Conflict of Interest on the FCC?

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) was established to regulate the media, and internet industries, to ensure fairness, competition and right practise.

However recently, serious questions have been asked as to the neutrality of the organisation, with cases of commissioners showing apparent conflicts of interest. The latest and most blatant involves FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Bake. She is leaving her position to become a Comcast lobbyist, only four months after she approved the merger of media giants Comcast and NBC Universal.

This has prompted the need for urgent action to be taken to hinder FCC Commissioners leaving their positions in order to take up these lucrative positions in the companies they are meant to be neutrally regulating.

Failure to act and restore confidence in the role of the FCC  could jeopardise future common-sense public policy, such as Net Neutrality or rigorous reviews of future deals, thus stifling consumer choice and competition. American business needs a robust organisation to oversee the sector, especially when deals like the proposed AT&T merger with T-Mobile is looming. Business needs to know there is some sort of strategy to maintain consumer choice whilst the powerful and aggressive Verizon increases it’s market share; and businesses will increasing need to have availability to super-fast broadband at a reasonable price, in order to remain competitive within the global market. With these kind of decisions facing the sector in the immediate future the FCC will need to quickly restore public confidence; and the church needs to begin to pray into these decisions so America will be blessed, and can continue to be a blessing to the nations.