foresee them taking place in the near future, and if they took place, let's say today, how long before that spectrum would be on the line? >> guest: well, i think that could take a while, and you say the near future, they're not going to take place right away. i hope the commission will do everything it can to expedite it, but, again, we don't want to see that as some sort of silver bullet solution. i'm not comfortable saying let's take a whole bunch of spectrum and take it from big, consolidate media and turn it over to communications. so we have on the careful.

again, we have to be careful about is there going to be some opportunity for competition? are we going to have designated entity rolls for these auctions? i haven't heard too many people talking about that yet, but we need to think about that. last time we had an auction, we waited until too late to even get around to crafting those rules, so we didn't end up with the very best rules. but that's important. but there are so many -- there's always so many unintended consequences when you do something that's this broad and this important. what's the impact going to be on public radio -- public television? i'm really concerned about that. public television is doing a good job with multicast and using three, four, five programming screens to do really good programming, and all of a sudden if, you know, they're going to be decreasing in number, their stations are going to be thrown together, does that mean we're going to have less programming? i'm worried about small diversity stations in big markets who might be really fighting to hold on, and now

they can sell their license and turn their spectrum in. that's not necessarily good in those, in those particular markets. so there are lots of different ramifications that tell me to be careful how we trod, and we're not going to get 500 megahertz through these auctions. i don't know what we're going to get, but it'll be far short of that. so i hope they work. i think we need to expedite them and do them as quickly as possible. takes a while to get auction rules and designate rules and all that, but meanwhile we can't let all of these other avenues of encouraging technology and all that sort out. >> host: you're watching c-span's "communicators" program. our guest, former fcc commissioner michael copps, served on the commission for ten years. also joining us is eliza krigman of politico. >> host: so you mentioned

getting to 500 megahertz, the president's goal for repurposing spectrum for mobile broadband. we're not going to get through that the auctions, another way is through freeing up government spectrum, but it's been very hard to do that particularly with the 1755, blair brand says we should focus on sharing spectrum and other ways to free up that goal. how should we accomplish that? >> guest: yes. i think we have to get a real good fix on what it's being used for, and some of those uses are pretty heavy uses, and you have to have some times of lying foul and to be able to be used in emergency situations. but we all know how government works, and our government bureaucracy works, and we love our national security apparatus, but they're not shy this holding on to the resources that they need or asking or for resources. and there's no question in my mind, but i'm sure there is, there are sizable swaths of

spectrum that could be freed up by that. it really takes some intestinal fortitude to make that happen and to make that happen, people in the highest-up positions of power are going to have to say this is going to happen. >> host: do we need legislation mandating spectrum inventory? i know there's some out there flooding congress, or is thissing? fcc can simply take up on its own? >> guest: well, we can do it, and we have done it with some extent, but not to -- and you don't really have to have an inventory of every little square foot in the united states of america, but you can do an inventory, i think, based on some sophisticated modeling and tools like that that can give you a pretty good feel of where we are and maybe legislation would help, but i think we can, i think the fcc could do something like that anytime it decides it wants to do it. >> host: what's the hesitation?

>> guest: well, i don't i don'tw what the hesitation is. it will take some time, it will take some resources. there are probably monetary constraints attached to it. it's not a wonderful time for anybody's budget including the federal communications commission. we're pushed so many ways, pulled so many ways. when i got there, i think we had maybe close to 2,000 employees, now it's down in the 1700s and just look how the world of telecom and media has changed and all the new problems and challenges and the technologies that you have to understand and train your employees for. and for the commissioners to understand. so it's, there's a lot going on, and that would take some, that would take some resources to do that. >> host: well, as someone who has, obviously, followed telecommunications issues for a long time and probably continues to, commissioner copps, what do you think about the cybersecurity bills that are currently working their way through congress? >> guest: well, i think we're a

day late and a dollar short on cybersecurity. it's a huge problem. i think the capacities of other countries do us damage through cybersecurity. they're already obvious to most citizens, and they're very serious. so i think we really have to see this as this would be one of the major fronts of international confrontation here. and anytime from now forward. so we need to be prepared for that. it has to be a priority. that's, obviously, not simply an fcc function. i mean, that goes to everybody's, every agency. >> host: eliza krigman. >> host: do we need to be concerned about foreign countries are investing in our national telecommunication efforts as part of the cybersecurity issue? >> guest: well, i think you always do. i think that's why you have sections in the law that talk about foreign ownership and if,

indeed, this is as critically important and at the same time as vulnerable an infrastructure as it is, then i think you have to be careful who's owning that and who's operating it. ownership, ownership always matters. that doesn't mean you never allow it and, certainly, we have allowed lots of foreign ownership, and some of that is justified. but i think in this age of heightened national security challenges, we need to have a good conversation about that. those stipulations were written long ago, before probably the word cybersecurity was even in existence, you know? so that's one of those issues that needs to be revisited, and it really needs to be prioritized. and i worry that, you know, every agency seems to have a cybersecurity guru or a chief, but there's got to be someone who's going to be a center of that and somebody really driving -- i hope, i hope we're

getting, i hope we're getting to the that. >> host: on a separate topic, we know you're a big advocate of the open internet. those rules are being challenged in court this year. do you think that the fcc is going to win in court? >> guest: well, i certainly hope so. i am hesitant to predict the outcome of any, any court cases. we're all affixed to our tvs this week watching health care reform, we've got some of the indecency cases up there with the fcc. i would hope so. as you probably know, i expressed some questions at the time about whether this was the best legal terrain, title i, to make our case on. when we had title ii i think just looking in retrospect after this years we started debating back in 2002 and started making these awful decisions about it's not telecommunications really,

it's something else, we'll put it over here where there's no colorado sight instead of -- oversight, instead of getting consumer protections, that was just the wrong way to go. so i think title ii has more legal clarity, but i am hopeful that we will get some deference on this and building a move ahead. be not, a strong recommendation to repair to a title ii defense as soon as humanly possible if we get turned down. >> host: michael copps, what do you think of the fcc's recent decision on lightsquared? >> guest: well, i think it was very difficult. i was there for part of that, and i think the experts there in the office of engineering and technology really dug in and did so without prejudice and really tried to understand the facts of the matter, was there going to be interference. and i would laud their

performance. both sides were up, of course, lobbying on the hill, and then the sky is falling down on the part of both of them, but i think, i think it just was the best decision they thought they could make. >> host: what do you think about the fact there's only been three commissioners since you left in december? >> guest: well, i think there should be five commissioners there, and talking to one another. it operates best when there's a full come policemen of people and a diversity of input, more advisers, more commissioners, better discussion. so, you know, it still has a quorum, and it's still doing business and casting votes and making decisions, and there are three very capable people there who seem to get along very, very well. they don't seem to, they do. i was part of it. so i think they're, ity they're

doing well, but i think they would be augmented by having two additional commissioners there, both of whom i know and both of who i think will be outstanding members of the fcc. >> host: eliza krigman. >> host: if you could wave your wand to have the fcc accomplish one thing in the next six months, what would it be? >> guest: get serious about media. >> host: okay, get more specific than that. [laughter] >> guest: well, without a news and information infrastructure that informs people about the world they live in, i don't see any of the problems facing this country being promptly or rightly resolved. and we have to be really candid about it, dumb down our democratic dialogue and our civic dialogue because of the consolidation that i mentioned earlier. we have sacrificed many journalists and newsrooms and investigative journalism, i think, hangs by a life thread. because of an fcc that has refused through the years to

step up to the plate on its public interest oversight responsibilities, and this goes back to 1980 with one or two brief exceptions. we used to have guidelines, for example, for broadcast licensees. all of that is gone now. i would bring some of those back. i would make them kind of news-sent rick and encourage the development of news and information. but in this, we have all of this wonderful possibility for an enhanced civic dialogue. not just traditional media, but new media and a town square of democracy that could be paved with broadband bricks. and we have -- the traditional media has stripped itself of its capacity to do its job, and the new media has not common voted that there's a model there to replace that. 90-95 president of the news that you and i and everybody else gets every day, reads every day even on the internet comes from where? the newspaper newsroom and the broadcast television newsroom.

there's so much less of it. and this is a serious challenge to our democracy. we've always found ways as a country to keep the country informed. you can go back to days of washington, jefferson and madison, the people who wrote the first amendment, the free -- freedom of the press and all that. they said we've got a new, young republican here, can it survive? they subsidized newspapers of every stripe, you know, right, left, whatever terms you wanted to use back then. but get it out there, and keep the people informed, and that's your premise. and that's the premise of self-government, an informed electorate will make proper decisions. that was kind of the idea behind broadcast, the market broadcasters made for use of the spectrum. they serve the public interest convenience and necessity, and we've got to get back to that kind of thinking. and it's not, we don't have time to sit around and say, well, the new media and the internet will solve all this someday. i don't think we can stand another two or three or four or

five years of thety munition of media and journalism and news and information. >> host: and finally, michael copps, what have you been doing for the last four months? >> guest: well, i've been almost as busy as i was at the fcc. i've been trying to make some talks, keep my issues alive. one thing i want to do is keep the issues i was passionate about at the fcc alive, and primarily that's media, news and organization. broadband ownership and female ownership and all those things are very important. so i haven't made any decisions about, you know, if i'm going to find a little home somewhere or do this from my home or what, but i will be speaking out, joining the common cause board of governors recently. probably joining some more boards and, hopefully, you'll be hearing from me and hopefully

enough that you'll say one day, gee, let's have him back. he's still doing some interesting things. >> host: michael copps, former fcc commissioner, has been our guest on "the communicators" this week along with eliza krigman. thank you both. >> host: thanks for having me. >> here's a look ahead. next, a group of former marine officers discuss the nation's dependence on foreign oil and the future of electric vehicles. then we're live as president obama speaks from the u.s. holocaust memorial museum in washington where he'll talking k about his strategy to prevent and respond to mass atrocities. and later, the senate returns at noon eastern to resume consideration on programs to prevent violence against women followed later by a debate on the national labor relation board's rules on representation and election procedures. >> in the new book by rodney king called "the riot within,"