Lying Liars: Media Access Project

All your hard-earned tax dollars have not been wasted on NPR. In fact, without NPR’s reporting we might not have such an open window on the shenanigans leftist front groups like the Media Access Project are up to. The ObamaMedia isn’t going to come right out and tell you, that’s a fact.

^{August 2008: Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project}

Today, MAP will ask the Federal Communications Commission to impose new rules regarding “transparency in political campaigns,” NPR reports. The organization claims to be in search of a “way to make public the sources of money behind those groups.”

MAP cites the case of Concerned Taxpayers of America as one reason for these “new rules.” CTA ran a political ad pointing out that the policies of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) weren’t working out.

The crime in this is alleged to be that CTA is funded by “a million-dollar front group financed by just two guys — a Maryland businessman and the head of a New York hedge fund.” MAP’s former president and CEO, Andrew Schwartzman, claims the ad should not have been attributed to CTA but, rather, to the two deep-pocketed individuals behind it.

NPR writes the “new rules,” for example, would require broadcasters to “identify any source supplying 10 percent of a group’s financing.”

Wonder when we’ll see George Soros’ name listed in political ad credits? Right. Just what I thought.

Also, the “largest outside money groups” would be excluded “because they have so many donors that no single source would hit the 10 percent mark.”

In case you don’t recognize it, this is the 2008 Obama campaign model. Too many donors, so little time to verify them.

Now, time for the lying liars.

Remember Mark Lloyd, Obama’s controversial Diversity Redistribution of Wealth Czar at the FCC? I first wrote about him back in August and September 2009.

You may recall, Lloyd’s agenda includes defanging the overwhelming power of conservative talk radio. (His concept, not mine.)

When Lloyd came under attack for his remarks and opinions, a bunch of astroturfing lefties went on the defense, including MAP’s Andrew Schwartzman.

Schwartzman served as MAP’s president and CEO for thirty years until March 2010, when he was succeeded by former FCC commissioner Tyrone Brown. Schwartzman stayed on as MAP’s senior vice president and policy director.

MAP’s reorganization started in December 2008 with an “eye toward adapting” to Obama’s administration and a new Congress, as well as Schwartzman’s plan to step down from the leadership role.

Among MAP’s major pending cases are a challenge to the FCC’s deregulation of broadcast ownership rules and the defense of an FCC ruling that Comcast for unlawfully blocked customers’ Internet access. “Needless to say, the coming of a new administration enables MAP to go on the offensive for the first time in eight years,” Schwartzman said.

Brown was tailor-made for MAP: “Brown served at the FCC during the Carter administration. He was vice president of Iridium satellite and was in-house counsel for The Washington Post Co.’s broadcast operations.”

Schwartzman said “veteran telecom policy insider” Brown was chosen “because of his deep understanding of media and telecom issues and connections in the private sector. Brown has also been an advocate for minority representation in the media and a supporter of localism.”

Connect the dots.

Earlier, in September 2009, representatives from more than 50 groups, including Schwartzman on behalf of MAP, signed a letter calling on “the FCC and Congress to support the work of the FCC diversity officer and to correct the record on localism and diversity policies.”

Ron Arnold writes at Undue Influence:

What the long letter didn’t say was how closely connected to Obama the 55 authors were and how rich their groups were from left-wing donors including George Soros, Peter Lewis, and other ultra-partisan Democrat fat-cats. Groups with combined annual revenues of several hundred million dollars put full effort into keeping Obama’s Media Diversity Czar in office.

Arnold credited Schwartzman/MAP with $619,284.

Where does MAP get its funding? A long list of progressive funders:

. Ford Foundation, $400,000 in 2011 for “Freedom of Expression.”
. Media Democracy Fund, amount unknown in 2010.
. Charles H. Revson Fund, $75,000 in 2008.
. Wallace Global Fund, $40,000 in 2007.
. Rockefeller Family Fund, $30,000 in 2006.
. Threshhold Foundation, $50,000 in 2005.
. Joyce Foundation, $125,000 in 2004 and $40,000 in 2003.
. Nathan Cummings Foundation, $20,000 in 1992.

And, of course, we have Soros dollars. Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media reported in 2004 that Soros’ Open Society Institute “provided $600,000 to the Media Access Project.” In June 2000, MAP’s Schwartzman participated in OSI’s Promoting Democracy as Digital Discourse: A Seminar on Broadband, Internet and the Digital Divide.

Also, ahead of Obama’s inauguration, in December 2008, MAP met with members of the Obama-Biden transition team.

On December 16, MAP’s legal team met with the Obama FCC transition team of Susan Crawford, Kevin Werbach, and Larry Strickling as part of a larger group of public interest organizations. MAP Senior Vice President Harold Feld presented specific recommendations for changes in spectrum policy focused on enhancing competition, enhancing efficient use of spectrum, aggressive outreach to traditionally marginalized stakeholders such as women and minority-owned businesses, and creating an overall change in culture driven less by ideological commitment to the discredit Chicago School “free market” approach and more driven by actual consumer and provider behavior. Associate Director Parul Desai discussed the need to clarify the FCC’s jurisdiction in specific areas where jurisdiction is ambiguous or has been challenged.

You can read MAP’s white paper to the FCC here.

By the way, Crawford and Werbach have connections to Free Press, headed by Marxist professor Robert McChesney. Free Press is often allied with MAP.

But the Obama administration-MAP relationship does not end there. Beginning in April 2009, MAP held four pubic forums in Washington, D.C., called MAPPING CHANGE.

The first, called “The First 100 Days of the Obama Administration: DTV, Economic Stimulus, and Beyond,” was held April 29, 2009. Speakers included Crawford, who had become a member of Obama’s National Economic Council.

The most recent MAP forum, “Reshuffling the Deck: Repacking and ‘Incentive Auctions’ in the TV Band,” was held March 11.

In December 2009, Mark Lloyd keynoted at a MAP gathering entitled “Social Media, Net Neutrality, and Future of Journalism.” Also present was former FCC commissioner Henry Rivera, a “strong proponent of the Censorship Doctrine, also mis-known as the ‘Fairness” Doctrine’” and chair of Obama’s purely leftist Advisory Committee On Diversity For Communications In The Digital Age. (Rivera also oversaw the Obama-Biden FCC transition process.)

Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell writes:

On December 15 in a speech for the Media Access Project, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd claimed to refute numerous what he called “exaggerations and distortions” of a wide range of his thoughts, positions and policy prescriptions from what he called a “right-wing smear campaign.” What Lloyd did was offer numerous falsehoods and denials about things that are undeniably true.

In what John Batchelor frequently calls an unforced error, Lloyd also said he was “not carrying out a ‘secret plot funded by George Soros’ aimed at getting rid of conservative talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.”

Why even bring it up if there’s no substance to it? Especially when it is well known that this is precisely what Lloyd wants — and the fact that he worked for the Soros-funded Center for American Progress prior to joining the FCC?

Lloyd added there was a “right-wing smear campaign” against him:

“I am not a Czar appointed by President Obama,” said Lloyd. “I am not at the FCC to restore the Fairness Doctrine through the front door or the back door, or to carry out a secret plot funded by George Soros to get rid of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or any other conservative talk show host. I am not at the FCC to remove anybody, whatever their color, from power. I am not a supporter of Hugo Chavez. The right wing smear campaign has been, in a word, incredible, generating hate mail and death threats. It is the price we pay for freedom of speech. And I do support free speech.”

The picture is clear that the relationship between leftist “media justice” groups, progressive funders, the FCC, and the Obama administration is incestuous. The whirling of the government-”media justice”-foundation revolving door has become a blur.

It is also clear that, for the Lying Liars, the rules need only apply to the other guy — the Conservative — and never to them.