Stop the revolving door at the FCC

If you want to know why so many people are disillusioned and disgusted with Washington, look no further than FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker’s decision to leave the FCC to become a lobbyist for Comcast after rubber-stamping the media giant’s takeover of NBC.

Of course, Baker is not the first government official to accept a paycheck from the industry she was once charged with regulating, and, sadly, she will not be the last. However, her announcement has brought the unseemliness of the revolving door into stark relief.

When less than one-third of Americans trust their government and nearly three-fourths are frustrated or angered by it, as indicated in a recent Pew poll, such conduct only deepens this cynicism and damages the credibility of even the most committed public servants.

Commissioner Baker and the FCC claim that no rules were violated in her job negotiations with Comcast, though a congressional inquiry is underway. But even if she hurdled all of the legal technicalities, that’s hardly the point. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.

Even in the absence of a clear quid pro quo, the notion that a public official can endorse a multibillion-dollar deal, publicly criticize the FCC’s review of that deal for being a time-consuming inconvenience for the merging parties, and then announce that she’s accepted a position with the new giant company she helped create is nauseating.
 
The voices of the American people in the decisions of our government are increasingly crowded out by powerful corporations. The revolving door at the FCC calls into question whether, instead of fulfilling the public mission of the agency, regulators there are only auditioning for roles with the companies they are supposed to be watching. And the next casting call is already underway.

The FCC is now reviewing an even bigger deal — the proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile that would unite the country’s second- and fourth-largest wireless carriers. Public interest groups have raised many concerns and questions about this deal, which could leave the newly engorged AT&T and Verizon in control of 80 percent of the wireless Internet market.

But the merger could also be an opportunity to restore the public’s confidence in the FCC. My organization Free Press today sent a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and the three other remaining commissioners, asking them to pledge neither to seek nor accept employment from AT&T or T-Mobile directly upon leaving their present posts. We ask for assurance that, in this matter, the FCC’s commitment is to the public it serves and not to potential future employers.

There are philosophical differences among the commissioners on what role government should play in regulating business. There is also no single resolution to this proposed merger that will satisfy everyone. But we hope that through this pledge the public can at least be confident that deliberations are based not on any future job prospects, but on the agency’s actual mandate: whether this deal is truly in the public interest.

Craig Aaron is the president and CEO of Free Press, a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to reforming the media.